To Ride Hell’s Chasm by Janny Wurts
At the start of To Ride Hell’s Chasm, an outstanding standalone fantasy by Janny Wurts, Princess Anja of the tiny isolated kingdom of Sessalie has gone missing on the eve of the ceremony for her betrothal to the Crown Prince of Devall. Since Anja is beloved by her people, and the alliance with Devall represents potentially big trade increases, it doesn’t take long for many people to be involved in the search, from Mykkael, a foreign-born former mercenary now in charge of the city’s garrison, to Taskin, the military commander for the kingdom.
Over 650 pages covering about 5 days, Janny Wurts delivers a story filled with almost non-stop action that’s at times impossible to put down. One of the odd and wonderful things about this novel is the contrast between the tight pacing and the lush language. Again, those 650 pages cover just a handful of days — the first day alone takes about 200 pages, because every emotion, every visual detail, every nuance of meaning is hammered down in the most meticulous, rich prose you could hope to find in the genre. As a result, one moment of realization can be dissected over several paragraphs, but amazingly, there’s rarely an unnecessary word in those descriptions. It all works together to drive the full experience of the characters home in unmistakable clarity. To Ride Hell’s Chasm never feels like a slow book — just a very intense one.
The novel is filled with several fascinating characters, but the most memorable one has to be Mykkael, the “desert-bred” foreigner, reviled by many, always placing honor first, and simply unstoppable. Here’s one of the highest compliments I can give a fantasy character: he wouldn’t look amiss in one of Guy Gavriel Kay‘s novels. From the moment he is first introduced, through the heart-pounding conclusion of the adventure, to the emotionally gripping wrap-up, Mykkael is an unforgettable character.
~Stefan Raets
Due to its remoteness, the kingdom of Sessalie has enjoyed generations of peace while other parts of the world have been ravaged by war with sorcerers. That tranquility is shattered when their beloved Princess Anja goes missing on the night on her betrothal. Now her fate, and the kingdom’s, rests on two men. Dealing with unfamiliar evils, Taskin, the iron-disciplined commander of the Royal Guard, must depend on the worldly experience and unfathomable character of a foreigner and sell-sword: garrison captain Mykkael, who could just as likely be involved in Anja’s disappearance as her sole chance of rescue.
This was my first time reading Janny Wurts, and I now understand her very dictated and enthusiastic following. To Ride Hell’s Chasm is the perfect fantasy story. It contains some traditional fantasy elements like an endangered princess in a far-away land where gryphons roam the skies and sorcery is a terrifying and mysterious force. But it also has the political intrigue and multi-person-point-of-view of believable and intensely interesting characters that’s prevalent in modern fantasy. It’s brimming with cliff-hanging suspense and pulse-pounding action. Mysteries unfold in tantalizing bread-crumb paths toward explosive resolution, and the characters become so endearing it’s hard to accept them as being only fictional.
Those things alone make To Ride Hell’s Chasm a grand adventure to read, but what takes it to an even higher level is that Janny Wurts is a natural-born story-teller. Her gift as a talented artist allows her to enhance her books with her own illustrations, whereas other authors must leave it up to another’s interpretation. Her knowledge of what she is writing about is extensive to the point that it almost seems closer to reality than story.
Best of all, Ms. Wurts writes with a prose that is pure genius. It has a Shakespearean quality that only a handful of other authors are capable of. Done with just the slightest degree less of talent, her style would easily become too melodramatic. But with the perfection exemplified in To Ride Hell’s Chasm, Wurts creates a tale that is both so exciting and uniquely fantasy; it re-enforces this reader’s enjoyment of the genre.
It’s hard for me to express accurately how much I enjoyed and admire To Ride Hell’s Chasm. Standalone fantasies are already a rare beast in this time of endlessly meandering series. To read a story someticulously crafted, contained in one cover, is a real pleasure. This novel is easily going on my all-time favorite list of fantasy novels.
~Greg Hersom
To Ride Hell’s Chasm was my first Wurts novel. I actually have a copy of the first book of The Wars of Light and Shadow saga which I started (and liked so far), but I got a bit intimidated by the time commitment (and the fact that WoLaS is unfinished…), so I decided to try this stand-alone first to get a feel for Janny Wurts’ style before I leapt into a mega-epic. Along that line, I was also interested to see how she would affect an actual ending, since WoLaS doesn’t actually have one yet (at least not in print).
It took me a while to get used to Ms Wurts’ style. I haven’t had a lot of reading time lately, so the last several things I’ve chosen to read have purposely been a bit… light. Like chocolate mousse. Wurts is not light. The prose is, in fact, heavy:
Only small details bespoke the grave trouble slipped in through the well-guarded gates. Taskin’s patrols came and went, double-file rows of neat lancers threading through the carriage traffic in the broad avenues above Highgate. In the queen’s formal gardens, amid lawns like set emeralds, two dozen tiny surcoated figures enacted the midday change of the guard.
The sun, angle shifting, sparkled off the polished glove of a flag spire. The slate and lead roofs of the palace precinct dropped in gabled steps downwards, in cool contrast to the terracotta tile of the merchants’ mansions, crowded in rows like boxed gingerbread above the arched turrets of Middlegate. There, the tree-lined streets ran like seams in patchwork, jammed by the colors of private house guards helping to search for the princess. Their industry seethed past the courtyard gardens, scattered like squares of dropped silk, and stitched with rosettes where the flowering shrubs adorned the pillared gazebos.
Farthest down, hemmed by the jagged embrasures of stone battlements, the lower town hugged the slope like a rickle of frayed burlap, the roofs there a welter of weathered thatch, and craftsmen’s sheds shingled with pine shakes. Mykkael’s garrison troops kept their watch on the outermost walls, the men reduced as toys, bearing pins and needles for weaponry.
When I first started reading, I felt like my dainty dish of chocolate mousse had suddenly been replaced by a 20 oz sirloin, and I had some initial trouble digesting it. It probably didn’t help that I wasn’t finding the time to sit down with the book before midnight. By the time I got to it, I was about as alert as if I actually had consumed that 20 oz sirloin. But, I liked the story and characters immediately, so I started reading earlier in the day, and by the time I was about 1/3 of the way through the book, my pace had picked up significantly. By the time I was 1/2 way through, the language was no longer a barrier and the story was so gripping that I actually could stay up past midnight and read. In fact, I stayed up reading until 2 am for the last two nights without any trouble at all. I actually had to force myself to go to bed. At first I thought that as the pace of the story got faster (it flies for the second half of the book), Wurts writing had become more succinct. But, I went back and read some of the first half again to check my theory: No. It hadn’t changed — it was me. I just got used to the writing style and had learned to appreciate it.
Janny Wurts is an artist (she does her own cover art and maps) and she uses words like she uses her paint. They put us in the scene; they show rather than tell.
This book is finely crafted in other respects, too. The plot is interesting, original, and tight. There are moments of horror, grief, and humor. There are no clichés, unbelievable romances, plot holes, stereotyped characters, or deux ex machina. The plot is unpredictable, too. In fact, there were a few times that I thought “how are they going to get out of this mess?” and I had no clue, and even if I’d had a clue, I would have been wrong. The ending, also, is unexpected, realistic (realistic for a fantasy novel, that is), and satisfying. And, importantly, Wurts writes knowledgeably about all those little details of ancient lifestyles that we love to read about in high fantasy — sword fighting, horses, war strategies, servants, weird food, boiling laundry, dressing wounds — at no time did I suspect that she was bluffing.
The system of magic that Janny Wurts creates is unique and fascinating. There’s an explanation of it at the back of the book that I wish I had seen before I finished the novel. And, speaking of the actual physical book, it was well-crafted, too. There’s a glossary and maps, nice cover and gorgeous interior art (painted by Ms. Wurts, of course), and I found NO spelling or other editorial errors in this edition. It’s too bad the publisher — Meisha Merlin — has gone under. (And too bad I dropped this copy in a puddle when I jumped up to pull my 2 year old out of the pool.) (Later update: I now own a new pristine copy.)
So, now that I’ve finished To Ride Hell’s Chasm, I think I have a small idea of what I’ve been missing by not reading The Wars of Light and Shadow. A long epic by Janny Wurts sounds like a very good thing.
~Kat Hooper
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