By Mark Charan Newton
It’s difficult when a huge weight of expectation precedes the reading of any book, it’s doubly hard when you’ve met the author and he’s a nice guy so it was with some trepidation that I eventually opened Marc Charan Newton’s Nights of Villjamur but, happily, I’m glad I did. It’s a multi-layered, multi-threaded story that requires the reader to pay attention so a brief outline here cannot hope to do it justice but, here goes.
Set in a far future world on the edge of a long-predicted ice-age, the Villjamur of the title is a huge city. Once great, Villjamur is now suffering from years of poor leadership by an increasingly deranged Emperor and things take a turn for the worse when he suddenly commits suicide and political machinations set in motion a plan for a new power to take over the city. Around this time, rumours begin to circulate of genocide out on the Northern Islands of the Empire, and the City prepares itself for the big freeze by stockpiling supplies and shutting it’s gates to the thousands of refugees camped outside its walls, hoping for shelter from the onslaught of the cold weather.
Brynd Lathraea, Commander of the Nightguard, is despatched to escort the emperor’s daughter, Rika, back to Villjamur to succeed the throne, but with a strange and undead enemy striking to kill-off the Nightguard at every turn, his mission seems doomed to failure either on the way out or on the return journey. Meanwhile Investigator Jeryd of the Inquisition is trying to track down the murderer of a prominent city councillor while at the same time trying to patch things up with his estranged wife and elsewhere a young, handsome teacher arrives in the City to tutor the younger princess in dance and fencing so she may be ready for the coronation celebrations but he is not who he seems and has his own agenda to attend to with the help of a very particular cultist, who himself has a hidden agenda that could have repercussions for the entire world.
Nights of Villjamur is a terrific debut, it starts with a bang and keeps on going, building action upon action with terrific pace and plenty surprises before relenting and letting you catch your breath before it starts up again. The world is rich and complex and Newton breathes life into it with the minimum of exposition while painting the city, from lavish palace to grimy inn, as it’s dark heart with politics at the core of everything and ingrained at every level. A particularly nice touch given the far-future setting of the novel are various Cultists, like religious orders, worshipping their ancient technologies that have a near-magical appearance.
The characterisation too is well executed, Commander Brynd, an albino who inspires awe and distrust in equal measure leads a ‘social life’ that is more dangerous to his health than his normal duties, Investigator Jeryd is not human he is a Rumel, a particularly long-lived race well suited to the life of inquisitor, but less suited to a life alone, which Jeryd fears he may end up if he cannot win back the love of his life and Randur, come to the city on false pretences and determined to play the women of the court for all he can get, he comes across as brash and arrogant in an effort to fit into these circles but will learn a lot about himself as the story unfolds. It’s to his eternal credit that this cast, and the many others we meet (this is a complex plot) each have their own, unique voice and unique traits with well-rounded emotional centres making them three-dimensional and interesting.
It’s not without fault, the coup takes a long time to build and then plays out very quickly at the end when it could maybe have been drawn out for longer – a character as morally strong and centred as Princess Rika would, I think, have fought harder to retain her throne – and there are places where you can see what’s coming from a long way off, but for all that it’s a smart and accomplished debut, stylishly wrought, melding a noir detective story with strange creatures like Garudas and Jurro the Dawnir and all-the-while dealing with adult themes and mirroring real-world issues in a way that the fantasy genre doesn’t do often and doesn’t often do well. All-in-all, refreshingly deft storytelling from an author who clearly knows how to write and I look forward to the next in the series.
Nights Of Villjamur is published by Tor through Pan Macmillan and is available from Play.com, Blackwell and all good book stores.
Mark Charan newton has a website.