Harrison delights in artful ambiguity and layered references.

What there isn’t is the kind of world-building that lends itself to a wiki, or a detailed timeline or map. And more important still, it was the last of the Afternoon Cultures, and was followed by Evening, and by Viriconium. More important, perhaps, it built enduringly despite its failing strength-leaving certain technologies that, for good or ill, retained their properties of operation for well over over a thousand years. The last of them left its name written in the stars, but no one who came later could read it. All but one are unimportant to this narrative, and there is little need to speak of them save to say that none of them lasted for less than a millennium, none for more than ten that each extracted such secrets and obtained such comforts as its nature (and the nature of the universe) enabled it to find and that each fell back from the universe in confusion, dwindled, and died. Some seventeen notable empires rose in the Middle Period of the Earth. There is great deal of compact, allusive language, a world painted in deft thrusts like the play of an epee or a rapier in the hands of a master.

Without ever knowing who Tomb the Dwarf or tegeus-Cromis were, this image captured something essential about these characters that made me want to know more.Ī part of the magic of Harrison’s style is there is both more and less than most readers probably expect in the exposition. It was this image of two men, one shrunken and leering, the other pensive but raptor-like, that made me go pick up this book. And this is only the first one in the Viriconium sequence. More happens in this slim volume than in trilogies of contemporary works. It is vastly different than the kind of fantasy book often written now. John Harrison is a tightly written tale of defeat and triumph, duty and revenge, all in 144 melancholy pages.

The pastel city m john harrison