Review: A compelling visceral and thought provoking first instalment.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 22, 2014
Oblivion’s Forge, the first instalment of the Aona Trilogy, is a highly original work free of the clichéd characters one expects of a fantasy work. Instead the author populates this cold, bitter, hostile and dilapidated world with deeply flawed, all too human individuals.The main protagonist , Vornen, is an individual banished and disowned by his own people, someone cursed with Gate sight, the ability to see portals between dimensions, and ‘a violent madman … a lunatic and a wastrel’ as his old enemy Rocan sees him. He’s also someone who feels an intense emptiness within, something he has tried to fill with drink, violence and the drug kyush. Amethyst meanwhile is a woman fated to forever wander and like Vornen is drawn to the gates whilst Jaana is a healer, one who has lost all faith in herself or her abilities. She is a broken character lost in self-doubt as all around madness and disease flourish.A sense of latent menace pervades the entire novel and we soon discover something ancient is trying to break through. These are the Marandaal, powerful beings who we suspect (like the Great Old Ones in H. P. Lovecraft) are seeking to return and destroy the petty humans who populate the earth.Much is made in this first instalment of light and darkness and if I have one criticism of the novel it is that the references become too frequent and repetitive. Yet this is only a small criticism. With these prophecies of the coming of the light, the author manages to capture a sense of religious mania, of awaiting a second coming. Visions abound in the novel as the Maraandal impress their minds on vulnerable mortals.The narrative remains strong throughout and the pacing is excellent with a number of vividly described and widely different landscapes. I was particularly impressed with the ancient and forgotten citadel Mirkwall surrounded by “a vast swampland, clad in the perpetual grey of mist.” It is here the good wizard Fistelkarn’s enemy resides, the frail, decrepit and dying wizard Shimlock. The language here reaches dark, poetic heights and reminds me in many ways of another decaying structure, that of Roderick Usher’s, although even Poe never dreamt up the bizarre red phantom worms that crawl between the cracks of crumbling brick.It is here, near the end that the ominous threat, although still un-glimpsed, becomes palpable as Fistelkarn senses the “black shapes” which have risen up from that place and “cast a burning frost upon the ground,” that is the madness, visions and disease that have been spreading through the villages. Yet just when we naively begin to assume we understand these beings there is a revelation at the end which comes as a major shock. It is a revelation guaranteed to compel you to want to read the second instalment.