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Alan Campbell
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Book
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Publisher | Tor | ||
ISBN | 978-033044476 | ||
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Reviewer
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Ann
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Synopsis
For nine hundred generations, the city of Deepgate has hung suspended by giant chains over a seemingly bottomless abyss. In the unfathomable darkness below is said to reside the dread god Ulcis, 'hoarder of souls', with his army of ghosts. Outside the city extend the barren wastes of Deadsands, inhabited by the enemy Heshette, so that safe access is guaranteed only by a fleet of airships. At the hub of the city itself rises the Temple, in one of whose many crumbling spires resides a youthful angel, Dill, the last of his line. Descendant of heroic battle-archons, yet barely able to wield the great sword he has inherited from his forebears, he lives a sheltered existence under the watchful eye of Presbyter Sypes, who rules the Temple. For despite his sense of purposelessness, Dill has a destiny about to unfold - one that will take him down into terrifying depths of the pit in a desperate quest to save the teeming but precarious city from total annihilation at the hands of a cunning and resourceful traitor.
Review
Sometimes writing is descriptively compared to food - a meaty tome, a fruity novel, a frothy tale - to my mind this trilogy is a deep, rich, undercooked black pudding with a crunchy lemon topping !
For information, as a codex can be defined as a manuscript of ancient annals, the Codex is the history of Deepgate, there is no other relevance in the plot.
It is difficult to avoid words like epic, Gormenghast, macabre, in describing this work - it deals with a war between gods with very odd other beings aiding and abetting each side, its very dark, violent and gory. It would be mildly interesting to find out how many times the word blood or it's synonyms are used - definitely feels like too many !
The first book in the series is Scar Night where we are flung rather than introduced into Deepgate, a city suspended by chains over a vast abyss. The main protagonists for the side opposing hell, I hesitate to say the good, are the weak and emotional angel Dill, the last of his kind, and Rchel, a female assassin or Spine, who has managed to avoid being tempered, that is made devoid of feeling, by the priests of the Temple. Also possibly on their side is Carnival, a fallen, scarred angel with a unwilling monthly penchant for murder.
I found it quite confusing and depressing, definitely not a book to read on a dank Sunday afternoon in February, and had to force myself to finish it. However at the end the God Ulcis who has been consuming all the souls of the dead thrown into the abyss is no more.
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