The Anvil of the World

Rating:
Summary: Witty, entertaining
Review: I've read all of Baker's Sci-Fi novels and enjoyed them, but her foray into Fantasy is like nothing that has come before. This book had me laughing out loud. Her characters, setting, and situations are completely orginial and fun. I agree with another reviewer in that she does a wonderful job of limiting her fight scenes, but I want to point out that they are not lacking. Baker is concise, but vivid. Besides, the semi-demons and their worldly knowledge crack me up.

Rating:
Summary: Give it time. This has a rocky start.
Review: If you start reading Kage Baker's first fantasy novel, The Anvil of the World, you may wonder why the book is so highly rated. That's because the weakest part is the first section. Perhaps it's because so many of the characters have something to hide, or at least some unspoken backstory that Baker feels she must reveal bit by bit, but it took me quite a while to warm up to the tale. In fact, she has so much to hold back about the main character, Smith, that she writes about him almost at arm's length, and I didn't really care what happened to the guy.

You might not, either, because the tone in the first part isn't especially smooth (at least compared to Baker's other works, nearly all of which I adore), and it wasn't until the second part (I should really call them several related novellas) that it finally hit me that, Oh! She's being *funny*! I was taking it all seriously, with perhaps a bit of lighthearted commentary. (I bet it'd all be a lot better on a second read. Or you might not have this problem, since you've been warned.)

But do bear with that rocky start, because once Baker finds her stride, she immediately proves why so many of her books earn 5-star ratings. While showing us the adventures of one Smith, an ex-assassin who's looking for a better life, she creates a believeable world with distinct races and plenty of conflict to cope with. Her portrayal of demons as, to some degree, technology indistinguishable from magic, is nothing short of great. And the book might be worthwhile for the Fatally Verbal Abuse duel.

Do read it. And if it seems hard going to begin with, plod on through. It gets better. LOTS better.

Rating:
Summary: A good foray into fantasy
Review: Kage Baker is known for her time travel series about the "Company" (Mendoza in Hollywood, In the Garden of Iden). While I just couldn't get started with those, I found Anvil of the World, her first foray into fantasy, fun to read and well written. It's an ensemble novel, created around a group of eccentric characters drawn together on a caravan ride. The strange religions of this world emerge as central to the plot. They include the Yendri, dreamy followers of a living god; the eminently practical Children of the Sun, who have an unfortunate lapse in their knowledge about birth control; and an unusual batch of conflicted demons, children of a demon king and the saintly living god. Baker's main character is a retired assassin and unassuming caravan trader, named only Smith, who appears to hold the fate of the world in his hands; fortunately, he has a healthy disrespect for the will of the gods.

The plot is lively, and Baker's writing style is witty and breezy, much less ponderous than her earlier writing. I hope she continues with fantasy.

Rating:
Summary: Amiable, slightly rambling, entertainment. Good fun!
Review: Kage Baker is mostly known for her Company series, about immortals and time travel. But she has begun to publish a few non-Company stories. The Anvil of the World is one such, an engaging fantasy novel consisting of one previously published shorter work and two additional stories of similar length, all closely linked.

In the opener, a mysterious man named Smith, who had come to Troon to escape the wrath of the family of someone he had killed (his previous job was assassin), is assigned to lead a caravan from the agricultural city Troon to the seaside town of Salesh. The caravan consists of a number of variously suspicious folks, including the sickly Lord Ermenwyr and his extremely lovely nurse; the highly competent cook Mrs. Smith; a courier named Parradan Smith; another family named Smith; and a Yendri herbalist, as well as a teenaged girl named Burnbright. These folks (and others met on the way) come from a variety of basically humanoid (and interfertile) races.

This first story simply tells of the caravan's journey to Salesh. To be sure, the journey is not without incident -- the caravan is attacked on a couple of occasions, including once at an inn where Smith himself is nearly killed; most of the passengers prove not to be what they seem; Smith finds himself entrusted with an unexpected additional delivery. By the end we have a better idea of the social and political issues of this world, and we more or less know who all the players really are.

The second segment is a murder mystery of sorts. Smith and his fellow caravan workers, at the end of the first section, found it wise to leave the caravan business and open an inn, under the patronage of Lord Ermenwyr. A guest at the inn is murdered during a Festival, and Smith is charged by the investigating constable with finding the murderer. Smith's investigations lead him to make some unexpected discoveries about the past life of certain of his associates. He also finds the murderer -- I thought a nicely set up surprise.

In the third section, a real estate company is proposing to build a development at a site sacred to the Yendri. This causes considerable interspecies tensions, and indeed it seems that a race war may be unavoidable. And Lord Ermenwyr shanghais Smith into a mission to help his sister -- coincidentally taking them close to the controversial development. The resolution this time involves secrets about Smith's own past, which I thought were revealed fairly cleverly. It also involves dealing with the relationships between all the races, and considerable exploration of the history and myth underlying this fantasy world.

All in all, this is quite an enjoyable novel. It's fairly witty throughout, and cleverly imagined, if most of the setting consists of ringing changes on familiar fantasy environments. The moral is humanistic and affecting. The structure, as hinted, is a bit episodic -- it really is more three separate but linked stories than one unified novel. It's an entertainment, with just a hint of a serious core to it. Amiable, a bit rambling, not a major work but good fun.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable but fragmented
Review: Kage Baker's first venture into fantasy, "Anvil of the World," is a funny but fragmented story full of religious fanatics, reformed demons, orgiastic festivals, verbal duels dead gossip columnists and a key that can destroy mankind. What's not to love?

Smith is a mystery man, an ex-assassin who has joined his cousin in a caravan going from dusty Troon to Salesh, with a sickly half-demon playboy Lord Ermenwyr and his beautiful nurse, a mysterious courier, the capable cook Mrs. Smith, a cold Yendri healer, a sulky runner, and a load of glass butterflies. As the caravan proceeds, they thwart attacks

When the caravan arrives (minus a few passengers), the butterflies are shattered and Smith and his friends have to open a hotel, only to have a celebrity guest croak in the middle of an orgiastic festival of free love. One verbal mage duel and a few surprises later, a Yendri sacred site is endangered, and a race war may break out -- with religious Yendri fanatics seeking out a mythical object that could wipe out all human beings.

When the first page casually mentions the "Festival of the Respiratory Masks," you can tell you've got a winner. This is not a tightly-written book, but it makes up for its lack of tightness with continuous humor and a cool invented world with interesting magic, some rather weird demons, and invented fantasy races whose "magic" is scientific in nature (the Yendri doc's explanation of infection is a hoot).

Fans of Terry Pratchett will find some similarities in "Anvil": Smith is somewhat reminiscent of Sam Vimes, and the humor is like a mildly racier version of Pratchett's. The verbal duel is pure genius, where two mages call each other names -- and magically transform one another ("I know you are, but what am I?!"). And like Pratchett, Baker manages to toss in a little social commentary -- religion, enviromental problems -- without being preachy.

The main problem lies in the structure. "Anvil" was originally three novellas, and so the story is divided into three main parts. What's wrong with that? Only the barest threads seem to tie the plotlines of the first two to the third climactic one. The dialogue is spectacular, especially when the demon siblings are bickering ("You can't tell us to shut up. We're DEMONS"; "You're going to break heads! You're going to rip off limbs! You're going to do amusing things with entrails!")

Smith is a likable guy, solid and essentially honest in nature. Mrs. Smith is a pleasant older woman whose respectable appearance hides her racy past; Willowspear and Burnbright are okay but not amazing. It's fussy, sickly, blunt, underage-playboy-mage-turned-junior-gigolo Lord Ermenwyr who really steals the show, whether he's resurrecting demons or whining about his food.

"Anvil of the World" is one of those books that begs for a sequel. While it's rather fragmented and a bit confusing, it's also too hysterically funny to not check out.

Rating:
Summary: writer is smoking dope
Review: Obviosuly the "writer" who wrote this book was high. Its a good thing too, because that allowed her to just breezily float by the utter incompetence and irrationality of the plot. The brazen false advertising whore of a writer completely lied on the back cover of the book by using the word assasin. This book is NOT about assasins of any kind. It has one interesting feauture: a homosexual demon. That's it. The humorous elements are mild and completely underdeveloped. [...]

Rating:
Summary: Anvil of the World - Blast from the Past
Review: THE ANVIL OF THE WORLD came as a cool autumn breeze at the end of a summer that has had more than its share of worthy, but somewhat downbeat material (I cite VENISS UNDERGROUND and THE LIGHT AGES, for example). Ms. Baker's obvious and stated tribute to L. Sprague de Camp is a welcome, and (perhaps) deceptively light read. The book has the tone of a VIAGENS story by de Camp (de Camp at his best), complete with pointed and only slightly oblique social commentary. The setting, however, is more reminiscent of Jack Vance world and culture building, and occasionally Ms. Baker's descriptions wander into Vance's baroque territory, especially when presenting the culinary masterpieces of Mrs. Smith or the festival costumes of Salesh by the Sea or Troon. The story, like all of Baker's work so far, is wonderfully cinematic. I only had two quibbles that kept this delightful book from 5 stars. The first is purely a matter of format. The book should have been presented as a collection of three related novellas, the wonderful "Caravan from Troon" and its two only slightly lesser companions (although I am not sure if they ever appeared independently). The second quibble is the sometimes cloying dialog between the semi-demonic children of the Lord of the Mountain. That they are petulant (and dangerous) children is well portrayed, but sometimes the dialog is just a little much (which also hearkens back to de Camp, even at his best). Thank God for the laconic Smith as a counterbalance. In spite of these small complaints, THE ANVIL OF THE WORLD is a highlight of my summer reading and I will look forward to more excursions into Smith's world between Company exposes.

Rating:
Summary: uneven but promising, very funny in places
Review: The first thing that should be noted about Anvil of the World is that though it focuses on a very small group of characters and one main character throughout and follows them chronologically, this isn't really a novel. Unless it's one with some major transition problems. Rather, it's three novellas with some large gaps of time between the three different adventures. Like any collection of stories, then, Anvil tends to be a bit uneven.
The first story, which has the unenviable task of filling in the backstory--who are these people, why are they behaving as they do, what world is this and how does it function, tends to be the slowest-moving one and the weakest, though it isn't without its strong points. It's funny in places, suspenseful in others, and mostly holds your attention. If you find it lagging a bit, as I did, continue on, because both the pace and the writing pick up in the rest of the book, as does the humor, though it's already pretty evident from story one. Some reviewers compare the humor to Pratchett. Personally, those works never did much for me. I found these more along the lines of the Robert Asprin Myth series, which I found more enjoyable. While the humor is uneven, the not-so-funny parts are outweighed by the laugh-out-loud/read aloud to your neighbor parts.
The main character is well-drawn, with a mysterious past, a nicely-honed sort of taciturn narration and wonderful reactions. The other major character, a semi-demon, also grows on you, though his dialogue is at times a bit overdone (annoyingly so when it's meant to depict his childishness). The rest of the small group range in quality of characterization, with the matronly chef the strongest and sharpest, while others are a bit cliched or too sketchily drawn.
The world itself is a bit sketchy in the larger details, but where Baker shines anyway is in the small stuff: sharply humorous details with regard to clothing or festivals or food. It's easy to forgive the somewhat vague worldview with so much richness in the smaller details.
As mentioned, the first story, which follows the group as they form (for the first time) a caravan, has a lot of necessary exposition which tends to slow it down a bit. It still manages, however, to get in some excitement (various attacks on the caravan and other more personal ones) and suspense (what's causing the attacks, who among the caravan is the bad guy). The second story, more of a murder mystery, has a much better pace and consistent tone to it and adds to our understanding and liking of the characters (though the semi-demon's brother, even more childish, can be even more annoying in places) The third story maintains the quick pace and strong wit, but its attempt to deepen/broaden the tone meets with mixed success. The weakest part is the environmental analogy which would have worked fine had it not been so overdone in terms of frequency and obviousness.
Overall, though mixed, the book was a fast and enjoyable read, with the funniest parts truly laugh-out-loud funny, making it quite easy to forgive the not-so-funny parts or the weaker written areas. There is clearly room for a sequel, one that I'd certainly pick up without any qualms.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: The Kage Baker excels at creating societies and characters that have the complexity and compelling reality of today's news and yet are full of the exotic color and flair that marks the best speculative fiction. I found this to be full of fun, wit and comic irony. I would definitely recommend it, and hope she continues work in this series.

Rating:
Summary: Here comes the social Commentary
Review: This book is a lot of fun. Totally different from Baker's Company books, it is a mix of fantasy and social commentary though really it's fairly light on magic sorcery, what we have is magic/mystical destiny. One the plus side it's funny as hell, showing a deft sure touch for dialog and situation that Baker is a master of, on the minus side it doesn't really flow like a novel. More like three long short stories, GOOD ones, but very distinct.