TITLE: To Ride Hell’s Chasm
AUTHOR: Janny Wurts
GENRE: Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 01/01/2002
RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Review: To Ride Hell’s Chasm is a stand-alone secondary-world fantasy of epic proportions. Clocking in at nearly 700 pages, it is the story of what happens when the small, unexceptional kingdom of Sessalie is attacked by demonic sorcery.
The answer, as it turns out, is a lot.
Generally speaking, a book this good is one I devour at very nearly one sitting, regardless of length; all other books go ignored in favour of finding out what happens next. And for the first third or so of the novel, that’s exactly what happened – I couldn’t focus on anything else but turning the next page. I did eventually have to take a break from it, but that was only because it was so long, not because the story failed to hold my interest. At times To Ride Hell’s Chasm is very dense, and it can get a little repetitive, with certain key bits of information mentioned over and over by varying characters.
But this is a really, really good one, guys.
On the morning of her wedding day, Princess Anja disappears. A known prankster, it’s not immediately a cause for concern, but Taskin, Commander of the Royal Guard, decides it’s better to be safe than sorry and calls in Mykkael, the dark-skinned barbarian currently holding the post of Captain of the city Garrison. The court despises Mykkael for his breeding, the colour of his skin, and his lack of polish, but in fact Mykkael’s unique history may make him the only one who can rescue the missing princess – because he is one of the only warriors to ever go up against a demon-ruled sorcerer and survive…
Sound interesting? It is. Sessalie is a small kingdom, prosperous but uninteresting and comfortable with its place in the world – a backwater place, really. It is completely unprepared for an invasion of demons, and with their king in the grip of dementia and their Crown Prince well-intentioned but useless, they are forced to turn to someone they want to see fail. It’s a fascinating tangle of politics and racism, small-town minds forced to face something much bigger than themselves whether they like it or not. Mykkael is an incredible character with a backstory that is only slowly, deliciously revealed; he is also physically disabled, and I can’t tell you how happy it made me to find a disabled character saving the day! Not only through his intelligence and experience, but even with his injuries he remains the most dangerous warrior in the book – quite a feat, and not something we see often with physically disabled characters.
As well as being able to craft excellent characters, Wurts has a delicious way with words, and doesn’t hesitate to break away from the clichéd descriptions we’ve heard a thousand times before. I loved the image of a sky ‘salted with stars’, or streets ‘entangled and narrow as dropped string’, but there were many more...
a hush as dense as a thrown blanket
the alley was poured pitch
Her language isn’t typical high fantasy – there’s no magical elves here, or many beautiful things that require reams of evocative description. In a sense To Ride Hell’s Chasm is very realistic, never attempting to varnish the brutality, the horror, or the sheer earthiness of the world Mykkael and Anja find themselves in. Sessalie is a place that feels very real, not glamourised or postcard-perfect, somewhere with inhabitants who are a mix of good and bad, petty and intelligent, blind and open-minded. Mykkael is one of the only dark-skinned people in a white culture, and that put a very different spin on the typical ‘outsider’ archetype that’s so common in fantasy. But in the end it’s that very otherness that gives Mykkael a chance to put things right where no one else can, and I feel that Wurts is trying to make a point with this. For sure, she never tries to make us sympathise with the characters who call Mykkael racist slurs; most of them are idiots and few of them are redeemed.
I suppose that is a critique – the characters that are good are, mostly, wholly good, and those that are bad are wholly bad (if generally well-intentioned). Taskin is perhaps the only exception to this; Mykkael is incredible, but in the end a bit simple, whereas Taskin is a character who makes mistakes in his attempt to do his duty. Unlike Mykkael, who only cares about upholding his oath to the King and finding Anja, Taskin has to try and ford the politics of the court while deciding whether Mykkael can truly be trusted.
My other main critique is the length. To Ride Hell’s Chasm could have been a lot shorter; it’s not so much that there are any scenes that could have been cut, because I don’t think there are, but Wurts often uses ten words where three would do. Introspection is common, and I still don’t understand how a story spread over two or three days can cover nearly 700 pages. There’s also Wurts’ tendency to overuse commas: more than anything else, this drove me insane, especially in dialogue. There are also a lot of sentences like this one
The brute effort became theirs, to unsnarl the bunched wagons that obstructed the royal roadway.
It’s a strange way of phrasing things, breaking up the actions and order of a sentence. For a while I wondered if Wurts might not be a native English speaker and be using the sentence structure of some other language, but apparently not.
None of this detracts from the story, though. Wurts has crafted a tale of demonic invasion, one that might lead to the end of the world if not stopped – one that will require great sacrifices and desperate measures to avert. Although the story takes place over just a few days, it doesn’t feel quickly or easily resolved at all. Wurts keeps the tension running constantly, and as I said before, it’s not always pretty. At one point Anja has to hide inside the corpse of one of her beloved horses, and that’s really one of the least horrible scenes. Far worse is the fate of those consumed or subsumed by the demons – if you’ve read my review of Sparrow Hill Road, you already know that I especially hate villains or monsters that damage, steal, or destroy the souls of their victims. Well, be prepared, because there’s more of that here…
I adored this one. I really did. This is a book that will twist your heart to pieces and make you scream with frustration when the idiots are idiotic; make you bite your nails and watch the clock anxiously until you can return to the pages, to Mykkael and all the rest. If you’re prepared for a great big door-stopper of a fantasy – and maybe even if you’re not – I would heartily recommend To Ride Hell’s Chasm. It’s a wonderful, well-written book, and its few flaws aren’t enough to overcome a truly fantastic story.