When I have started The Book of the Crowman, I was under the spell of Stephen King’s comments – one of them right on the cover. I am not a fantasy fan, and I avoid horror books most of the time. But I adore Stephen King, especially his apocalyptic stories like The Strand, and a good book is a good book is a good book. So I gave it a try.
Result: I enjoyed it, even though I am not going to read another of the kind – not anytime soon, at least. The reason is simple: I was left wondering about too many things, and even now I’m not completely sure about what the whole thing was about. I mean, literally. Yes, I have not read the first instalment of The Black Dawn, and for sure that would have helped. But, and this is the point, The Two Towers is perfectly intelligible without The Fellowship of the Ring. You overlook some details, but you still get the meaning of the story, together with the pleasure of the quest, the thrill of the action and the uncanny beauty of its characters. As it should be. If something can’t make sense without a previous part, it should not be a stand-alone, but a section of a single book. No commercial reason can make up for this intrinsic logic. Too long? Tell Ayn Rand about it.
However, let’s try to be fair. In a normal book review, I would have started with what the story is about, then moving to what the author(s) wanted to show and evaluating if they were successful or not. And explaining why. But it is exactly this structured approach – obviously a professional bias – that put me in trouble with The Book of the Crowman. So I will do it in reverse, talking about what rocks (to quote Stephen King) and what doesn’t. Sometimes, the end is the (right) beginning.
What works.
*The dramatis personae, most of them. D’Lacey writes credible and intriguing characters, especially Gordon Black. This boy on a quest (he searches for the Crowman) is exactly what you would imagine him to be given his fate in the book – a callous warrior and tormented youngster at the same time, without unrealistic contradictions. You start caring about him pretty soon, and he keeps you reading when you wobble. Mr. Keeper is another fine one, even though so little is said about him. But he makes for a charismatic figure. Female personages are less convincing. Especially Megan, the other half of the sky (and the action), would have certainly benefited from a subtler psychological characterisation. It is said she is a woman, yet her thoughts are not, or not always, woman-like. (Denise is better, but, given her function in the story, she was allegedly easier to portrait). I am also undecided on the other essential character of any adventure story – the enemy. Who/what is it, anyway? It is called the Ward. It is a sort of Big Brother, it is mean and it is violent. A collective body – you perceive well its cruelty, but its rules are not so clear and its aims even less, especially if you listen to some of its acolytes. Not astute, fiction-wise. It is the enemy that defines the hero, and this villain doesn’t shine, not even in a black light (pun intended). With the pleasant exception of the final part, which I have to admit I appreciated the most.
*Actions. D’Lacey writes them in a powerful and pretty graphical fashion, with good pace and accurate descriptions. I especially enjoyed fights and tortures, not because I am a sadistic monster, but for the fact they are challenging, in an era of videogames and 3D. Besides, that kind of scenes is riddled with hidden dangers. Once I made the exercise of spotting mistakes when people get killed. Blood that doesn’t flow in the right way, victims who instantly die (quite rare in real life). Examples are countless. Here they are generally credible and compelling enough for you not to analyse the angle of the stabs: you are too busy with getting the creeps.
*The quest for the Crowman (and the Crowman itself). Since Propp and his Morphology have become popular, everybody knows what to expect from stories with a substantial amount of fantasy components. The quest, the hero, the magical helper. In this case, we have even the grail (Gordon’s stone) and the armour (the black feathers). It would have been easy to sound trite. D’Lacey avoided that in a rather smart way. Suspense is well build during the story, and the Crowman is best described by the words of the crowd. You keep wondering if he is actually Gordon himself (a case of personality split or a Matrix-like you-are-the-one-the moment-you-know-you-are), somebody from a different dimension or simply an ideal of freedom. But, after a while, you no longer care. You simply want him to show up, and this makes you reading faster and a bit further every night. Admirable.
So far so good -what doesn’t (work) here, then? Mainly the overall architecture of the novel, which remains a bit fuzzy. So both the settings ( where are we, exactly? Most likely in a sort of post-nuclear, post-apocalyptic, post-plague England, but I couldn’t tell from the description) and the timeline (we don’t have a declared starting point, and D’Lacey not even once tells us when the Crowman saga takes place) are unclear.
I have deliberately avoided making here any comment about grammar (the book has still to go through its last revision, so this will excuse some obvious mistakes) and style. Style, especially. For these discussions are comparable to the ones about beauty. You have only a few objective rules, and great artists break them all the time. It is a matter of taste, more than anything else. I personally didn’t like the eschatological tone, especially in the prologue, the prophecy-informed narrative and the continuous use of capital letters and symbolic names – the Green Men, the Ward, the Rag Man, just to mention some. I found it at odds with some other, rather lively, exchanges among minor characters (which I found quite enjoyable). But, as I said, this is personal, and it represents no parameter for objective judgement. I am sure others simply loved it. De gustibus non disputandum est.
The book finishes as vague as it has started, leaving me puzzled and with mixed feelings. What remains, however, is a fleeting sensation, and a sort of longing. I don’t care about the Black Dawn, whatever it is, but now I am waiting for the Crowman too. Picturing him in other forms, because the reality of the Crowman is in the eye of the beholder. Imagining different endings, and parallel universes. In this I believe resides the real magic of this book, and this is why, I guess, I have been so severe in some of my judgements: because I’ve liked it, in spite of all good reasons I shouldn’t.