The Coward by Stephen Aryan (Online Blog Tour)
Hi Everybody!
Hope all your summer reading lists are in and you are chipping away at the Mount TBR - one book at a time. So, this week we are super excited to be taking part in the Online Tour for The Coward by Stephen Aryan from Angry Robot Books, that is releasing on June 9th with a joint launch planned at the Forbidden Planet along with Edward Cox's Wood Bee Queen at 7pm BST.
The blurb for The Coward:
Kell Kressia is a legend, a celebrity, a hero. Aged just seventeen, he set out on an epic quest with a band of wizened fighters to slay the Ice Lich and save the world. He returned victorious, but alone.
Ten years have passed and Kell lives a quiet life, while stories of his heroism are told in taverns all across the land. But now a new terror has arisen in the north – something has taken up residence in the Lich’s abandoned castle beyond the Frozen Circle, and the ice is beginning to creep south once more.
For the second time, Kell is called upon to take up his famous sword, Slayer, and battle the forces of darkness. But he has a terrible secret. Kell was never a hero – he was just lucky. Everyone puts their faith in Kell the Legend, but he’s just a coward who has no intention of risking his life for anyone...
About the Author.
Stephen Aryan is the author of the Age of Darkness and Age of Dread trilogies. His first novel, Battlemage, was a finalist for the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut fantasy novel. It also won the inaugural Hellfest Inferno Award in France. He has previously written a comic book column and reviews for Tor.com. In addition, he has self-published and kickstarted his own comics.
My review of The Coward.
The Coward by Stephen Aryan in fact, is my first book by the author ( despite having his previous trilogy that started with The BattleMage with me!) and I have to admit, I am kicking myself for not having read him any earlier. This book is a standalone (not sure! could be the start of a trilogy as well.) and ticks all my boxes - a formidable but reluctant hero, a band of foolhardy but brave warriors out for a quest bonding with each other and discovering themselves, an impressively laid out quest that is a harrowing trek across a brutal frozen landscape - add to it a healthy dose of politicking and twisty conspiracies playing out in the background, comedy and lots of well written vicious fights with some fucking amazingly well written monsters out on the ice. That is actually packing quite a bit into a 400-page volume and Stephen eloquently shows us that the best of epic fantasy adventures don't need to be doorstoppers.
This is a book that starts ten years after the 'monster' has been vanquished. Dealing with loss, our 'hero' Kell Kressia is having a hard time returning back to normality, dealing with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares about what he underwent on that first quest when he was a callow shallow-headed youth of seventeen summers. Full of bright ideals and heroic dreams that got quickly cut down to size by the callous indifference and downright humiliation suffered at the hands of the band of heroes he set out to rid the Five Kingdoms of the infamous ice monster that was the cause of an untimely brutal winter choking the lands. Kell survives and there are songs sung about his 'bravery' but he is the only one who knows the truth of what happened out there beyond the Frozen North. This is a story of hurt, of trauma that spills out slowly over the course of the first part of the book where we slowly discover the truth about young Kell and the heroes who perished in that quest.
History is about to repeat itself and the King's advisor quickly seeks him out with the promises of riches and glory. Kell has promised himself never to put himself into that situation again but then, circumstances conspire quickly against him - as his fame precedes him and the story and he quickly realises there are other fools out there just like he was, ten years ago. His band of heroes grows quickly and he decides to set out to find the truth behind the cause of yet another winter storm that is picking up in the North and spreading its menace to the farmlands in the south.
Stephen writes amazingly real characters, each with their own layers coming undone slowly with enough secrets to fill up a cupboard. Endearing, real and flawed to a fault. Starting with Kell himself, a man with nightmares from his mis-adventures of a youth gone horribly wrong - despite how the fucking bards paint it. Here's a thoughtful reluctant hero, scarred and wisened from the horrid experiences of a quest that ended in tragedy, one that he survived due to just plain blind luck. He is willing to part this hard-earned wisdom but his golden words are weighted down and he's not a man to dole these out at random. His interactions with Gerren, the young man who reminds Kell of himself from ten years ago, are not the scenes of a Gandalf with Frodo or that of Yodha with a young Skywalker. This here is a man dealing with his large share of doubts and demons inside his own mind and not quite out of the woods yet. Stephen's characterisation of Kell is what made me stick to the book through and through. ( The terrific fight scenes with the nightmarish creatures of the wild and from the ice of course were just the icing on the cake!)
The other motley bunch of misfits who accompany Kell are each a 'hero' fit to write a sequel for. Including the annoying boy-hero Gerren and his coming-of-age discovery narratives. The charming Vahli, a bard on his own quest for glory, thirsting to write his own masterpiece story with his own set of secrets. Then there is the mysterious Alfar, a race not quite human, but endowed with superhuman endurance and power, a great ally to have your side against the monsters. Or Bronwyn, the lonely woman-warrior who has never been bested ever - either by a man or animal yet. There is the jovial King-of-the-Isles Malomir whose motor-mouth and sword-work are both useful in the brutal cold. Stephen also brings alive the machinations and Machiavellian conspiracies and wheels set turning by the Sisterhood of The Shepherd, an organization of the church/faith who is working on her own set of missions and goals to unite the Five Kingdoms through the POV of sister Britak, which as well were quite enjoyable. Though these scenes ended rather abruptly for me to appreciate these enough.
Excellently paced, with brief interludes to the chapters about the Church working that invisible hand behind some of the wheels getting pushed, The Coward surges ahead once we get past that initial reluctance of Kell to fully commit himself to the quest. There is always the mystery of the quest itself, in terms of who or what could be the cause of this return of the untimely winters - but the stages of the quest as the band of heroes move through various stages to get to that final showdown, is written very well. Immersive, with some controlled world building as that frozen North beyond the kingdoms come alive, fraught with dangers ( literally treading on thin ice!) myriad. The monsters are many and the fight scenes pulsating and visceral, it kept me flipping pages hard and late into the night as I followed the band to the final destination. The neat little twist at the end of their quest was sweetly satisfying as well, tying up all the mysteries that led up to this.
Overall, The Coward is an excellent addition to the epic fantasy genre, a ripping adventure with a lot of drama and heart with some solid characterization. Above all, this turned out to be a thoughtful rumination on the subject of trauma, a story focused not just on the horrors out on the frozen tundra but also those that haunt us inside our minds. Highly recommended!
Comments