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Books : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Authors, A-Z : G : Gemmell, David
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In Stormrider David Gemmell yet again demonstrates the passion for storytelling and the heroic which makes his best books so very much better than his sometimes clunky individual sentences might indicate.Driven back to the barren hills of their homeland, the Rigante clansmen whose ancient ways have dominated Gemmell's series named for them are the natural world's last resource against crusaders, whose corrupt magic would destroy everything. Yet the crucial hero of the struggle is not the Rigante chieftain Kaelin, but Gaise, the dashing cavalryman son of the Rigante's worst enemy, the Moidart.
Gemmell is fascinated by what makes good men do evil--Gaise becomes hideously ruthless in his pursuit of a righteous war--and also by what makes evil men do good; faced with an ultimate evil that regards him as a personal enemy, the Moidart is forced not only onto the side of Good, but also to an understanding of what he really wants.
Gemmell is fond of the brutal and of the sentimental, but there is an underlying integrity to his work that comes from a real belief in the importance of what he is saying; his work is sometimes ponderous and pretentious, but never trivial. --Roz Kaveney
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David Gemmell's latest heroic fantasy The Swords of Night and Day, latest in the Drenai series, stars the tormented swordsman Skilgannon the Damned and opens a thousand years after his debut in White Wolf (2003). Reincarnation is the secret, of course. Having died in his final battle and spent a fraught millennium in the Void, Skilgannon is deliberately brought back to take up his swords and fulfil a prophecy.Other revenants include the body though not the soul of his old comrade-in-arms Druss the Legend, and more than one form of this era's tyrannical queen the Eternal, a woman once very important to our hero. This queen not only controls overwhelming armies but is literally eternal because technomagical wizardry makes death, for her, no more than a minor interruption. Her current lover is an obsessed psychopath carrying the only swords more deadly and cursed than Skilgannon's, the Swords of Blood and Fire.
The land is infested with sorcerously created man-beast "Joinings"; in an unusual subplot, one hapless and unheroic merchant tries to teach a pack of these monsters to hunt animal rather than human prey. Naturally there is copious swordplay, not to mention axe-wielding and archery, all described with Gemmell's usual kinetic skill at handling fluidly violent duels, skirmishes and battles. Even with help from a tiny remnant of Druss's folk, the Drenai Legend Riders, Skilgannon's quest seems utterly hopeless. But correctly interpreting the fantastic, colourful imagery of that millennium-old prophecy suggests a desperate course of action.
The storyline is as compelling as ever, punctuated by artful flashbacks, with a generous helping of unexpected twists, betrayals, tragedies and triumphs. Gemmell's countless fans will not be disappointed. --David Langford
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David Gemmell is Britain's most popular writer of hard-edged heroic fantasy. White Wolf opens a new subseries, "The Damned", set in the world of his Drenai saga and featuring the invincible axeman Druss the Legend--now well into middle age. But the central character is Skilgannon the Damned, deadly wielder of a very special pair of swords and a former general whose nickname comes from a war atrocity that he does not deny. His attempt to make a new life as a monk ends abruptly when civil unrest threatens the monastery and Skilgannon's old fighting skills come into play with appalling effectiveness. In flashbacks to decades earlier, a young Skilgannon painfully and plausibly learns the warrior's art, until his boyhood finishes in a blaze of horror. He finds true love, but his lady is also in love with power and gives the orders for a city-wide bloodbath that makes him forever The Damned. Now known as the Witch-Queen, she won't forgive him for leaving her...Other stories intertwine with Skilgannon's. There's a young lad who wants to be a swordsman; a fey girl haunted by voices; twin brother fighters, one with a personality ravaged by brain cancer; and Druss the Legend, still indomitable but beginning to worry about his heart. Their paths entwine in a land full of disorder, hostile troops, desperate refugees, and escaped arena beasts (sorcerous hybrids of man and animal). Gemmell excels at combat scenes, with a pace, timing and gripping conviction rare in the genre. He makes it clear, with grim compassion, that opponents aren't just straw men to be knocked over. Skilgannon is forced to kill people he admires, or who admire him; even legitimate self-defence turns sour when we hear the version told by the dead man's fiancée. At the climax, Skilgannon, Druss and their surviving companions stage an audacious assault on a particularly obnoxious villain's well-defended fortress. Much bloodshed follows, with satisfactory settlement of many debts and a final gleam of hope for the future. More tales of Skilgannon will surely follow. --David Langford
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Following Sword in the Storm, Midnight Falcon is David Gemmell's second novel in the Rigante sequence. Sufficient information is provided to enjoy this volume alone, though the series will be more accessible if read in order. Seventeen-year- old Bane, illegitimate son of King Connovar, comes to the city of Stone, a place of gladiatorial combat, corruption and religious terror. Embittered by his father's refusal to acknowledge him, Bane's wildness leads to bloodshed, before friendship and betrayal force him to accept the complexities of power and responsibility. The novel builds to an epic climax, as Bane must accept who he is in order to lead his people in a desperate battle for their very survival. David Gemmell has created a detailed and realistic world in which the action is vividly described and often thrilling. Yet there is a melancholy tone, for the author is as concerned with the consequences of war and the nature of men of violence, as with conflict itself. There is a sense of the tragedy of war, lending the sad grandeur of history to a strongly characterised and intelligent adventure. It is something the series has in common with Stephen King's haunting fantasy western epic The Dark Tower. David Gemmell is Britain's best selling author of Heroic Fantasy. He has written 23 previous books, finding immediate success in 1984 with the highly influential and acclaimed Legend. -- Gary S. Dalkin This text refers to the Hardback Edition of this book.
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In Ravenheart, the time-scale of David Gemmell's novels of the Rigante, a Celt-like people living on the fringes of other, more aggressive cultures, reaches a historical period that is the fantasy equivalent of the early 18th century. The Rigante clans are oppressed by their Varlish neighbours, forbidden their traditional dress and culture; only in the hills do the old ways hold and there are plots to destroy even those strongholds by treachery. Young Kaelin is the son of a chief treacherously murdered by the Moidart, the local Varlish overlord; everyone waits to see what will become of him, especially his rowdy mentor Jaim and his cautious foster-mother Maev. What makes this such a likable book is that Gemmell is aware of the sheer complexity of the situation he has created--Kaelin's unsympathetic austere Varlish schoolteacher Alterith becomes practically a hero in his own right through an ethic of scholarship and legalism entirely alien to the Rigante among who he lives. The Moidart's son, Gaise, is a man of more honour than his father and clearly booked to be important in a sequel.--if Gemmell has been reading Walter Scott novels such as Rob Roy, it is considerably to the book's advantage.--Roz Kaveney
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Followers of David Gemmell since the publication of his first novel Legend in 1984, will be used to his ability to weave a compulsively engaging story, and Sword In The Storm is no different. But in the intervening years, his skill in mixing mysticism with stark reality; tenderness with the brutality of battle, and credible lands with well-drawn characters, has continued to develop.Sword In The Storm is the first in the Rigante Series and traces the young life of Connavar--a Rigante tribesman with the mark of greatness upon him. Fighting against the flaws of his own character, the prophecies of invasion from across the water, and feted as both hero and villain, Connavar strives to secure the lands of his birth for his people through joy, tragedy and every shade in between.
This is the beginning of another epic saga from arguably the finest fantasy writer in Britain today. Following in the footsteps of the classic Drenai series and the tales of The Jerusalem Man, this offering will not disappoint Gemmell devotees. Sword In The Storm is easy on the eye and offers up a hero that can be both loved and hated in equal measure. Quite simply, David Gemmell has done it again. --James Barclay
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