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 Folding Knife by K.J. Parker

Bassianus Severus - known to the people as Basso - is the First Citizen of the Vesani Republic. He is politically savvy, financially creative, ruthlessly ambitious and very lucky. As his power and prestige grows, so does the rift between him and his sister, and the battle for the loyalty of her son.


The Folding Knife is the eleventh novel by the enigmatic K.J. Parker, a stand-alone book which is not part of any series. Fourteen years ago I picked up Parker's debut novel, Colours in the Steel, and later its two sequels and enjoyed them enormously. I've missed out on her books since then, which is something I'll have to rectify. The Folding Knife is outstanding.

This is the story of a man's life, or rather a twenty-year slice of it, but mostly focusing on the three years after he becomes First Citizen of the Republic. Basso grows up learning the family trade of banking, and through canny deals and excellent advice he soon becomes one of the richest men in the city. He then moves into politics, using his common touch with the people and his skills of persuasion and blackmail with the nobility to become the ruler of the Republic. He even has a long-term plan for the entire nation: to strengthen its borders and increase its resources against the threat of competing kingdoms jealous of Vesani's growing military and economic might.

Basso plays the Republic like an instrument, working out how to make the people and politicians jump to his tune. However, as the story unfolds Basso's inability to mend the feud with his sister or make foreign powers likewise obey the rules he sets out both become dangerous, leading to more desperate gambles. There's a strong economic spine to the book, with Parker successfully showing how expensive it is to run a large kingdom even without trying to fund major wars. In fact, I'm wondering if the economic storyline is a commentary on the current financial crisis, with Basso's self-justifications and ability to conjure money out of nowhere to keep things going just a bit longer being more than slightly reminiscent of recent news stories on the banks and national governments almost going bankrupt.

Basing the story on economics could be deathly dull, but Parker's well-paced writing, solid characterisation and dry sense of humour keeps things ticking along nicely. Basso is a well-written protagonist, monstrously flawed but also sympathetic, with his genius at handling money and politics contrasted against his disastrous relationships and his empty personal life. Basso's story is something of a tragedy then, but one with more than its fair share of humour and ingenuity. Also, by Parker's standards it's not that dark or disturbing (there's no Belly of the Bow 'moment' of unexpected ultraviolence here), though her twisted sense of humour remains intact. She also reigns in her tendency to interrupt the story for a three-page digression on the best way to build trebuchets (though there is one detailed explanation of how to use a scorpion - a piece of field artillery - as a stealthy assassination weapon, but this is quite funny so fair enough).

This is a strong novel with only a few brief but well-described moments of action, with the focus being on political and economic intrigue. Intriguingly, whilst set in an (unmapped) secondary world, there is no magic or mysticism in the novel at all, but this lack is barely felt.

As for criticisms, the tight focus on Basso means we don't get much of a sense of the Republic or the wider world beyond his own views on it, but that's the point of the story, I suppose. The ending is also perhaps a little underwhelming (and whilst it's not the first in a series, the ending is open enough to allow for a later sequel, if necessary). The reasons for Basso's sister's hatred of him are also under-explored, since we don't have any POV chapters from her. Finally, there are moments when things go as clockwork and Basso finds things going all his way that feels a little too clinical and not allowing for the unpredictability of human actions, but the latter part of the novel repays that in spades, so that's not too much of a problem.

The Folding Knife (****½) is an engrossing, page-turning economic and political thriller, executed with finesse by one of our best (but possibly most underrated) fantasists. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

KJ Parker's ENGINEER TRILOGY re-released.

KJ Parker's Engineer Trilogy is actually quite a recent series, but Orbit have nevertheless chosen to reissue the books in the UK and Australia with new covers. The new UK editions should be out now, and will hit Australia in March.


Devices and Desires (2005), Evil for Evil (2006) and The Escapement (2007) have all been very-well-reviewed, although I'm still a way behind on Parker. I enjoyed the Fencer Trilogy back when it was first released, but haven't picked up either the Scavenger or Engineer series. Parker's new novel, The Folding Knife, which is apparently a departure for her, is also published on 4 February in the UK and 22 February in the USA.


The blurb sounds most intriguing:

Basso the Magnificent. Basso the Great. Basso the Wise. Basso the Murderer. The First Citizen of the Vesani Republic is an extraordinary man. He is ruthless, cunning and, above all, lucky. He brings wealth, power and prestige to his people. But with power comes unwanted attention, and Basso must defend his nation and himself from threats foreign and domestic. In a lifetime of crucial decisions, he's only ever made one mistake. One mistake, though, can be enough.

Very good. I'll have to rectify my lack of Parker reading this year, I think.