When I go a prolonged time without reading an acclaimed new author I start to feel itchy. Maybe its fear of missing out, maybe its disgust at myself for intellectual laziness, but whatever the reason, I feel compelling to check out those with big reps. Its therefore mildly surprising to myself that it's taken me so long to read one of Mark Lawrence's books. That's doubly so as I've read kindle samples and enjoyed his style.
There seems to be a distinctive voice to British trad fantasy at the moment, unflinching about brutality and laced with self-mocking gallows humour. It feels like a mix of Gemmell and Pratchett, although I think I'd be wrong to place it entirely as the natural hybrid of the two greatest British fantasy writers of the 80s/90s. Is it a reflection of the post-Thatcher world? Something inherited from older writers? Did we all just watch too much Blackadder?
That's a trick question as there's no such thing but there is definitely something of Blackadder to Prince of Fools' main character, Prince Jalan. Although its more accurate to say there's something of Flashman; Blackadder is a loser, Flashman is a winner. And so is Jalan. A complete cad with considerable natural gifts, Jalan is obsessed with the good life and gets it. Or at least to start with.
Now, I've sometimes complained about such characters as being utterly dislikable. But I also love some of the characters like this I read about. The key for me is a certain self-awareness and at least some sense of empathy and responsibility, no matter how crabbed. Jalan has these things, even if he would protest about the second. Therefore, I'm prepared to sign off on Jalan as a fun character. And I do! Jalan is a lot of fun as narrator.
My issues with Prince of Fools starts with he has to narrate. Most of the book is a quest, or as I've taken to calling it, a travelogue. I'm beginning to think that quests/travelogues are some of the hardest books to do. One of the reasons is that a good travelogue requires a huge number of genuinely interesting locations to go through, which is no mean feat when doing secondary worldbuilding. Personally, Mark Lawrence's medieval Europe with the serial numbers filed off doesn't meet the criteria.
The other hard thing about Quests is that it messes with Conflict. Its easy to maintain a sense of conflict when characters are mostly in one place dealing with one enemy. But when they move from place to place? Either there's still mainly one enemy we see, which can lead to the same situation again and again. Or there's a cast of different enemies, in which case it can feel uneven and like a chain of loosely connected scenes rather than a story. The one big Conflict an author has during Quests that stays consistent is the Protagonists vs Each Other and the Protagonists vs Themselves.
Without giving away too many spoilers, I think Lawrence clearly understand this. He puts Jalan through a decent amount of internal conflict. I'm just not sure how well he executed in terms of keeping my interest (even after finishing it). Jalan chews over his problems endlessly, but he only ever really has one option, and I often know that before he does. Like I know he's going to stay basically the same person throughout the book. And the longer the book went on, the more aware I was of this, and the more I was dragged out of enjoying the story.
And make no mistake, I did enjoy Prince of Fools. But I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would at the start. Hopefully the next book will have more cad and less quest.
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