A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 32

In 1998 Orbit Books in the UK published the debut novel by a new author: Colours in the Steel. The first volume of The Fencer Trilogy, it was very well-received. However, the author, K.J. Parker, declined to tour or do any public appearances for the book. Interviews were conducted only online by email.

As the years passed, Parker's output became ever more critically-acclaimed. Orbit began publishing the novels in the United States to growing sales and critical acclaim, whilst the small Subterranean Press began publishing acclaimed editions of Parker's novellas and short stories. This culminated with back-to-back World Fantasy Award wins in 2012 and 2013 for the novellas A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong and Let Maps to Others. The mystery of "Who is K.J. Parker?" went from a minor meme to a major fantasy mystery, with bloggers posting detailed guesses of who the author might be.

Finally, in 2015, the author came clean. K.J. Parker was really Tom Holt, a bestselling British comic author. It had actually been a popular guess for a few years that Parker and Holt were the same person, so it wasn't a major surprise.

Tom Holt (born 1961) published his first novel, Expecting Someone Taller, in 1987. The novel was about Malcolm Fisher, an auction clerk, who inadvertently kills the giant Ingolf (in the form of a badger), keeper of the Ring of Nibelung and the Tarnhelm. Coming into possession of these items, Fisher becomes King of the World, to the irritation of Wotan (Odin), King of the Gods. The result is a comical farce involving Norse gods, valkyries and Rhinemaidens.

Holt published fourteen novels and a satirical autobiography of Margaret Thatcher over the next eleven years, but always had a hankering to write something more serious. In 1989 and 1990 he published two novellas, Goatsong and The Walled Orchard, under the cunning and impenetrable pseudonym of Thomas Holt. In 1997 these were combined into a novel, The Walled Orchard, which was well-received. The book focuses on the real (if highly enigmatic) Eupolis of Athens, a playwright who is living in incredibly dark times (the Peloponnesian War of the late 5th Century BC) and can only get through them by writing comedies and using humour to try to deflect the misery of the period. The book also focuses on politics, love and the absurdities of war.

The book was well-received, but it was noted that it was very different from Holt's other work. So Orbit hit on the idea of launching Holt as a "new" author under a slightly more original pen-name, K.J. Parker.

Colours in the Steel

The Fencer Trilogy is the story of Bardas Loredan, fencer-at-law. In the first novel (1998) he is serving as a lawyer in the triple-walled city of Perimadeia, where the advocates fight with swords rather than words and arguments. A particularly tricky case is complicated when the "savages" of the plains somehow develop siege weapon technology (they just come into the city and work in the armoury for a bit and steal all of the ideas) and besiege the city. Bardas is drafted to help with the defence, to his despair.

The result is a war novel combining the grit of Gemmell, the humour of, er, Holt and a rich and fascinating eye for technical detail. The trilogy takes for its theme the idea of certain weapons and facets of war, and for the first book this is very much about swords and siege weapons. There is a lot of detail about how swords are forged and how trebuchets are made and operated. This isn't just medieval war porn, it's crucially important for the plot and the characters as well.

The Belly of the Bow (1999) focuses again on Bardas, this time returning to his home island to find his dysfunctional family (this is a major, major understatement) embroiled in a local civil war. This book is about longbows and shortbows and focuses on the idea that a bow is a supreme weapon because it can bend and flex...right up to the point where it snaps. The novel climaxes with a moment where Bardas snaps (in a moment that out-Red Weddings the Red Wedding before the Red Wedding ever appeared in print) and the reader is forced to confront the possibility that they've just spent two novels rooting for a guy who is a complete psychopath. As a moment of character reversal and revelation, it is supremely well-handled, and arguably marked the point where the name "K.J. Parker" went from "just another fantasy author" to "something special." This process continued in the third volume, The Proof House (2000), based around the forging of armour, in which our battered protagonist tries to find a new home in a vast, rapidly expanding empire. The trilogy as a whole is fantastically characterised and is heroic without aggrandisement, cynical without despair and realistic without bitterness.

Following the Fencer Trilogy, Parker followed up with the Scavenger (2001-03) and Engineer trilogies (2005-07). The former is about a man who wakes up with amnesia and has to survive whilst being pursued by enemies he doesn't know for deeds he cannot remember. The latter focuses on an engineer in exile who plots a complicated revenge on those who wronged him.

After that work Holt switched to writing stand-alones. The Company (2008), The Hammer (2011), Sharps (2012), Savages (2015) and The Two of Swords (2015), the latter published as a serial, all showcase Holt's wit, keen observation of character and event. However, it was his 2009 novel The Folding Knife that arguably encapsulates his work the best.

The Folding Knife

The Folding Knife is set in the Vesani Republic, the closest analogue to Republican Roman in Holt's world (all of his books take place in the same world, but at wildly varying points in its history with different levels of technology and different borders and absolutely no maps). The book follows the story of Basso, First Citizen of the Republic, who achieves his position thanks to his supreme skills of diplomacy, economics and politics. However, his inability to create a happy home life and his inability to mend a long-simmering feud with his sister both distract him. As his career progresses, so does his arrogance and overconfidence, resulting in disaster.

On the one hand this is a pretty straightforward novel about hubris. But on a deeper level it's an exploration of family, of responsibility and how not having to see violence or conflict first-hand makes it easier to start wars and send people off to die when you don't have to live with the consequences. It's also a book about economics, and Basso's ability to keep borrowing long past the Republic's ability to pay through creative accounting makes one suspect that this novel is also riffing off the 2008 global financial crisis, which would be a rather different source of inspiration for a fantasy novel.

It's the most contained and representative of the Parker books and makes a fine place for a reader new to this author to start.


Holt is one of a small number of authors who asks an important question about epic fantasy, a genre that likes to steep itself in realism when it comes to determining how many miles an army can cover in a day (less so about how a 30-ton reptile can stay in the air without adequate life-generating wings): how the hell does anyone pay for these massive mile-wide castles, vast numbers of troops and hire expensive mages with unique (and therefore expensive) powers?

The Proof House by K.J. Parker

Thanks to the efforts of Bardas Loredan - fencer turned bowyer turned sapper - the city of Ap' Escatoy has fallen, allowing the Empire to begin its expansion into the lands held by the plains tribes. Loredan is reassigned to an imperial proof house, testing armour to destruction, until his previous relationship with the leader of the tribes is discovered. Loredan is the only person that Termai, sacker of Perimadeia, fears and the Empire plans to make good use of that fact in its invasion.

The Proof House is the third and concluding volume of K.J. Parker's debut work, The Fencer Trilogy. As with its two predecessors, Colours in the Steel and The Belly of the Bow, it's a novel that wears the clothes of epic fantasy but seems resolutely unimpressed by them. Wars, battles, sword fights, clashes of armies and so forth are all featured, but presented with dripping cynicism and sarcasm by the author, who is far more interested in her(?) characters. The Fencer Trilogy is less about the trappings of the subgenre and more about family relationships, particularly the extremely dysfunctional (to the point of murder) Loredan clan. The novel is driven, as to some extent the previous ones were, by Gorgas Loredan's insistence on repairing the damage he did to his family as a youth, utterly unaware that his crimes are past forgiveness or forgetting.

Elsewhere, Parker continues to base her narrative around the trappings of medieval-style warfare. The first book revolved around swords and the second around bows, with both standing as metaphors for the novels' themes. This continues in the third novel, which is about armour and how it is tested to be 'proof' against the pressures that will be brought to bear against it. This thematic element is a bit overstated in this third volume, with what was previously a subtle and clever analogy instead being rammed down the reader's throats with less nuance. This is a shame as other elements are handled in a far more enjoyable manner, such as the final conclusions about the Principal (including some interesting information about its temporal-manipulation effects) and the resolution of Temrai's storyline from the first novel.

The novel's biggest weakness is the fact that a major new political power - the Empire - appears literally out of nowhere and is described as the largest and most powerful nation in the world with an army numbering in the millions (individual provinces can field armies in the hundreds of thousands by themselves), with its nearest borders being only a few hundred miles from Perimadeia, Shastel and other familiar locations. Yet it somehow went completely unmentioned in the first two novels of the series, stretching credulity past breaking point. This is a shame as the Empire is a reasonably well-constructed fantasy nation (as these things go) and the increasingly bemused meta-observations by one of its provincial officers on the plot is quite amusing.

The Proof House (***½) is a clever novel that uses the trappings of epic fantasy to criticise the subgenre intelligently, whilst also featuring some dark humour, nuanced characterisation and an appropriately messy ending. Some shaky worldbuilding and over-egged thematic elements leave it as the weakest of the three novels in The Fencer Trilogy, but still a worthwhile conclusion to the story. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The Belly of the Bow by K.J. Parker

Shastel is a country owned and run by an academic foundation, whose bank holds the debts of its impoverished citizens in perpetuity. Spying an opportunity for profit, the Loredan Bank has taken over the nearby island of Scona and is undercutting the Foundation's economy, sparking a trade war that is in danger of turning very real and very bloody. For Bardas Loredan, living in seclusion as a bowyer in Scona's backwater, the last thing he wants is anything to do with the schemes of his ruthless brother and pragmatic sister. But he is soon drawn into the conflict, even as he comes to realise that his attempts to live a good life may be nothing more than a sham.

The Belly of the Bow is the second volume of K.J. Parker's Fencer Trilogy. At first glance, this is a slighter novel than Colours in the Steel. Whilst Colours centred around a massive siege and the attempts to defend a city, The Belly of the Bow is a much more personal story focused on the dysfunctional Loredan family. The war this time is more in the background, and played for maximum cynical impact. Parker's black humour and refusal to glorify the horrors of war combine to provide a damning indictment of violent conflict and the reasons for it.

As a personal, more character-focused story the novel takes a while to get going. The complex relationships between Bardas, his sister, brother and niece are built up steadily but the thematic point of the novel is elusive until a shocking late-novel development throws everything into sharp relief. The book is essentially a character study of Bardas Loredan, who believes himself to be the 'good' member of the family, a hard worker who sends money home to his younger two brothers on their farm and has always tried to do the right thing. As the novel demonstrates, Bardas is kidding himself (his previous careers as soldier and lawyer-at-arms being steeped in blood and mayhem) and his self-belief is a rather brittle thing. When faced with a revelation of a betrayal on an massive scale, his reaction isn't reasoned or understanding, but a cruel and merciless lashing out that is genuinely unexpected.

The novel pivots on this moment (which happens very late in the book) and doesn't fully work until you realise that moment - a moment of gut-wrenching horror that even George R.R. Martin might consider excessive - is coming. As such, the book works a bit better on re-reads. However, as well as Bardas the novel concentrates a lot on his brother, Gorgas. Gorgas is best described as an ex-sociopath who has genuinely reformed from being a violent lunatic and is now seeking to make amends for his past mistakes. Unfortunately, Gorgas is rather disturbingly single-minded in this attempt to seek redemption, and the crimes he commits to achieve it actually dwarf his original offence. The contrast between the two brothers (and Bardas's angry denials he is anything like his brother, which ring increasingly hollow as the trilogy unfolds) is a key point of the novel that Parker develops effectively.

As with much of Parker's work, the tone is often deceptively light-hearted whilst masking a cynical edge, the humour is jet black and the characterisation is strong, but takes a while to come to the fore. Also, as it standard, the novel is packed with information on the creation and use of a standard fantasy weapon of war, in this case the bow. These passages of mechanical engineering may appear skip-worthy, but Parker actually cleverly uses the bow as a metaphor for her(?) characters and the world they live in. Other characters from Colours in the Steel return and there is some more information on the Principal (less of a magic system than an ability to nudge future probabilities to get a more favourable outcome, but due to chaos theory this is wildly unpredictable), but the focus is firmly on the Loredan family and their issues.

The Belly of the Bow (****) is a less-obviously engaging novel than its forebear, but once the scope of Parker's ambition for the book becomes clear it turns into a much more impressive work. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Colours in the Steel by K.J. Parker

Triple-walled Perimadeia is one of the richest city-states in the world, famed for its teeming markets and its impregnable defences. After decades of trying fruitlessly to take the city, one of the plains tribes comes up with an ingenious idea: send one of their own to get a job in the city arsenal and learn its secrets from the inside.

Even as an ambitious young chieftain's son plans the most audacious siege in history, life in the city goes on. Bardas Loredan, a former soldier, now works as a defence advocate. In the courts of Perimadeia cases are settled through swordplay and Bardas is very good at what he does...until a vengeful young woman hires the city's Patriarch to curse him.

Colours in the Steel was originally published in 1998 and was the debut novel by the enigmatic K.J. Parker. It's also the first in The Fencer Trilogy, although it also works quite well as a stand-alone book. It can be best described as a sort-of anti-epic fantasy. The trappings of much of the subgenre are present: swordfights, large armies, sieges, military manoeuvres, magic (more or less) and prophecies (kind of). However, most of this is window-dressing, with the focus being on Bardas Loredan and his troubled family life, and on young Temrai, the chieftain's son and spy who ends up plotting the genocide of a city he actually quite likes.

As with Parker's later books, Colours in the Steel has a cynical vein of black humour running through it. There are musings on the futility of revenge, the pointlessness of warfare and the quite insane meanderings of the military bureaucracy (there's more than a whiff of WWI incompetence to the leaders of Perimadeia and their military judgement during the siege). There's no glorification of warfare, with both sides suffering heavy losses and wondering if it's all worth it. However, there is also a distinct love of military hardware. In fact, Parker devotes pages to how swords are forged, how siege engines work and are built and on the best ways of defending a city under siege from a superior enemy. Colours in the Steel belies the tendency of much of epic fantasy to be pure escapism, instead educating the reader on matters mechanical and mathematical more effectively than most science fiction novels. Sometimes the deviations onto the best way to make a trebuchet work go on for a bit too long, but Parker's writing skill is enough to keep even the most detailed descriptions of gears and counterweights interesting.

Long-term readers of Parker will know that she(?) has little truck with gratuitous worldbuilding. There is no map and the legal system of Perimadeia seems to have been created more for dramatic effect than any desire to create something that would work on a practical level. There is no 'magic system' either, with the city's Patriarch cheerfully acknowledging that he has no idea about how magic (the Principal, which actually seems more like some kind of limited prophetic or telepathic ability) works. What does work quite well is the subplot where the Patriarch and his best friend try to lift the curse the Patriach put on Bardas (without understanding what was going on), only to find other forces getting involved. Parker doesn't spell out what's going on with this 'magical' plot and it's left to the reader to piece together what it all means, which shows respect for the reader's intelligence.

The book's biggest success is in its characterisation, although it has to be said that Bardas himself is painted a little too straightforwardly. Those who are familiar with the whole trilogy (particularly his actions in the second novel, The Belly of the Bow) will be aware that there are good reasons for this, but newcomers may find Bardas a little too obvious as a protagonist. However, the rest of the cast are painted well, particularly Patriarch Alexius and his friend Gannadius who spend a lot of the book as outside observers and commentators on what's going on before having to get involved. Bardas's brother, Gorgas, is also a fascinating and contradicted character. Whilst definitely being a nasty piece of work, he also has his own sense of honour and fair play. He doesn't play much of a role in this novel, but is set up well for the sequel.

Colours in the Steel (****½) is a striking debut novel. It has the requisite amounts of well-depicted carnage and military activity for an epic fantasy, but it's focus is much more on the characters, their motivations and the realisations they lead to. The book is also darkly funny. It's an excellent example of an epic fantasy novel that uses the tropes and limitations of the genre to say something a bit more interesting than normal. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.