Year of Our War FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Debut novelist Steph Swainston has written a wildly original fantasy that takes place in a realm ruled by a group of immortals whose main objective is protecting humankind from hordes of giant insectoid invaders.
The novel's protagonist, a winged immortal named Jant Shira, is the Emperor's Messenger -- and he's also a hard-core junkie. Addicted to a heroin-like drug called cat, Jant struggles with his extraordinarily important duty of delivering timely messages to and from the godlike Emperor. As a seemingly endless swarm of insects attack and destroy towns and transform the once beautiful landscape with gray, hivelike structures and towering protective walls, the self-obsessed Jant is given an impossible task: Find out how to destroy the insects or lose his immortality. His charge is made more difficult when a brutal civil war erupts between immortals just when solidarity is most needed in the fight against the insects. Jant, however, finds answers in the most unlikely of places; moments after unloading a syringe full of cat into his veins, he finds himself in the Shift, a fantastical and horrific realm accessible only through narcotics -- or death.
Ingenious. Disturbing. Exuberant. Amazing. The Year of Our War has received rave reviews in Swainton's native England, where it was published in April 2004. Fans of unusual fantasy will definitely not be disappointed by this memorable debut -- which mixes drug-addicted antiheroes and a pantheon of dysfunctional gods with alternate realities and world-hopping insects. In a word: Weird! Paul Goat Allen
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Unique among his fellow immortals and mortal folk alike, Jant Comet can fly. His talent is a gift and a curse that has earned him a place in the Castle Circle as Messenger to the Emperor San - soaring high and free above the bloody battlefields of his world, carrying word back to his master of progress and regress in the ever-escalating conflict between man and the awful armies of giant, flesh-devouring insects." But while Jant's duty is to remain neutral in the petty squabbles and power plays of the fifty who will neither age nor die naturally, bitter rivalries that have festerd for centuries now threaten to incite a savage civil war. And Jant may be the only being alive capable of stemming the onrushing tide of destruction and the unstoppable insect infestation. For only he can gain entrance - through extreme doses of the narcotic that owns his soul - into a place of darkest wonders and revelations, a strange and horrific alternate reality that none but Jant Comet believes exists.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
For hundreds of years, the people of the Fourlands have fought the giant insects from beyond the Insect Wall. Jant, one of a group of 50 elite immortals, acts as Messenger to unite the realms against their common enemy and may be instrumental in the defeat of the insects, provided he can conquer his own addictions and survive the infighting among the immortals. Swainston's first novel brings a bold new vision to the fantasy genre, combining classic fantasy elements with imaginative new images. A strong addition to most libraries' fantasy collections. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
"You wanna live forever?" the troopers cry in Heinlein's Starship Troopers as they go bug-slaying. And in British fantast Swainston's big bug-filled debut, one person does want to live forever amid the Circle called The Immortals. The Insect swarms from Paperlands keep invading Awia, striving to push down the Insect Wall at Lowespass, where King Dunlin Rachiswater has his fortress on land recovered from the Insects. Elsewhere, the Emperor lives with the Immortals in the Castle on the border between Awia and Plainsland. Retreating soldiers burn villages in Awia before the Insects can take them over, although the Insects build beautiful paper hives on razed villages and riddle the ground with tunnels in battles that have raged back and forth for two thousand years. Hero Mercurius Comet, called Jant, who has been 23 for centuries, is the bewinged flying Messenger and functions literally as the god Mercury for the Olympian Immortals, a group of 50 alien-esque yet humanlike beings who lead mankind against the Insects. Jant, though, is a junkie and ex-pusher, not to say murderer, rapist, liar, and, in his better moments, a master manipulator, or Jung's Trickster-altogether a nasty guy who really keeps our interest with his destructive lusts. Then there's 1500-year-old Lightning Saker, a general dressed like the sun, who tries to curb Jant's habit. With the right drug fix, though, Jant can Shift onto the golden plane of Epsilon, an alternate world where he has built Sliverkey, a palace he gives to the doomed Dunlin when Dunlin dies. Then the Insects overrun Summerday and Lowespass and build a wall around the Fortress, sealing it in. Is all lost?Archaeologist Swainston-and her lyrical debut-gotterrific press in England. Deservedly so. Agent: Mic Cheetham/Cheetham Literary Agency
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