On The Nightstand – Blackwing: Ravenmark – Epilogue – 6/18/18

So…my wife and I are laying in bed last night – she’s checking her phone – I’d just started Jim Butcher’s “Brief Cases” – and she turns to me and says “You got a little lazy with your post tonight”.  At the time, I didn’t really believe that to be the case and I still don’t – I thought it was a neat idea to let the author speak for himself – but she made her point.  When I express that strong a preference for a book, it probably does deserve just a bit more than what I gave it in last night’s post.  I’m not going to overwrite tonight but I do think I should say a few more words.

I posted those quotes because I love to find authors who really use the English language effectively – authors whose writing creates explosive pictures in my head and / or who elicit strong reactions – either intellectually or emotionally.  As I was reading Blackwing, I couldn’t help but think – Wow…McDonald really, really knows how to use his words.  In this case, it was an incredibly grim, ugly picture but it very real as I was reading – it just jumped off the page.  Those quotes I posted were just a sampling but…for me… they were representative.  To find an author capable of doing that in his debut – that’s a double bonus and it leaves me hungry for more.

While all his characters were extremely well drawn – the good (vanishingly few), the bad and the ugly (plenty of both) – I was particularly impressed with how he built his protagonist – Ryhalt Galharrow.  McDonald starts small with him – someone who presents in the beginning of the book as a relatively simple bounty hunter – but gradually builds out a life history that makes everything about him – his dissolution, his callous attitudes and – ultimately – his heroism – all entirely believable.  He was able to make me accept a broken down, alcoholic sell-sword that also retained a sliver of god-touched heroism at his core in a way that never felt contrived or cliche.  Those two strands of his character were extremely well-balanced throughout the story – in such a way that you never expected either too much or too little from him.  Overall, the ugliness of Galharrow’s life mirrors the ugliness of the Range in a pretty seamless way.

I was also totally sucked into the Misery and the Range and the palpable hopelessness of both places.  McDonald populates the Misery with some truly ugly creatures.  The Gillings were just repulsive but the Darlings were a particularly loathsome creation and they’re a great indication of the way McDonald creates impact for his readers.  He’s taken the penultimate evil in the Misery – the most potent and dangerous servants of The Deep Kings – and placed them in the bodies of children – easy to disregard until its far too late.  The Range is just desperate and hopeless – nothing clean or strong about it.  As I read through the book, there was never a feeling of strength, cleanliness or light – even those who fight to defend it are broken, compromised, confused or just worn down.  You won’t find anything in this place to like but I suspect it will be hard for you not to find it fascinating – it has the feel of the trench scene in “Apocalypse Now” – endless war – hopeless cause – whatever virtue you arrived with – now long gone.

I really enjoyed the way that McDonald was able to mask his ending – almost until the final pages of the book.  You spend the entire story buying into a narrative that The Nameless – those supernatural allies of Galharrow and the other humans inhabitants of the world – have spent 100 years building for their own purposes.  In the final 50 pages, the entire thing is turned on its head.  I could tell that McDonald was building to something but I honestly couldn’t get a line of sight on the end game until – like their adversaries – it was just too late.

Finally, McDonald encourages an unavoidable suspicion throughout the book that The Nameless – humanity’s god-like benefactors – are really not that different from our and their adversaries – The Deep Kings and their Drudge minions.  In the final few pages of the book, however, he manages to subtly dispel that suspicion and provide them with just a hint of moral superiority.  It’s not enough to like them or trust them but it is enough to be thankful for their protection from The Deep Kings – who do prove themselves to be thoroughly alien and inimical.  I found this final note to be particularly well played.

Short to long – it all worked for me.  I just can’t find a thing to quibble with on this one.  That’s rare and it’s exceptionally rare in a debut.  I have pretty high hopes for this author and I am really looking forward to the release of the second book in the series – Ravencry – in August.  In fact, the only complaint I  have is that Ace chose not to release a hardcover edition of this second volume.  Why would they do – it almost climbs to the level of literary malpractice.

I hope this helps provide a bit more insight into why I enjoyed the book so much.  If it doesn’t, I’ll at least have satisfied both my strongest supporter and my most insightful critic.  🙂