'm reading Tim Lebbon's Dusk. Lebbon is a horror writer, and this is his first foray into fantasy.
It was slow slogging through the first fifty pages, but it was well-written, so I persevered and it's starting to grip me.
It concerns a world which lost its magic after a cataclysmic war, and only now is magic is returning, and there are those attempting to prevent it.
The setting is reminiscent of China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, although I wouldn't suggest that Lebbon's prose is equal to Mieville's. But the "feel" is there, gritty, dark, and full of strange wonders.
It's recommended by Steven Erikson, Paul Kearney and F. Paul Wilson. That's more than good enough for me!!
I thought it was pretty disappointing. I read it last year, with some anticipation as I consider myself a fan of Lebbon (particularly his short stories), but I just thought
Dusk - while certainly atmospheric - was pretty sub-standard. Taking away the couple of instances of inventiveness, it was essentially
dark shannara (and a shannara under any name can't be good
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), with all the trappings that other high fantasy works fall into,
deus ex machina and all.
I have to disagree that Lebbon's setting has any similarities in feel or is as described anywhere near as well as Mieville's New Crobuzon or Bas-lag in general. I consider Mieville's Bas-lag, along with other settings like VanderMeer's Ambergis, or Thomas's Punktown, to be among one of the elite backdrops in fantastic fiction, Lebbon's drowns us in the same description no matter here on his map we are. The setting never becomes an amalgamation of its denziens, symbolizng more than just
'where things occur'.
I'm going to review this book fully soon, but it was a case of me wanting to like it and being pretty disappointing., in fact I'd say it's the most disappointing novel of 2006 for me. That, said, opinions certainly do differ.
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