James EngeReviews

This was a fun short book. I think I will read another book about Morlock's adventures.

Readers of Ovid looking for something with a little more sex and magic would do well to dwell in these pages. Like A Guile of Dragons, Wrath-Bearing Tree is a book whose mood implies it is best savored on a stormy summer afternoon, or from the comfort of a stuffed chair on a cold and bleak autumn night.
Continuing the early adventures of Morlock Ambrosius, Wrath-Bearing Tree begins by giving us a taste of life in the kingdom of Kaen and how easy it is for one of the many city gods of this continent to be replaced by an usurper. It stands to reason, then, that when Morlock is thrust into the middle of this, his only way out is to kill a god and return home to the Graith.

But no sooner is he home than he is sent back to Kaen. Something more is going on on that scary continent, and more information is needed about the Two Powers, believed to be behind the fall of many of the city gods of Kaen recently. While readers of A Guile of Dragons will remember the role of the Two Powers in the return of the dragons, this second volume was still approachable as a stand alone novel. Before the novel ends, Morlock and his companion will face warring gods, living machines that grant apotheosis, and a wintry father figure named Merlin driving a sleigh led by eight tiny demons.

Morlock and his companion's journey reads like a medieval travelogue, cataloging the strange customs and unusual creatures and beliefs found along the way. I enjoyed the book, though it was a bit more graphic (NSFW) than expected. Enge again delivers a well written story set in a mythos that is so familiar to us, painted with the elements that have defined the landscape of fantastical stories for centuries, and yet delivered in a fresh and entertaining story.

High Fantasy often faces the criticism that it is a poor reflection of the works that have gone before it, most notably Tolkien. By employing the same basic mythos with a highly Western European (and generally, British) composition, many chide that too much of fantasy falls into this trap and needs to be refreshed with something edgier, or something more original. The end result is generally a poor facsimile that inevitably fails to shine in comparison.

"A Guile of Dragons" is not some mere copy.

Yes, it employs many of the elements that we might quickly label a High Fantasy trope - dwarves, dragons, ancient terrors, and the name Merlin (or at least his son, Morlock). Its important to remember that it is not what elements a writer uses, but how they use them, that brings distinction. Enge does not treat these elements lightly - the history and culture of the dwarves alone are an integral part of this story, hinting at a depth we never see a bottom to. The shortness of the work (@300 pages) is belied by the depth and fullness of the characters that populate it. These are thick characters, populating the pages not because they fill a need but because it is their story to tell.

Set as a prequel for Enge's character, Ambrosius, aka Morlock syr Theorn, "A Guile of Dragons" introduces us to a small cast of recurring characters, each of whom demonstrates a depth and fullness usually reserved for the titular character. Not having read the other books in this milieu proved to not be a problem - as a prequel, it is a well contained volume, beginning with the birth of Morlock, son of Merlin, and the circumstances that place young Morlock in the care of the dwarves of Thrymhaiam to the north. This is also the story of Morlock's first real adventure (other feats are alluded to, but nothing so grand), following a metre and pace that is reminiscent of a classic saga even when the story telling is modern.

For in the Northold, the dwarves find themselves cut off from the Graith of Guardians as a guile of dragons invades, reigniting the Longest War from before the dawn of history. Morlock, a thaen of the Graith, adopted son of the dwarves, trapped between both worlds, faces the failings of each as he is thrust into battling the dragons themselves.

Enge, who's unsecret real world identity is a classics professor, demonstrates that a writer is influenced by the books and life you lead. "A Guile of Dragons" is a worthy epic for any fantasy reader, containing a surprising depth and fullness that is rarely found in so short a book. I cannot say more about this book without spoiling it, so I will just say that I wholly and heartily recommend that it be read.

Enjoyable read. Coming of age story in a fantastic world with interesting characters.

Loved the introduction.

Enjoyable short story with an unusual hero.

This was a fun read, but... short. It's a short story, so I suppose that should be expected! As short stories often do, this one left me wanting more. I enjoyed Enge's voice and writing style, in spite of a strange attachment to the word "inveigle" and a habit of doubling up on the adjectives (a minor distraction). The character of Morlock Ambrosius is observed through the eyes of his dwarvish apprentice, who has a fine knack for sarcastic humor. I'd have liked to see what magic Morlock could do—he was advertised as wizard/maker, after all! Swords, sorcery, magic and curses make this funky little piece of pulp-fantasy.

Blood of Ambrose is an enjoyable different sword-and-sorcery novel - a bit of a throwback in many ways. Enge has created an interesting cast of characters and a narrative with a nice pace to it.I'm looking forward to further entries in the series.

The King of Ambrose has always relied on help from the semi-mortal Ambrosius siblings - powerful wizards with a swarm of legends trailing them. Just as well, as the young King as been usurped, and he will need every ounce of creativity his "uncle" and "aunty" can bring to regain, and retain, his throne.

I enjoyed this novel. Enge is one of a growing number of fantasy writers writers, not outside genre per se, but certainly distinct from the prevailing trends. The antecedents of Blood of Ambrose are earlier fantasy novels. There's a kind of humour and Vance-ian touch to proceedings, and also a clear debt to Fritz Leiber.

As it happens, I love those older authors and their style of fantasy, so I felt right at home with Blood of Ambrose. This was Enge's first novel, and there are a few rough corners (the prose gets a little unfinished at times), but there's a solid base underneath it all.

That base is the characterisation. The Ambrose siblings, Morlock and Ambrosia, are well-drawn, interesting, and call back to a very rich history during the course of this book. Enge is happy to keep some cards off the table, and it makes for a complexity and ambiguity that really bodes well for the future books in the series.

Morlock in particular, is a tortured, and flawed figure who is always compelling. Enge resist silly hyperbole when it comes to these flaws - something a lot of fantasy writers succumb to, and it keeps the character fresh and his responses unpredictable.

A great start for a debut novel and first in a series. I'll definitely read more.½

James Enge's A Guile of Dragons is actually the first book of a "prequel" series called A Tournament of Shadows featuring his celebrated character Morlock Ambrosius. Not having read the original books, I'm sure my experience is probably going to differ wildly from that of a reader who is already familiar with the world and character, but knowing beforehand that I was going into an origins-type story was good preparation for what to expect.

Most of the book covers the life of young Morlock. We begin at a point before he is even born, then watch as he is given to the dwarves as an infant. Morlock's real father is Merlin -- yes, that Merlin -- though he is raised among the dwarven folk; as such things go, the character's struggles with his birthright and mixed feelings about his heritage eventually emerge as one of the overarching themes of the story.

But on top of that, the book is also an adventure, with an ancient war between dwarves and dragons at its heart. When the dwarven territories are invaded, their defenders taken prisoner or placed under the corrupted influence of dragonspells, it falls to Morlock to protect his surrogate family and the people who raised him.

This was a good story, well told in its complexity and showing of relationships between different characters, but I have a feeling I'm not clicking with it as much as I should. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with the book and I getting off on the wrong foot, with the introductory chapters throwing me off with its pacing. The sections that take place before Morlock's birth and up to the brief scenes of his childhood with the dwarves feel like they should have been a prologue, separated from the rest of the book.

I understand the importance of including this time of his life as part of his backstory, but I don't know if it meshes that well with everything that comes afterward. The first part of the book felt like a running commentary on the circumstances behind Morlock's birth, resulting in a disconnect between myself and the character. Fortunately, the book really gets going once he reaches adulthood and we get into the meat of the story, when we encounter the dragons and their violent confrontations with the dwarves.

What follows is a very intriguing take on the history behind the dwarven-dragon conflict, and the intricacies in the nature of the two societies. The character dynamics also pick up, and as factors like bitter resentment or shifting loyalties start to come into play, things get a lot more interesting. The author throws in a lot of surprising twists, and I have to say one of my favorite aspects of this book is how Enge incorporates elements from legend and Arthurian fantasy into the world lore.

My overall feeling is that you can definitely read A Guile of Dragons on its own, but I have no doubt I'm also missing out on a lot of the subtleties. Yet despite delving into this one without any context, I was on the whole impressed. After seeing how the events of this book has shaped Morlock as a character, I admit I find myself curious about him and his future exploits.

First , this is a tale involving Morlock, which wasn't evident from the back cover blurbs.

Second, this is probably my favorite by James Enge. I've been reading his tales of Morlock since the short story days of Black Gate Magazine and RBE offerings such as Return of the Blade.

I don't know if the author has somehow upped his game, or if it's just that he has a lot more pages to write a story (as opposed to a short story). But this book is so full of memorable moments that I was continuously telling my nephew about all these bits and pieces of it. He was so interested he turned around and read it right after me and we had many fun discussions about the novel.

This tale has very well fleshed out characters, locations, society, etc. The characters in here are very interesting, and this is something I recall thinking when I read "Lies of Locke Lamora". It's very similar in that the society, the cities and locations, the mythology, the individual characters, all of it seems very well thought out and coherent.

I'm attempting to stay spoiler free here, but for a fully realized world and setting, this book has it. True, it's only one area of the world that Morlock inhabits, but I feel as if I have actually been there.

Since the book itself mentions on the back, I feel free to mention that the city the majority of the tale is spent is a "werewolf" city. But this city is more than that would appear on it's face. There are different physical differences among werewolves. Some can't change to human, some can't change to wolves, some are stuck in between. This is all handled with great humor. The society itself also has many differences among packs, and among male and female wolves. So you will enjoy the extremely humorous moments as all of these elements are explored. All kind of facets are explored, such as courting, marketplace, law and order, battles, prisons, mythology, music, language, you name it it's probably at least briefly covered somewhere in here. Politics is also a big part of this story, but trust me, werewolf politics is very fun and interesting. And the variety and creative use of insults and snark in this story keep the humorous feel going, even when there are extremely violent fights and battles going on.

And then there is the mysterious Morlock. This guy is a very different kind of character - i'm not even sure he's a hero. He seems to be somewhat anti-social, rarely wants to speak, and usually doesn't bother to explain himself. One key problem he has is alcohol. It's been hinted at in many previous stories. One of the really interesting things in this story is exploring that particular vice. What happens when someone is an ex-alcoholic, and they are so tempted to drink? What happens if they do drink, and lose themselves in alcohol? And what is it that makes them realize that they are on the wrong path, and have to somehow break free of it again?

As i've seen before, Morlock seems to run into other Makers, and then get into a pissing contest with them, which is always in good fun.

I can highly recommend this book if you've previously enjoyed Sword and Sorcery, stories such as Lies of Locke Lamora, Fantasy with political intrigue, well realized worlds with very well done character development, suprises and curve balls aplenty, then you can't go wrong here.

**** SPOILER****
It is very hard to write a review of this book without spoilers, since there are so many great moments. Here is one that had me laughing. I'm going to have to paraphrase as someone else has the book.

At one point, Morlock is stuck in a cell for a long long time. He's tried all kinds of things to get out. He's been in there probably for a month or more.
Eventually he notices that there is some writing in the walls. So, being a Maker, I'm thinking cool, he can read that and unmake it. But when he ultimately
scratches away grime and junk that is covering up the writing , it says something like "I, Iacombs, built this prison. Sorry about that, prisoner" lol

Speaking of Iacombs, there is a hillarious part where this guy is arguing with a brass head in a library. The brass head seems to be something like a search engine, but it fusses with Iacombs as he is trying to locate a book. At first, it brings back way to many results, and they argue, and he gets it to narrow the results, several times. At some point, the brass head says something like "I'd rather be a disembodies brass head". The other guy says, "Good, i grant your wish. now bring me the frelling book" lol

And the insults that the werewolves spout out continuously are so funny i couldn't wait to see what the next one would be. One of the early ones was something like 'you never-wolf, ape fingered, walrus fondling pimp' lol

**** END SPOILER****

Personally, I blame Star Wars, but the Lord of the Rings movies are doubtlessly at fault, too, and I suppose people were just fed up a bit with all those sword-swinging barbarians… whatever the reason, the Sword & Sorcery had a bit of a hard time, even to seeming extinct for a while superseded, by Epic Fantasy and its huge doorstepper novels that had lost even the last bit of decency by extending themselves beyond the trilogy format. While the situation has not exactly been reversed, Sword & Sorcery has made a bit of a comeback in recent years, and one of the pioneers of that revival is James Enge with his stories about Morlock Ambrosius, master of all makers.

In one sense, Enge is very much a traditionalist; not only does he not hide the debts he owes to his influences, he positively flaunts them in the reader’s face. Leiber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser and Vance’s Cugel the Clever come to mind most strongly – for the frequent and devious plotting and counter-plotting that is going on in Enge’s stories, for the often odd and bizarre turns his imagination takes (just check out his fantasy version of the internet in “Whisper Street”) and for wit and writing that are elegant, sharp and swift like a rapier. For all this, he is very much his own man, and Morlock a Sword & Sorcery protagonist not quite like any other. He compensates for his physical disability (he is a hunchback) with a keen intelligence and a formidable talent for magic (or at least one branch in what seems like a very thoroughly thought-out magical system – Enge in general does pseudo-erudition really, really well, just have a look at the appendices to this volume). Unusually for a Fantasy hero (even supposed barbarians who are often quite grandiloquent), he is very monosyllabic most of the time; his favourite utterance is a simple “Eh” that Enge often uses to great effect – it is quite astonishing to see the shades and variety it is able to take if placed deftly in context.

Morlock is also a hero with a past and a man with a family, and the latter in particular plays an important part in This Crooked Way (as it actually did in Blood of Ambrose, the first book featuring Morlock – but those were different members), an attempt Morlock’s to help his mother against his father in fact constitues the main drive for the plot, such as it is. The Sword & Sorcery genre tends to favour the short form over the novel, and having a novel made up of stories, as Enge does here, might therefore seem almost natural. Or as an attempt to keep your cake and it eat it, too – and while those attempts are of course invariably doomed to failure, This Crooked Way comes close enough to suceeding to make the reader not care about the difference, because it is all so very enjoyable.

In their best moments, these stories have a certain exuberance to them, a joy in their writing, that at times rises to the level of sheer glee and can’t help but infect the reader, in spite of the sometimes dark and grisly nature of what they tell of. Possibly connected to that, it has to be said that James Enge is probably unparalled in Fantasy literature when it comes to writing unpleasant characters. Which might not sound like much in the way of praise, but you likely won’t be saying that once you have encountered some of his villains. The main villain of This Crooked Way is a wonderfully repellent example of that, but probably even worse is Nurgnatz the gnome who in my estimate has a very good chance to go down into Fantasy history as the most disgusting villain ever - completely ridiculous, of boundless arrogance and narcissm, and utterly horrifying.

There is a basic plot in This Crooked Way, but it makes its presence felt only sporadically, and for the most part deals with events and encounters along the way that are only marginally connected to the main storyline which almost happens an aside. On the other hand, this is not a random travelogue either – the arrangement of the stories (four long ones in the centre of the volume, all told by or from the perspective of a single family) bracketed by shorter narratives, and those interspersed with bits of interlude (although I have to admit that I did not quite see the point of those – but that might have been my own fault rather than the novel’s) shows an intention towards symmetry and an awareness of form and balance. Enge has obviously given some thought to the overall structure of his work, but even so it still is very much a case of the journey being the reward – something that is emphasised by the final showdown between Morlock and the villain which is delightfully anticlimactic and pretty much guaranteed to frustrate any expectations the reader might have had for it.

Fantasy novel set in a werewolf timocracy.

The concept and characters of this book are far stronger than the writing and execution. Which is a pity, because the characters and concept are very, very promising.

The Empire is threatened twice - there's an internal threat, from the Protector who seeks to "protect" the country a little too well, arranging for the death of the Empress and stealing power from the very young King - as well as an external threat, from a mysterious "Shadow" that was bolstering the Protector. The first half of the book deals with the King's overthrow and the events that bring his immortal ancestors, Morlock and Ambrosia, into the city and to his aid. The second half deals with the discovery of the Shadow and his creepy necromantic acts, and his attempts to take over not just the Empire, but the world.

The world and its magical systems are fascinating - there's ties to Arthurian England, odd hints of immortality and spiritual magic, and all sorts of cool quasi-magical, quasi-mechanical creations wandering about. There's illusions, and alchemy, and smithery - phlogiston plays a major part in several areas, and dephlogistonating something seems to be an activity reserved for an excellent smith (or Maker) that also has psychic abilities. Fascinating concepts, all, and they're well applied against a backdrop of political machinations and coming-of-age.

The characters are unusual and engrossing, especially Ambrosia. She's an impossibly strong, dominant female character, the sort you don't see too often in fantasy literature. She's the progenetrix of an entire empire, and is still around to try to guide it and mould it to her will as the power behind the throne for generations; she's a powerful psychic and an incredibly deadly warrior, and is just plain badass. She's fearless, unsentimental, and vicious. It's striking to see this in a female character, because usually they're watered down with sentiment or sympathy SOMEWHERE along the line - not so Ambrosia. She has very little maternal instinct, and her drive is simply to gather power and protect the legacy she spent centuries building. She'll fight like a wolverine for her brother, but nothing else gets that sort of devotion - just cold, calculating logic and the fierceness of a hardened general. It's refreshing.

That said, the writing really lets down the side. There's way too many parenthetical asides, and there's a lot of details that simply don't compute. The young King has food tasters and constant bodyguards, for instance, and yet he mentions at one point being used to being cuffed, because the scullery boys used to beat him up. WHAT?! That doesn't even begin to make sense or flow in the context of this world or the author's own setup. There are simply too many contradictions and "oopsies" in terms of consistency and flow.

Which truly stinks, because I'd like to get to know more of this world and its characters - how Morlock and Ambrosia and Hope came to be who they are, and why Morlock really got kicked out of the Wardlands, and how this whole world came to be, with Merlin playing a large role in things and there being a clear link back to earth (this is NOT set on earth - there are three moons and a complicated timekeeping system based on their movement). I just don't think I can handle more of these internal inconsistencies and all the parenthetical asides.

Kinda sad or grim with lots of gruesome violence, but warm relationships make up for it...Yes, I will probably read the third one, too.½

Good first entry in a series.½

A solid fantasy novel with interesting characters and a well thought out world. Takes place primarily in the werewolf lands but centers around a human character that ends up there after a prison break. The subplot involving the Strange Gods is a little bit too thin but is interesting none the less.

Although I loved this book, it felt a little like a series of short stories built into a logical narrative rather than a novel. It doesn't necessarily suffer for that, but it grates slightly. Otherwise it'd have been a five!½

Good lord but James Enge can write! This is by far the most impressive novel debut I have read for some time.

This book deserves a lengthy review, but I'm going to be brief here.
If you are familiar with Morlock, then you'll expect there to be some humor, interesting encounters, odd motives, and interesting twists on magic. You get all of that on steroids here.
This was a great read during my lunch breaks, the chapters are just the right size.½