From My Bookshelf: ‘The Raven’ (James Barclay)

When I first moved to London, the daily routine would invariably be along the lines of joining job agencies in the morning and finding the nearest bookshop for a good old browse in the afternoon. Well, maybe I did a little job hunting in the afternoon as well but you get the picture.
One afternoon I found myself in one of those bookstores (you know the ones...) where fairly recent releases get bought as a job lot and sold at around half the cover price. I love those places, saved an absolute fortune by using one of these shops for my ‘Wheel of Time’ reading! But anyway...
This time round, I found myself faced with the bright green cover of James Barclay’s ‘Elfsorrow’ at a price that happened to match what was in my pocket. I figured I’d give it a go and that was it. I was away...



It's not the green cover at all but I was kind at the mercy of the internet here! :o)

James Barclay’s ‘Chronicles of the Raven’ trilogy and four part ‘Legends of the Raven’ trilogies tell the tales of ‘The Raven’, a band of mercenaries who are just entering the twilight years of their career. Despite this though, their reputation still holds strong and is usually enough to carry them through any number of confrontations. These men have fought together for over a decade and the struggles they face grow even more dangerous as events conspire to force the end of the world. Wielding an axe or broadsword is one thing though, what truly scares certain members of the band is that one day the Raven will disband. If your friends are your life then what have you got left when they leave...?

Let’s get one thing straight, if you’re after an intelligent tale of old mercenaries pondering their future then this isn’t the first series you should go to. Glen Cook’s ‘Black Company’ series does that a whole lot better with it’s blurring of the line between good and evil. The ‘Raven’ books are a lot more polarised in this respect and it shows, almost to the point where you can predict the outcome of any of the books. That’s not to say that Barclay doesn’t shove his characters into some impossible situations, far from it. Check out ‘Nightchild’ and see what I mean...
The line, between good and evil, in these books, is drawn with thick permanent marker though and this makes some of the confrontations come across as cartoonish rather than considered. I’d also seriously consider not looking at the map in the front of each book as well, just saying...

Bearing all this in mind then, how come the entire series has pride of place on my bookshelf? Simple...



James Barclay has clearly gone to the ‘David Gemmell School of Writing’ and that’s a very good thing as far as I’m concerned. Honour in battle and doing the right thing are the order of the day! You might know just what you’re getting in a read like this but it’s done very well and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?
Barclay is a master of depicting full on warfare in its many guises and also does a mean line in just what it might be like to stare a dragon in the eye. Whatever he’s writing, Barclay leaves you in no doubt just how urgent a situation is and what it means in terms of the larger plot. And that’s where the energy comes in. Barclay pulls the plot along at a hell of a rate and I found that I was caught up by the momentum as well as wanting to know how it all ends.

I found that I had a lot of time for Barclay’s characters as well. They may be generic mercenaries to begin with but they grow and develop over the course of the series in the best way. No matter what they face, Barclay still manages to find time to convey all the fears and thoughts that any middle aged mercenary must have. ‘Do I have enough in me for one more fight?’ ‘What about my family?’ ‘What will I do if I’m left on my own?’ Some of the answers make for poignant reading at times...

‘The Raven’ might not start out on the best foot but there is more and more to recommend it as the series progresses and it’s a lot of fun at the same time. Well worth checking out if you’re a fan of mercenaries trying to do the right thing in a world that’s tipping closer and closer to the edge...