Burning air or rivers running upstream would be the least terrible things. Last time, the Mages had practiced out of greed and lust for power. This time, were they to harness the magic, theirs would be a triumphant return from exile. If their armies were dead and gone to dust, they would make new ones. If their soldiers could not run fast enough, they would build machines. This time, revenge would be their prime motive.
- Title: Dusk
- Author: Tim Lebbon
- Genre: Dark Fantasy
- Year: 2006
Farm boy Rafe Baburn is the chosen one, destined to return magic to the land. Together with a group of varied companions, Rafe travels the strange landscape of Noreela, battling horrible monsters and evil magic…
Whoa! Wait a minute, I hear you say, what the hell is this crap? Chosen ones? Farm boys on a quest? Hasn’t this stuff been done to death? Yes, it has, but not like in Dusk. Trust me, and trust Tim Lebbon, and read on.
For starters, Noreela — the world of Dusk and its sequels — is a wretched place, a place sick and in decline following the ravages of the Cataclysmic War. In that war, some two hundred years prior to the events in the book, the Mages of Noreela were driven from the land — and with them its magic. Now the land festers, the earth itself rots away and strange creatures roam the landscape, the shells of vast, dead machines rot and rust away in the wilderness, and human society has grown savage and decadent. It is a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, and horror writer Lebbon doesn’t miss a trick in describing this land gone bad. Dusk is gritty, full of violence and ugliness and suffering, a true Dark Fantasy.
And Lebbon understands high fantasy cliches as well, and skillfully uses a reader’s expectations to create surprise in Dusk. Surface appearances here are deceiving, and the ‘farm boy is the chosen one on a quest’ narrative is beautifully (and shockingly) subverted by the books end. That’s not to say this is a deconstructionist or satirical look at the genre either, far from it, rather Dusk is every bit a work of high fantasy, only with a dark and original slant.
The book opens with the slaughter of Rafe’s village at the hands of a Red Monk, one of an order of implacable killers bent on the eradication of magic. Rafe escapes, as does the thief Kosar (who’s hands have been marked by perpetually bleeding wounds), and much of the action of the book involves them and a few other disparate companions, such as the drug addicted fledge miner Trey Barossa and the maternally protective and paranoid witch Hope, drawing together. It’s the standard quest formula, but it’s paced so well and sprinkled with unexpected details that even a jaded reader will not mind. Eventually it is revealed that two factions seek Rafe, the Red Monks and the returning Mages, and his group of protectors flee across the dying world in search of a refuge.
Dusk is the opening of something larger, essentially it’s an extended chase covering the gathering of our group of protagonists and the setting up of the conflict in Lebbon’s series. It’s a promising start, with a well-drawn world and interesting characters, and one that gets extra points from this reviewer for actually managing to surprise me. Perhaps my favorite aspect of Noreela is the way magic is handled for, even though it is gone from the land, there is much that the reader would consider magic that operates in the world. But it isn’t true magic, we learn, only simple exploits of natural laws, and when we finally witness real magic is strange, mysterious, and awesome. All too often fantasy fiction is safe, and magic is little more than a fireworks display or a card trick slowed down so you can see how it’s done. In Dusk, magic is weird, its frightening, and one can sense its power — something so rare in most contemporary fantasy that its bears singling out for praise.
Dusk is something different for the jaded palate, and if the remainder of the series lives up to the first volume, Lebbon may yet produce a classic saga for fans of true Dark Fantasy.
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