By Alan Campbell
The Deepgate of the series title is a city that hangs suspended on chains over an enormous black abyss. Over many millennia, this network of chains has been broken, repaired, cannibalised, and strengthened to form an interweaving web of criss-crossing supports across and around the entire city. Similarly the buildings have come and gone and neighbourhoods grown and collapsed in concert with the fate of the chains supporting them. It is a dark, industrial, smog-covered place, partly in ruin and held in thrall by a powerful church.
The church has, for countless years, strictly upheld belief in Ulcis, Hoarder of Souls, by ritualistically casting the dead of the city into the abyss and thereby commending their souls to his ever-growing army of the dead, who will one day rise up, march on heaven’s gates and overthrow the usurper who cast Ulcis down, bringing his followers glory unbound. In order for the soul to remain intact, the corpse must still contain blood, without it, the corpse cannot be offered to Ulcis and must spend eternity in the Maze where the soulless walk in torment forever, but there is an ever present menace in the shape of fallen angel, Carnival, who prowls the city in search of victims on whose blood she can feast, once each month, on Scar Night.
Into this world we introduce Presbyter Sypes, benevolent leader of the church, and Dill, his ward, last of the Archons, angels that traditionally protect the city and a boy as unprepared for the role as is possible. As Dill comes of age to take up his church duties, Sypes places him under the care of Rachel, a member of the Spine, the church assassins, to teach him to fight and survive.
And learn he must, for unknown to all, the church Poisoner, Devon has great plans to bring down the city – literally – with the help of their great enemies the Heshette tribesmen, and to that end, has been working secretly to perfect a drink called anglewine which, according to ancient scriptures found in the church, renders the drinker immortal. Unfortunately, in order to create this elixir Devon needs a particularly nasty ingredient – 13 human souls. If that wasn’t bad enough, the god Ulcis, far from being the benevolent deity the church espouses, is raising an army of the dead to reek his own vengeance on the city above.
This is rich, dense and complex stuff and highly recommended for fans of dark, gothic fantasy. The story starts slowly and builds page by page till, at the end, there is no putting it down until the epic and bloody climax. The characters are richly drawn, and while there are some stereotypes, each is unique in their ticks and brought out through vices and virtues rather than dull exposition. The city of Deepgate itself is described in fantastic detail with it’s mixture of crumbling towers, dark alleys and dilapidated factories, bridges of planks and rope and, amongst all this, a sky dominated by huge airships.
There are easy comparisons to be drawn between this and the work of Mervyn Peake or, more recently, China Miéville and it also borrows freely from vampire and werewolf mythology but it’s fair to say that Campbell has his own voice. It’s nicely written in a beautifully flowing, vivid and evocative style that is easy to read and, not surprisingly from someone with a games background, extremely visual. The action scenes are nicely paced and, when the airships go to war, the way the action unfolds on the bridges of the airships would make godfather of the techno-thriller, Tom Clancy, sit up and take notice.
But it’s not all style over substance. In its quieter moments and through the eyes of the various characters, it examines self-doubt, jealousy, vengeance, self-loathing and rage. It also looks at the influence of religion and the expectations and conventions of an often misguided church, not just through the yes of the priests but through the gods they worship.
All in all Scar Night is an impressive debut and a real page turner, beautifully written, nicely paced and with enough original twists and turns to mark Alan Campbell out as one to watch. It’s follow up, Iron Angel, has already leapt to the top-end of my ‘to-read’ pile
Scar Night is published by Tor through Pan Macmillan and is available from Amazon
Alan Campbell has a website, you can reach it by clicking here.