The Year of Our War

by Steph Swainston

Jul 20, 2007 Colin Harvey

Swainston's first novel was published to enormous critical acclaim in 2004, eliciting comparisons to Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast and M. John Harrison's Viriconium series.

Steph Swainston’s first novel was published to enormous critical acclaim in 2004, eliciting comparisons to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast and M. John Harrison’s Viriconium series.

It is the two thousand and fifteenth year of the war between a winged version of humanity and a vast horde of insects across the Fourlands, a group of disparate kingdoms ruled over loosely by the Emperor San, whose court includes a circle of fifty immortals.

The insect horde’s purpose is unclear; apart from their intent being clearly hostile. They rip buildings apart and chew them up, and wad them into colossal walls that act as a sort of Maginot Line, separating the conquered lands from the Fourlands.

Jant is one of the immortals, and the only one who can fly. He is used as a messenger by the Emperor, and being able to read the messages that he bears, acts as the reader’s eyes. Each of the other immortals has their own specific talent – so Lightning is the greatest archer in the world, Swallow is a composer, and Tawny is phenomenally strong. The Emperor deliberately restricts the number of immortals in order to limit their power, and increase their competitiveness.

Jant is addicted to Scolopendium, a drug that shifts the user’s consciousness to another dimension. An overdose will effectively shift a mortal permanently to that dimension, but will shunt Jant’s to yet another one; all three (and presumably other) dimensions are alternate versions of the Fourlands, increasingly strange yet still prosaically recognizable as worlds where there is a life to be had, rather then the standard glowing white light of more mundane afterlives.

The Year of Our War is clearly a first novel, both from the mind-boggling level of inventiveness (to paraphrase the critic James Sallis, first novels are always a labour of love, far more creative than later works by the same writers) and from the comparatively loose plot, which seems at times during the first third of the novel to be little more than a series of picaresque rambles, albeit at ultra-high speed, and leaving the protagonists soaked in blood and insect gore.

It’s also a book the rewards the hard work that it demands of the reader. Demands because it almost completely eschews infodumps -- instead working the information into each exchange of dialogue, and short, naturalistic bursts of narrative – and as the novel progresses, a fascinating and at first seemingly unrelated back-story starts to appear, while the narrative itself gradually gains momentum until it hurtles like an avalanche toward its finish..

Swainston is a writer to watch.

The copyright of the article The Year of Our War in American Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish The Year of Our War in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Cover for The Year of Our War