The Whitefire Crossing: There’s real promise here

The Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer

FORMAT/INFO: The Whitefire Crossing is 353 pages long divided over 24 numbered chapters. Narration alternates between Dev’s first-person POV and Kiran’s third-person POV. The Whitefire Crossing ends at a satisfying stopping point, but is clearly the first book in a series as numerous threads are left unresolved. The Tainted City, volume two of The Shattered Sigil, is scheduled for publication in 2012. August 2011 marks the trade paperback publication of The Whitefire Crossing via Night Shade Books. Cover art is provided by David Palumbo.

ANALYSIS: The Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer is the tenth fantasy debut I’ve read in 2011. Four of these debuts are published by Night Shade Books, including Teresa Frohock’s Miserere: An Autumn Tale, Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht, and Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo. Of these four, Of Blood and Honey and The Winds of Khalakovo are immediate standouts, while Miserere: An Autumn Tale showcased tremendous potential. The Whitefire Crossing, however, is the best of them. In fact, when all is said and done, The Whitefire Crossing could be the fantasy debut of 2011.

So what’s so special about The Whitefire Crossing? In a word… everything. Characterization. World-building. Prose. Plot. Storytelling… The Whitefire Crossing succeeds in all of these areas, and does so with flying colors.

Take for example, Courtney Schafer’s characterization, which is highlighted by Dev and Kiran, charming three-dimensional protagonists blessed with believable personalities, strengths and weaknesses. What makes Dev and Kiran so interesting is that neither one of them are prototypical ‘heroes.’ Dev is a former Taint thief and current smuggler who takes on the job involving Kiran because he needs the money, while Kiran is secretly running away from his life as a blood mage apprentice. Both harbor convincing motivations for their actions — some are even honorable — and are willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish their goals, including sacrificing the lives of innocent people. At the same time, Dev and Kiran are also willing to sacrifice their own lives, not for fame or glory, but because they feel it’s the right thing to do. The supporting cast meanwhile, is quite strong and features Cara, an outrider and Dev’s friend; Pello, a dangerous shadow man (spy) whose allegiance remains in question throughout the book; and a couple of very powerful and very deadly villains in Ruslan Khaveirin and Simon Levanian.

The Whitefire Crossing is very well-written. Courtney Schafer’s prose is polished and confident, and her writing style is highly accessible. Most impressive was the author’s ability to write compelling narratives in both first-person and third-person point-of-views:

For several years now, I’d run packages across the mountains and over the Alathian border to the city of Kost for him. The Alathians were strict as hell on magic, piling on all kinds of laws and regulations to try and stop people from using it except in the tame little ways approved by their Council. Human nature being what it is, that makes for a thriving trade in certain specialty items. And since they’d outlawed all the darker, more powerful kinds of magic, it wasn’t too hard to get around the poor bastard of an Alathian mage stuck with border inspection duty. Easy money as far as I was concerned, but smuggling a few illegal charms and wards was one thing. Smuggling a person was a whole different story. —Dev

Ever since he’d taken the hennanwort, Kiran felt trapped in a nightmare. A terrible smothering numbness engulfed his mind, his inner senses vanished as completely as a severed limb. Wavering colored haloes shimmered in disorienting array over his sight, and the distances between objects grew and shrank with no discernible pattern, as in some bizarre dreamscape. Every time he reached for power, he felt nothing but a sickening void, and his thoughts scattered and skipped like striderbugs in magelight. —Kiran

World-building is not very detailed, providing only the barest amount of information necessary to understand concepts introduced in the book — the founding of Ninavel, Alathia’s restrictions against magic, Tainted children — but it is extensive. So not only has Courtney Schafer created a secondary world populated with different races, cultures and geography, but the world also has its own gods (Khalmet, Suliyya, Noshet), currency, slang (highsiders, streetsiders), food/drinks, illegal substances (taphtha, lionclaw), and flora/fauna (bristlebark pines, knotweed, fiddlenecks, sandcats, banehawks, snaprats), all of which is seamlessly integrated into the similes/metaphors used by the novel’s characters: “the mage’s face stayed as serenely calm as a Varkevian idol’s.” Certain concepts may take a while before they are properly explained, but that’s by design. Dev and Kiran come from two very different worlds, neither with much knowledge about the other, so the reader will learn things about blood magic,channelers/focus, ikilhia, Tainted children, the Change, the Well of the World and so on whenever information is shared between the two protagonists.

Magic includes different kinds of mages (blood, bone, sand, wind, earth, metal, crystal, song) and charms/wards used for just about everything imaginable including healing (bonemender, pains-ease, skinseal), sending messages, starting fires, dispelling vermin, adding a sniper feature to crossbows, tracking a person, discerning the truth, etc. Not very groundbreaking as far as magic systems go, but it’s interesting, well-developed, and is the primary source for pretty much all of the conflicts & challenges that Dev and Kiran have to face in the novel.

Rock climbing is an important element in The Whitefire Crossing. It helps define Dev as a character, brings a unique ingredient to the table that I’ve never read in a fantasy novel before, and establishes a sense of authenticity — obviously a result of the author’s own experiences — that is translated to the rest of the novel. Thematically, it’s quite interesting to see the vivid contrast between Ninavel and the cities of Alathia with all of their restrictions, while the author also explores issues of trust, sacrifice and different kinds of prejudice (highsiders/streetsiders, mages/nathahlen).

Storytelling in The Whitefire Crossing is superb. Right from the start, I was hooked by the book’s plot and remained fully engaged throughout, thanks to excellent pacing and a story that is easy to follow, yet full of unexpected surprises and nonstop thrills. Basically, every time a question was answered, a problem solved or a crisis averted, new problems and revelations would arise, propelling Dev & Kiran into ever greater danger and adventure. Yet for all of the excitement offered by The Whitefire Crossing, it was the personal nature of the story that I admired most. Most epic fantasy these days features some sort of grand struggle between good and evil that threatens the entire land. The Whitefire Crossing is different. The stakes in Courtney Schafer’s novel are much more personal. Intimate. Dev repaying a debt to an old friend. Kiran running away because of what was stolen from him. The relationship that develops between the two. Even though a subplot emerges that threatens the city of Ninavel, The Whitefire Crossing remains personal, driven by Dev and Kiran’s thoughts, feelings and morals. Personally, I loved it. The story felt different from a lot of epic fantasy that I’ve read. Refreshing. The ending is a bit slow and anticlimactic, but it sets up a number of interesting developments for the sequel.

There’s very little to complain about in The Whitefire Crossing. Dev’s narrative voice seemed familiar to me, bringing to mind numerous first-person POVs that I’ve read recently in urban fantasy and books featuring thieves, while the novel’s magic system, themes and world-building could have been fleshed out in greater detail. However, these issues are rather insignificant since they hardly impacted my enjoyment of the novel.

CONCLUSION: It’s not very often that I get to say this, but Courtney Schafer’s The Whitefire Crossing is the complete package. Fully developed characters. Across the board world-building. Intriguing magic. Accomplished writing. Engaging storytelling. Thrilling adventure… Add it all up and there’s no doubt in my mind that The Whitefire Crossing is not only one of the best fantasy debuts of 2011, but it’s also one of the year’s best fantasy novels period.

~Robert Thompson

Dev works as an outrider for caravans crossing the Whitefire mountains, going from the city of Ninavel to the kingdom of Alathia. To pad his income, Dev also does some smuggling on the side. After all, there’s a prohibition on magic in Alathia, so Dev can make a handsome amount of money transporting various magical items from magic-friendly Ninavel across the border. As The Whitefire Crossing starts, Dev is asked by his contact to take along an unusual package: a young man called Kiran. The surprisingly high reward is what finally convinces Dev to take on this risk, because he is hoping to raise enough money to free a young girl before she is sold into slavery…

Dev is an interesting main character, especially because of his history as a “Tainted” youngster. Some prepubescent children have minor magical skills, making them ideal assistants in various criminal enterprises. Unfortunately, the magical “Taint” usually wears off with the onset of puberty, at which point the children become useless for crime and are often sold into a much less savory business… Dev’s history makes him especially sensitive to this — hence his desire to save children from this fate.

The first half of The Whitefire Crossing is excellent, entertaining adventure fantasy. The descriptions of the journey through the Whitefire mountains are fascinating. Author Courtney Schafer is a mountain climber, and it shows in the many knowledgeable and exciting descriptions of climbing expeditions. To explain Kiran’s presence, Dev pretends that the young man is learning to be an outrider, but when it becomes clear what he really is — the apprentice of a feared bloodmage — the adventure takes on a completely different tone. What’s more, there’s a spy in the convoy who may put the entire venture in jeopardy.

Unfortunately, The Whitefire Crossing loses steam in the second half, once the caravan arrives in Alathia. The tension and beauty of the mountain scenes disappear and are replaced by a more standard fantasy plot involving a rivalry between two mages, with Dev and Kiran stuck in the middle. While this section of the novel isn’t bad at all, it lacks the originality and excitement of the first half. If I could give star ratings to separate sections of novels, the first part of The Whitefire Crossing would get a solid 4 stars. The rest isn’t quite as good, but Courtney Schafer still shows that she can write a compelling and original fantasy story with original world-building, interesting characters, and surprisingly confident prose.

The Whitefire Crossing is a fun fantasy adventure that’s incredibly polished for a first effort. Based on its first half, I was at one point looking around on the Internet to see if this was an established author working under a pseudonym. I felt that the novel lost steam in the second half, but I nevertheless plan to keep an eye on this series and author for the future, because there’s real promise here for many good stories to come.

~Stefan Raets