RJ Barker
Orbit, 29 June 2023
Available as: HB, 626pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356517230
I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for sending me a copy of Gods of the Wyrdwood to consider for review.
This is one of those occasions when writing a review is simply daunting. I just want to say "buy this book, it's brilliant". I've come to expect a high standard form this author but really, it's just ridiculous how good Gods is. Whether you judge by characters, by setting, by the issues addressed or just by plain old-fashioned readability, Gods of the Wyrdwood amply delivers (and this, in passing, with the author making it deliberately hard by writing a book in a setting with no metal!)
Gods of the Wyrdwood doesn't mess around, but drops us immediately into its menacing, disturbing setting. Our hero Cahan Du-Nahare, known to most as "The Forester" since his real name attracts attention from powerful enemies, is an outcast living on the fringes of a remote village, Harn. Cahan is clanless and therefore pretty much despised by the villagers - near the bottom of the social pile in their harsh land of Crua, they're glad to have someone else to look down on, and as Cahan lives on the fringes of the frightening wild woods, he's also touched by the dread and superstition directed at that realm. So when the story opens with the Forester's death, it's a foretaste of what is to come in this violent land, riven by warfare between followers of different gods - and by a ruthless pursuit of any woman or man suspected of being a conduit for the wrong gods.
In this atmosphere of external persecution, the ruling faction - followers of the new god Tarl-an-Gig, the Balancing Man - are as divided internally as their enemies, and Barker quickly sketches a complicated polity where personal motivations - the desire for power, for safety or for revenge - can outweigh politics and duty, giving scope for all sorts of double dealing and chicanery. It's a world that Cahan has known and turned his back on, one of the themes of the novel being his desire to set aside power - and he's been blessed, or cursed, with considerable power - and live a quiet life, harming none.
If only the world would let him do that! Whether pursued by enemies or enlisted for help the desperate villagers - despite their fears of him - throughout this book Cahan is continually harried to aid various causes, including venturing into the depths of the Wyldwood itself when the son of the village's headwoman disappears. That episode introduces Cahan's unwelcome companion Udinny, a character who is just exquisite. I'd say that Cahan and Udinny are destined to be one of the great partnerships of fantasy, her enthusiasm and moral drive the perfect foil to his dourness and reticence.
Udinny is a monk, a former thief who has somehow fallen into the service of a powerful goddess - not a comfortable thing to be at all in a land under the dominion of Tarl-an-Gig - and a person who's just hugely inquisitive, self possessed and, above all, brave. The scenes between the two, especially where they are on their forest quest, are simply brilliant, a spiky bickering moderating into respect and even grudging admiration.
In their brilliant depiction, Cahan and Udinny are not though unique in this book - Barker is on top form here giving us real hiss-inducing villains (but then flooring us by showing us their relatable human emotions and drives), and complex, grey-shaded villagers, soldiers and artisans as well as epic battles, a whole bizarre ecology for both the woods and the deities that inhabit them, and - in glimpses - a slowly emerging backstory for Cahan. That last is possibly the most affecting part of the story, slowly showing us the basis on which he lived his life and what he lost along the way, leading to him being the reserved figure we see through most of the book. It's not just filling in background, what happened to the boy - and young man - Cahal could easily be a book, or more, in itself. Writing is about much more than "having ideas" I know but even so, there's a profligacy to the amount of material that Barker is happy simply to allude to here without needing to explore in detail, something that, to me, promises he's a got a lot more to come in this series.
Gods of the Wyrdwood is a big book with epic themes, but also very personal ones, showing ordinary people forced to step up when their quiet lives are threatened by the games of the powerful. In its exciting finale the people of Harn, tanners, butchers and farmers are forced to defend their village against experienced troops. Like Cahan, they have been drawn into conflict and politics whether they like it (or understand it) or not and they just have to make the best of things. Quiet loyalty, mercy and kindness seem small things compared with armour and powerful magic, but they still, as Barker seems to show, have a value in themselves.
Just an incredible read, a corruscatingly good book, promising a standout trilogy from RJ Barker.
For more information about Gods of the Wyrdwood, see the publisher's website here.
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