The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel [ペーパーバック]

I'm a big TES fan. So of course I rush out to buy this puppy the moment Hasting's opened and read it the same day.

If you're not a TES fan, some of the details might elude you, but the overall story will be pretty easy to grasp. If you're the type of person who likes having all the background explained to you, you might want to read it in front of a computer with your browser open to The Imperial Library (a google search should turn it up as the first hit).

The Infernal City was a fun, quick read. I enjoyed it. There's one part in particular that pretty much screamed TES, and that made the whole thing worth reading in and of itself. TES fans will find that Tamriel has changed slightly in some places, more drastically in others. That also makes the book required reading for TES fans.

The main plot, however, isn't so strong. Without the TES background, it would be relegated to "nothing special." I think that's really what hurts the book the most. I can understand wanting to leave the truly epic TES plots for the games, but that left the book with a rather "meh" plot.

My biggest gripe with the The Infernal City is the ending. The book's not terribly short, but it ends rather abruptly for one set of characters, and I'm still not sure if a page or two went missing or what. It also screams "The next book will be a sequel," leaving me with what feels suspiciously like half a book. One set of characters had a good, solid, end-of-a-book ending, the other set were left hanging with no resolution of any kind. Acceptable in comics, yes, not so much in books. Nothing for those characters was resolved, and I feel rather cheated in that regard. Now I have to wait for the next one to come out before I get any resolution at all.

So overall, a good, fun book. Not a GREAT book, and it will certainly be improved upon with a sequel and some resolution, but definitely a good read for the TES fan.

The Infernal City is a new novel by an accomplished sci-fi/fantasy writer. It is based upon a world from a popular video game and is a well written novel.

This novel is very fantastical in its writing. It is a new and vibrant world and very unique. There are cat people, lizard people, human, orcs, and other forms of life. The most creative portions of the novel are the  of the book spent in the floating city. This portion is written from the perspective of two protagonists who find a way to "fly" up to the city. This city is completely unlike anything I have read before. It exists in a rigid cast system and this cast system seems to be most highly based on culinary abilities. That's right, the cities structure is based on chefs. There are coups to take over other kitchens, chef assassinations, culinary explorations, ect. The lower casts exist to serve and process the food and the higher casts seem primarily to consume the food and the "souls" which are imparted into the food. This is shallow overview of the city so as to not give spoilers, but it is a completely new and very creative place.

On the downside, this book is very short, around 280 pages. For a novel that exists in a very complex world, this is on the light side. For example, Greg Keyes last series was four novels covered about 2000 pages to explore that world. This series will be 2 novels around 500-600 pages total. From this first book, I would say this world is much more complex than that in the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. I wish the author had taken more time to explore this new world and further develop the characters. Perhaps the assumption is that many of the readers will have played the video game and therefore have a broader baseline understanding than I had. Having now written novels based on movies (Star Wars novels) and video games (this novel), I find myself wishing Mr. Keyes would spend more time developing his own worlds and stories, rather than delving into the worlds of others.

On the whole, this is a well written and tight novel. The characters are drawn well, though lightly. The world is unique and fun to explore, but underdeveloped by the short novel. I give it a rating of 3.5 and will read the next novel.

Greg Keyes, The Infernal City (Del Rey, 2009)

How on Earth did it not occur to me when I first read the description for this a couple of months ago that "the first of two exhilarating novels" meant this was the first in a series? I try to wait until most, if not all, of a series is out before reading it these days (George R. R. Martin has taught me well). Not that I would probably have listened to my own advice in this case had I read that correctly. Elder Scrolls novels? I'm going to hop on that train from day one. Which I did, actually; I almost never pre-order novels, but the second I had book money, I tossed an order in for this (about a month before its release). So, yeah, there's been "waiting" all around where this sucker is concerned. Including the month between my finishing the book and my typing this. (I lost the first draft of my review for this book in a power outage and have been truculent about recreating the review ever since.) None of this, of course, has anything whatsoever to do with The Infernal City. I'm not usually big on novels adapted from games, but the Elder Scrolls world is something well beyond most game worlds, and I figured if any game world was detailed enough to make its novels worth reading, Tamriel would be it. While Keyes doesn't often stray outside the conventions that annoy me about most game-world books, he's still a good enough writer to make this worth reading, and the second book (whenever it appears) worth waiting for.

The book centers mostly on Annaig and Mere-Glim, a human and Argonian, respectively, from the Black Marsh. (If you don't know what an Argonian is, I cannot encourage you enough to run out and get yourself a copy of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as fast as you can. Most computers produced in the last ten years should be able to handle Morrowind, but you'll need a much beefier box for Oblivion.) Annaig is something of a mage-in-training, though with the destruction of the Mages Guild (and when did THAT happen? Note that the book takes place forty years after the end of TES: Oblivion) she's got little to go and and is mostly teaching herself. Mere-Glim, who's something of a rogue, is a friend of Annaig's (and sometime unwilling guinea pig). The two of them, after hearing rumors of a huge floating city heading for the Black Marsh, decide to investigate, but events on the ground push them into it a lot faster than they would have moved otherwise. In any case, when they get there, they find that even the oddest things they know about their own world are nothing in comparison to this. Meanwhile, an Imperial City prince, also heading off to investigate the floating city, goes missing, and one of the last remaining Imperial mages is on his trail.

While the jacket copy makes it seem as if these four characters will eventually meet up and form a typical adventuring party, if that's going to happen, it'll happen in Book Two; by the end of The Infernal City, they're still separate. Juxtaposing the actual book text with the jacket copy reveals this to be a book of pure setup. That's not necessarily a bad thing; Steven Erikson, for example, is capable of writing exquisite books of setup (Midnight Tides is one of the best of the Malazan novels, for example). Keyes is not quite as accomplished a writer as Erikson, but this is still a fun book. Many other reviewers have complained that it's far too short, and I'm inclined to agree; if your entire party isn't even together by the end of book one, there's no way you're going to reach a satisfying conclusion by the end of book two. But there's more than enough going on here to keep the Elder Scrolls fans happy. And if you're not already an Elder Scrolls fan, why in the world not? ***