The Steel Remains is the (fantasy) story of three war heroes, well after the war (against a race of lizard people wanting to take over all human lands) has ended. Ringil, the main guy, is asked to help track down a distant relative who’s been sold into slavery. The second one, Egar, is a nomad chief who’s no longer respected by his tribe. Archeth, advisor to an emperor, is tasked with investigating a mysterious and powerful attack on a harbour city. Most of the book circles around Ringil’s voyage but the three plot threads turn out to be connected, via a powerful alien race who has evil plans against humans.
That’s the plot. But the theme of the book is that of war: the cost of war, and how little time it takes for the gains to be frittered away, and how quickly the people forget what their warriors did for them and what they sacrificed.
While some of the events described (the war, for example) are huge, the viewpoint is always close up and personal. There is no grand battle between good and evil – there are just angry men fighting for or against something.
This is fantasy noir at its bleakest. It’s a corrupt, bigoted, ignorant, violent world, where criminals get rich and honest people suffer. There is no hope, no aspiration towards a brighter tomorrow. In all the 400 pages not a single happy relationship is mentioned, nor a happy memory, not to mention actual happy feelings in the present.
Perhaps this is why one of the back cover blurbs says that The Steel Remains “doesn’t so much twist the cliches of fantasy as take an axe to them. Then set them on fire.”
But I suspect that comment was referring more to the style and tone of the book, which is pretty brutal: all full of action and violence, drugs and sex and swearing.
Unfortunately this axing of cliches becomes too much of a focus for Morgan, and turns into provocation for provocation’s sake. Yes, making your protagonists flawed is a trendy thing for fantasy books, but when they’re all more or less despicable, you’ve gone too far. (Not as bad as Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself but definitely competing in the same league.) Yes, having a homosexual protagonist is a modern touch, but describing each of their sex acts in great detail is just juvenile. And yes, using contemporary language is a break with the usual high-flowing semi-archaic language, but when every other word is fuck, it starts to grate.
I guess this brutalist approach suits the theme. But it also seems like a prop that Morgan uses because it’s an easy way to stand out. Strip away the dark ambience from this book and what remains is not so special.
(Oh, and I cannot resist mentioning the absurd love affair between Ringil and one of the vampire-like all-powerful evil elves. Yeah, right, aliens find humans irresistibly sexy, happen to be homosexual, and their anatomy just happens to fit, too. Gaah!)
Still, despite this grumbling, I enjoyed the book. It did stand out from the masses of fantasy: it was intelligent, coherent, thrilling, realistic and intense.
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