F. Paul Wilson's novel The Keep had impressed me growing up because it was a novel that had started out as Dracula and ended with Lord of the Rings.
John C Wright has managed and even greater trick with his novel Iron Chamber of Memory.
In this case, what started out as a romantic comedy, Nora Roberts style, and then, Jeffery Deaver-like, ended in an epic battle on the scale of Mary Stewart and her books of King Arthur and Merlin.
Let's call it a fantasy romance, of sorts. Where's the soundtrack for Excalibur! I need O Fortuna to accompany the knights charging out of the mists!
Trust me, when I say it was epic, I mean EPIC.
The story
The small island of Sark in the English Channel is the last feudal government in Europe. By law, no motor vehicles run on the road, and no lights burn at night. Only the lord of the island may keep hounds.
Enter our hero, Hal Landfall, penniless graduate student (yes, that’s redundant). He's looking for his friend Manfred Hathaway, who now owns the house and the island. What he finds is Manfred’s fiancée Laurel. They discover one room in the house, where those who enter remember their true self. When Hal and Laurel step in, they remember a terrible truth they must forget again when they step outside.
I wish I could go more into this story without given things away.
This book has haunted Wright (Haunted? Good enough) for over a decade.
The island it takes place on is real, even though it sounds like a fantasy construction, for it is a fantastic place.
I read it on a Kindle, so I can't give you page numbers. But the first 25% is a romantic farce. Like Bringing Up Baby, only it's funny. Then the next 25% is an epic romance. The third quarter .... transitions nicely into the last 25%, in which the fecal matter hits the air impeller, and we are in for one hell of a ride.
So we have some of your epic fantasy, we have some RomCom, and we have a face off with the forces of Hell.
And in all of those elements of epicness and mythology clashing, good against evil, we have a bit like this.
"I am the son of The Grail Knight. My father showed me the cup when I was a boy, still with heaven's innocence in me, so that the shining rays were visible to me: and in the Blood of the Grail he anointed me."
"And after..."
"We moved to New York, and he opened a used bookstore."
The unexpectedness of that line was ... well, I was glad I didn't wake the neighbors.
Or:
"Are you suffering from cutlery dysfunction?"
It's times like those where I'm wondering if I'm in Mary Stewart or in a Peter David novel. Either way, it works.
This is what, in my family, is called a "Novel novel." There is more in common with Victor Hugo than James Patterson. It's a book where I spent a lot of time admiring the crafting of story, and the crafting of words and phrasing. I'm usually not the sort of person to note that sort of thing.
So, you want your humor? Check. Want your fantasy, triple checked. Want romance? Double checked in two different meanings of the world. Also, if you want a plot twist that makes Jeffery Deaver look like amateur hour? Quadruple checked (yes, really, four, I counted. Maybe 6).
The characters
Everything and everyone is drawn in inventive ways. There are no data dumps, The best way I can describe it is how well Babylon 5 did characterization, because no one here is anything like what they appear to be. This makes it hard to go into a deep dive of the characters, because that would involve spoilers all over the place.
The world
It's John C Wright. This man makes five fully fleshed out worlds before breakfast. Then he throws out four of them because they're merely better than what's on the NY Times bestseller list.
I hope I’m exaggerating.
Wright is obviously in a level all of his own, wherein he brings together so many myths and legends, there were moments I paused and went “How did I not see this?” His dissertation director at Oxford is a Dr. Vodonoy. You will be amused by a Mister Drake in this novel. He doesn't actually have any lines of dialogue, but trust me, when Wright reveals the joke, you'll enjoy it.
The politics
If battling the forces of Hell, chivalry and virtue are political, then those are the politics of the book.
Content warning
This is at least PG-13. There are sexual situations, but at 13, I just skimmed over them. Granted, if your kid is smart enough to read this book, your kid is probably mature enough to handle how mild the sexual bits are.
Who is it for?
This book is for anyone who misses a sense of the fantastic in their fantasy, and who wants to make Arthuriana great again. If you enjoyed Mary Stewart and Stephen R Lawhead, or even Murphy and Cochran's The Forever King, you should be reading this.
I feel like I just made three references that no one is going to get. But I can hope.
Why read it?
Read this because this is epic fantasy that battles all the forces of Hell, and still contains a sense of wonder.
Awesome book. I liked the older cover better, though.
This book is fantastic. I rarely ever reread books, but I have read this one at least three times since its original release. I've still not read anything else quite like it - at least nothing else executed so perfectly as this.