The Steel Remains: This is fantasy - just harder, faster and bloodier (Land Fit for Heroes)

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In Pranderghal at an inn, Ringil is there with Sherin and the dwenda when they run in to Egar. Egar explains to Ringil that a dark figure (Takavach) sent him here to save Ringil. Seethlaw tries to use magic to make Egar go away. Ringil upends the table and a fight breaks out. Egar and Ringil grab Sherin and run. Egar kills a couple dwenda. They then steal a ferry and float downriver. like the name especially, but it had the sort of ring people expected of a famous sword—and his landlord, a shrewd man with money and the potential for making it, had renamed the inn the same way, setting an eternal seal on the thing. A local artist had painted a passable image of In my time I've been a rent collector, a furniture mover and a barman, to name but three of the more interesting. Mostly, though, I worked as a globe-trotting English as a Foreign Language teacher, with spells in Istanbul and Madrid. The award-winning author of Altered Carbon and Market Forces brings the same iconoclastic approach to his fantasy debut as he did to his sf technothrillers. . . . [Richard K.] Morgan’s storytelling talent and his atmospheric, hard-hitting prose make this a strong addition to mature fantasy collections.” — Library Journal Deliberate Values Dissonance: The religious extremism, sex slavery, war crimes, authoritarian government, misogyny, and general brutality within both major human factions.

Thank you for your very kind words Richard, and to turn the compliments about face for a moment, I have to say I was expecting to meet someone who scored quite high on the cynical and angry scale (purely judged from the characters in your books) but instead found an incredibly warm, educated human being with a passion for doing what is right and decent. hung with shamanistic iron talismans and daubed in the colors of the deceased's clan ancestry. As a rule, Ringil tried not to come out here too often; he remembered too many of the names on the stones, could put faces to too many of the foreign- sounding dead. It was a mixed bag that had died under his command at Gallows Gap that sweltering summer afternoon nine years ago, and few of the outlanders had family with the money to bring their sons home for burial. The cemeteries up and down this stretch of the mountains were littered with their lonely testimony. Overall, good writing and a decent plot merit a three-star rating. Even though upon finishing the novel I had a very unpleasant feeling I had dabbed with something smelly and not really healthy. Karmic Death: It's likely Emperor Jhiral will get one, now that Archeth is approaching him as he beats up her lover and furthermore Egil wants Archeth to depose the Emperor and will support her in the event of a coup. as did all Kiriath- forged weapons, but it was an ornate title that lost a lot in translation. "Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors" was about as close as Archeth had been able to render it, so Ringil had settled on calling it the Ravensfriend. He didn't

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So it’s out – the B format MMP of The Steel Remains, complete with reader-drawn map of the Yhelteth Empire and Trelayne League territories to the north. A handsome piece of work if ever I saw one and, I am assured by its author, utterly geographically sound. Not to mention revised numerous times with fanatical attention to detail. Stealth Sequel: Has many tonal and thematic similarities to Morgan's Kovacs novels. Turns out it's set in the distant future of those books, and Kovacs himself makes an appearance, although in a somewhat different form. No knowledge of the prior books is required, though. I wanted to like The Steel Remains so much more than I actually did. I was so looking forward to reading it. I've read two of Richard K. Morgan's science fiction novels, Thirteen and Altered Carbon and thought they were unique and amazing. Morgan takes sex and violence to a level I would never be able to tolerate in a movie and manages to glamorize neither. He reveals the damage violence does to those who commit it, even the bad guys. He really understands socio-politics and is great at extrapolating the future based on today. I really wanted to see how he would bring that ability to the fantasy genre. Losing Your Head: The Dwenda like to cut off the heads of those who displease them and graft the still-living heads to tree stumps as a warning to others.

Superpowerful Genetics: Ringil is a descendant of the Dwenda race through his mother's side. He inherited a portion of their speed and looks, while his mother likely has some degree of longevity - she's known for looking younger than people decades her junior. There's much to admire about the book for any lover of dark fantasy. It avoids too much exposition. The plot never really slows down, and the action is gritty and well written. Morgan's characters are believably flawed but not unlikable as so many dark fantasy anti-heroes are these days. Indeed, Ringil and his friends are not really anti-heroes at all, which is great because in so many recent books and television series, complexity is often achieved by creating heroes we love to hate. But we don't hate or question the innate goodness of Morgan's protagonists even while recognizing how deeply flawed each may be. The world building is very good, the kind that allows for inference without generating jarring confusion, and I always love a good puzzle challenge! Unfortunately at the outset the narrative style didn't work for me, I didn’t like the way the story unfolded and its erratic pace: some parts were too rushed, others too slow, and the fact that the boundaries between past and present twisted and blurred didn’t help. The descriptions though, were very vivid and skilled. Ringil starts by visiting an old friend, Milacar, to find his cousin. Milacar is a self-described criminal, though he lives in a mansion in The Glades, he has ties with the Marsh Brotherhood. Ringil and Milacar had a sexual relationship when Ringil was about 15, which they rekindle during this brief visit. Milacar eventually warns Ringil about what he's getting in to, and tells him about a dwenda in Etterkal.

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Ringil finds Sherin and tells her his is there to take her home. They plan to stay the night at a scavenger camp, and then take a ferry across the water and walk to Pranderghal. Ringil is now starting to lose his memories of the time in the marches (the "gray places"). In Pranderghal, Ringil, Sherin, and the dwenda go to an inn to eat and drink. It is here that Ringil runs into his old friend from the war, Egar. (Continued below.)