The Reading Canary: A Reminder

Series of novels - especially in fantasy and SF, but distressingly frequently on other genres as well - have a nasty tendency to turn sour partway through. The Reading Canary is your guide to precisely how far into a particular sequence you should read, and which side-passages you should explore, before the noxious gases become too much and you should turn back.

Gotrek and Felix: A Nod To the Elders

In an extremely interesting article on the influence of RPG tie-in fiction on genre fiction as a whole Howard A. Jones, editor of Black Gate, makes a point about the writers of tie-in fiction which I would argue is depressingly true of far too many fantasy authors in general these days:

The author doesn't realize that the fire and forget spell list came from Vance, or that the elves and hobbits came from Tolkien or that thieves' guilds came from Lankhmar because they've never read the source material ... These games wouldn't exist if Gygax and Arneson hadn't loved the source material.

I suspect that the reason why tie-in fiction is so universally looked down on, aside from the issue that an awful lot of it is written hastily and published on the cheap in order to exploit a particular franchise, and the fact that the very existence of tie-in fiction in the first place suggests that the publishers view the core property as a franchise to be exploited, and the fact that you have people like R.A. Salvatore and Weis and Hickman cranking it out... Ahem. I suspect that one of the many reasons that people tend to look down on tie-in fiction is that it is frequently (although not always) a product of precisely the sort of ignorance of the source genre on the part of the author, and I can't help wonder whether it fosters a similar ignorance on the part of readers.

Take the example of Dungeons & Dragons. The earliest version of Dungeons & Dragons was squarely aimed at experienced wargamers, and therefore the game mechanics presented in it wouldn't necessarily be easy for a non-wargamer to absorb; similarly, it assumes that the reader is familiar with the sort of magic-and-monsters medieval fantasy genre depicted in it, and doesn't make much of an effort to introduce outsiders to fantasy fiction. It's significant, to my mind, that early on in the game's development both the Dungeon Master's Guide in the Advanced version of the game, and the various editions of the Basic Set of the non-Advanced game included appendices of suggested fantasy reading; the intent seems to have been to introduce beginners to the genre, as well as introducing beginners to the rules of the game.

Of course, everything changed with the runaway success of the Dragonlance tie-in novels, and the subsequent explosion in TSR's fiction output. From a business point of view, it was only natural that TSR would prefer it if D&D players went out and bought official D&D tie-in novels, rather than original RPG fiction - so, out went the appendices, and from that point on D&D was less about reflecting the fantasy genre as it stood and more about defining a particular vision of the fantasy genre. Soon enough a feedback loop began to develop: a generation of teenagers would read D&D novels, the books would inform their idea of what the fantasy genre was about, they'd go on to become writers (sometimes of D&D tie-in fiction, sometimes of original fantasy that nonetheless bears all the hallmarks of D&D fantasy), a new generation would digest the new books and then go on to become writers themselves... On the larger messageboards devoted to tabletop RPGs you can find strange creatures whose only conception of the fantasy genre comes from the output of TSR and Wizards of the Coasts' fiction department, and that's mildly scary. I suspect that of all the authors who've published a fantasy novel featuring a heroic barbarian (or a guild of thieves, or a race of evil sadistic elves) in the last year, only about half could tell you that the heroic barbarian trope came from Robert E. Howard (or that Fritz Leiber gave us thieves' guilds, or that Michael Moorcock's Melniboneans are the model for corrupt, satistic cultures that are a little bit like elves), and only a tenth would have actually read the original stories in question. And I suspect a goodly proportion of those authors wouldn't be able to handle the tropes in question in an effective manner, because their lack of experience with the source material means that they don't understand what made those ideas interesting and novel and vibrant in the first place, making it extremely difficult for these authors to either recapture the original vibe or taking the trope in a new and interesting direction. In the worst cases, you have authors throwing in features like elves and dwarves and stuff simply because they think that they're mandatory elements of the genre, without even thinking about what sort of function they might actually serve.

It's heartening, therefore, to see a writer of Warhammer tie-in fiction who is clearly familiar with the development of the fantasy genre. William King's Gotrek and Felix series - at least, in the early stages presented in the first omnibus - frequently tips its hat to the founding authors of the field, especially the pulp writers. King's grounding in the genre's history feeds into his personal view of the Warhammer world, which he essentially depicts as a high fantasy setting (replete with elves and dwarves and orcs and all the other baggage we inherit from Tolkein, along with a number of fair old bright races who are well into their twilight years and are observing the startling rise of humanity) in which sword and sorcery-style stories take place. In theory, fusing the dynamism and exuberance of the pulps with the epic grandeur and sweeping scale of post-Tolkein high fantasy should yield something pretty interesting, but then again Warhammer tie-in authors have managed to completely botch good ideas in the past. Let's see if King can do any better.

Trollslayer

Gotrek and Felix originally made their debut in a series of short stories, Trollslayer being a compilation of them. The downside of this is that, because King couldn't assume that everyone had read the earlier stories in the series, each tale incorporates a quick rundown of the pair's past, which can get a little repetitive. The short version: Gotrek is a Trollslayer, a sort of punk rock dwarf berserker sworn to seek out the toughest battles and most fearsome enemies in the search for a glorious death in battle, to atone for some unspecified past crime of his. Felix is a human ex-scholar, poet, and swordsman, whose life was saved by Gotrek in an incident that occurs some time before the action covered in the series; in gratitude, Felix swore to accompany Gotrek on his quest to seek the perfect death, so that he may commemorate the dwarf's doom in an epic poem. Naturally, Felix ends up regretting this when he sobers up and realises that he's going to have to get involved in every fight Gotrek gets into, and the little guy picks a lot of them...

Whilst you would be forgiven for assuming that a series entitled Gotrek and Felix features the two title characters equally, almost all of Trollslayer is written from the point of view of Felix, and none is written from Gotrek's point of view (this is a pattern that holds true for the rest of the omnibus). Gotrek is essentially a MacGuffin that ricochets from adventure to adventure at high speed, dragging Felix along for the ride. Felix, on the the other hand, gets to experience some actual character development (although only a little), as he comes to terms with and eventually embraces the lifestyle of a wandering adventurer. I would argue, in fact, that the Trollslayer of the title is not Gotrek but Felix; initially failing to understand Gotrek's motivations, Felix eventually understands the dwarf's perspective, and himself ends up playing an equal part in killing the only actual troll that appears in the book.

This focus on Felix extends to the fight scenes; we only very rarely get the impression that Gotrek is actually in trouble, whereas it frequently seems as though Felix is done for - even though we know full well that Felix must survive to write the memoirs quoted at the beginning of each story, and sooner or later Gotrek is going to die. This is a pretty clever trick. In addition, Felix's relatively sheltered upbringing means that he can ask all of those questions which readers who aren't familiar with the Warhammer setting might want to ask, and Gotrek is experienced and smart enough to give the answers (and never resorts to pages-long chunks of exposition).

The individual stories which make up Trollslayer don't really cover any sort of cohesive arc, beyond Felix grasping his destiny as an adventurer and the pair fighting a whole lot of Chaos beasties, which only increases the resemblance the book bears to old-style sword-and-sorcery collections. As a modern addition to that lineage, Trollslayer isn't too bad, although it does get a bit repetitive towards the end; still, it's a fair start to the series.

Skavenslayer

The second book in the series, Skavenslayer, is more problematic. It appears that King simply couldn't decide whether he wanted to write a novel or a tightly-connected series of short stories, and as a result ended up writing a book which fails as novel because of the overly episodic nature of the chapters and fails as a collection of short stories because none of the stories are really self-contained.

Skavenslayer is blatantly a tribute to The Swords of Lankhmar, the only novel-length story of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser that Fritz Leiber wrote. (There's a direct reference in the text, where a sage refers Felix to a book by a certain Mr Leiber in order to find out more about the skaven threat.) In The Swords of Lankhmar a hidden society of rat-people conspires to overthrow humanity and take over the city of Lankhmar. In Skavenslayer, a hidden society of rat-people - the skaven of the title - conspires to overthrow humanity and take over the city of Lankhmar. I'll start off by discussing the best feature of the book, so that I don't accidentally give you the impression that the book is a complete waste of time; the skaven in this are awesome, by far the most interesting characters, to the point where the novel drags a little when it isn't focusing on them. King's depiction of their paranoid, cowardly, manipulative, treacherous ways is so vivid and entertaining that I now can't imagine seeing the skaven in any other way. Unfortunately, whilst the skaven are a bit too frightening and psychotic to be relegated to mere comic relief, they're a bit too hilariously fractious and prone to in-fighting to be really effective villains; it becomes clear within the first few chapters that the skaven plot is doomed to be torn apart by backstabbing and internal strife, and it's no surprise when by the end that actually happens. At no point is the reader ever convinced that the city is actually going to fall to the skaven threat.

However, it's the parts of the book focusing primarily on the protagonists that really let the book down. Aside from an interestingly non-standard romance plotline (Felix falls in love with some girl, they date for a bit, and then she dumps him and basically he just kind of accepts it), Gotrek and Felix's segments of the novel are tepid and lifeless. It starts off well; the pair start out as goblin-hunters in the sewers of Nuln, and then after getting fired from that job in the first chapter get jobs as bouncers at a bar. Fair enough; Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser took on all sorts of interesting jobs between adventures, so that's a nice tie-in with the inspiration; however, Leiber never allowed Fafhrd and the Mouser to stay in those jobs for very long, whereas Gotrek and Felix remain bouncers for most of the rest of the book. In theory, this provides them with a home to protect and supporting characters to care about, but they spend so little time in the bar it's hard to care about the place. Our heroes aren't exactly completely inactive, but it's pretty obvious that King is casting about wildly trying to find something for them to do.

The structure of the book isn't helpful. The individual chapters are presented as individual short stories, which are very finely structured: the first story introduces the skaven threat, the successive stories showcase the individual skaven clans, and the final story wraps up the novel. While in theory the structure presented is interesting, in practice it just gets repetitive: here's the skaven clan trying to do something interesting; here's Grey Seer Thanquol, leader of the skaven conspiracy, tipping off Gotrek and Felix so that his rivals in the skaven leadership don't get all the glory; here's Gotrek and Felix saving the day through a series of slightly dreary fights during which we never feel that they are actually in danger. The structure also means that any momentum the plot manages to gather in one chapter fails to carry through to the next one, because King is still writing as if these are installments of an episodic serial appearing in a magazine instead of a cohesive novel. It's ultimately that approach that wrecks Skavenslayer.

Daemonslayer

Fortunately, Daemonslayer is a far superior effort, partially because King gets his act together and writes to the standard established in Trollslayer, partially because the novel is sensibly structured and isn't pretending to be a compilation of short stories.

Just as Skavenslayer was a tip of the hat to The Swords of Lankhmar, Daemonslayer is a tribute to Tolkien. King is not so overambitious as to try to recreate The Lord of the Rings with different protagonists; instead, he focuses on drawing parallels to a particular incident within The Fellowship of the Ring - the Fellowship's ill-fated trip into the lost dwarven mine of Moria, called by the dwarves Khazad-dum, during which they encounter a balrog, a terrifying demonic entity. This makes a lot of sense considering King's "sword-and-sorcery adventures in a high fantasy world" approach to Warhammer fiction; of all the sequences in Lord of the Rings (arguably the foundational text of high fantasy), the dungeon crawl in Moria is probably one of the most suited to a sword-and-sorcery treatment.

So, we have Gotrek and Felix summoned by an old dwarven mentor of Gotrek's to join a perilous expedition by zeppelin into the godforsaken Chaos Wastes to find the long-lost dwarven city of Karag Dum. Yes, by zeppelin; there's always been something just a little steampunk about Warhammer dwarves, but up to this point in the series King has been a little anxious about playing with that aspect of them - it seems that with Daemonslayer he's loosened his inhibitions and cranked all the dials up to 11, which is kind of what you need to do with the Warhammer setting.

Fittingly for a Tolkien tribute, much of the book is devoted to the main characters travelling long distances, but King makes sure that there are enough incidents along the way to stop things getting dull. In particular, he brings back Grey Seer Thanquol and his skaven minions, fresh from the events of Skavenslayer, as supporting characters and secondary villains, and in that role they work like a charm.

King is generally on top of his form for this one, in fact; I was especially impressed by the smooth transition from the steampunk fantasy of the zeppelin voyage to the traditional Tolkien "high fantasy by way of the Eddas" feel of the climactic sequence within Karag Dum itself. My one quibble with this book is that it isn't as self-contained as the others - several plot strands remain unresolved at the end (although the major story - the trip to Karag Dum - is wrapped up nicely), and there's a couple of other incidents which are clearly setting things up for future books. Then again, it'd be hypocritical of me to praise King for making changes to the formula to accommodate the shift from short stories to novels and then slam him for making changes to suit the shift from standalone books to continuing series. In the end, Daemonslayer is the best effort in the first omnibus by far.

The Canary Says

Ultimately, the Gotrek and Felix series is reading-candy for fantasy fans: it's not meant to be interesting or new or intellectually nutritious, it's meant to scratch your dwarfs-killing-orcs itch. That said, both Trollslayer and Daemonslayer succeed admirably at that goal (the less said about Skavenslayer the better), so the first Gotrek and Felix omnibus is probably as decent a purchase as any. That said, they're no substitute for reading the inspirations: go read The Swords of Lankhmar (available in one of Fantasy Masterworks' Lankhmar compilations) before you tackle Skavenslayer, flip through The Fellowship of the Ring before you go through Daemonslayer, and familiarise yourself with Conan or Elric or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser before you dip into Trollslayer; there's no point spending time on second-tier efforts like this if there's readily available top-notch fantasy which you haven't yet encountered, and you'd probably appreciate Gotrek and Felix better if you've digested their sources in the past.