
The cover of James Enge's Blood of Ambrose
My criticism of James Enge’s Blood of Ambrose may sound a bit harsh without some qualification. Let me say that I enjoyed reading Blood of Ambrose, and I thought it was a pretty good book.
The plot of Blood of Ambrose is full of the usual things you’d expect from a sword and sorcery fantasy with an anti-hero. You’ve got your young king, desperate to fill a throne entirely too big for him; an evil uncle planning regicide; and distant relatives who just happen to be the sorcerous type all thrown together to create a conflict that sets the stage for the novel. There isn’t anything new and unusual here, but neither is it a weak spot of the novel.
The only weakness I noted in the prose itself was a distinct lack of atmosphere (as opposed to my other critiques, which are more thematic in nature). Action scenes were matter of fact, describing action yet not quite conveying any moods. Descriptions of the setting were just as sparse. In fact, the entire book seemed to be operating in some kind of metaphor-free zone. If the prose of early sword and sorcery is said to be purple with its over-verbosity, then the text of Blood of Ambrose is down-right infrared in its lack of description.
The end result is a story with plot, setting, and character but no atmsosphere. The bones of each of those three basic elements is present, but there’s no dressing to give them mood and feeling. Call me old fashioned, but I need more than a few adjectives splattered here and there to get my imaginative juices flowing. Enge’s writing never activates that part of my brain. It’s all fact and no magic.
Which brings me to my next criticism. The world Enge builds in Blood of Ambrose is fantastic, but in an alternative metaphysics kind of way. That is, everything still makes sense and is logical. Everything still obeys natural laws. It’s just that the natural laws are different.
Enge’s usage of Aristotelian notions of phlogiston are fun, don’t get me wrong. In fact, the world-building is unique and interesting. I’d be willing to bet that most readers would applaud Enge for it, but the lack of a fantastic, irrational sense of the universe leaves something missing for me. I get the sense that the world of Blood of Ambrose is ultimately a rational and understandable kind of place. Probably a personal preference, but that kind of world coupled with Enge’s sparse and realist prose leaves me feeling… well, unfantastic.
Take Enge’s anti-hero, Morlock Ambrosius, as an example. An immortal (or at least very old), alcoholic, and crook-shouldered son of Merlin, Morlock is both a master Seer and Maker. The metaphysics of each profession are broken down cleanly, each following its own rules. Powered by the a quite clear and understandable metaphysical phenomenon, the magical doings of Morlock read more like the son of the Merlin found in Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court than the Merlin in, say, Bradley’s Mists of Avalon. Morlock is a Renaissance man, a rational thinker putting the nature of the universe to work for him.
This is nowhere more obvious than when (SPOILER!) Morlock drives his spiritually-powered giant, mechanical spider car on a midnight adventure to a graveyard. The spider is a made thing, crafted through Morlock’s unparalleled understanding of the natural world and his ability as the world’s pre-eminent maker. He has, for all intents and purposes, created a soul-powered spider-mobile. It’s not without flaw, but Morlock’s loyal apprentice acknowledges that. The scientific process is already underway, and a future iteration on the idea will surely include improvements.
Is there anything wrong with this? Well, no. I think it does reveal something about us culturally though when a work of fantasy is still constrained by the same rules of logic and reason as every day existence. Genre fantasy, over the past few decades, has become a place where the rationally fantastic is the accepted norm. The rational and scientific has supplanted the wonderful and irrational mythologies of early fantasy. The fantastic is no longer a place to delve into the unconscious; instead, it’s a place that needs to be exhaustively catalogued and documented, just like the real world.
I guess I’m saying I would have preferred a little more of the unreal.
The flip side of the introduction of a rational and scientific realism is the introduction of rational and real political and social consequences. This is where I think Blood of Ambrose falls flat. Once it was laid out, it was clear that the novel took place in a world that had consequences much like our own. Yet the relationship between the main characters and the society they inhabited is poorly defined. The economic and social consequences of the plot are glossed over. The moral consequences of the protagonists’ actions are hinted at, but aside from one wealthy merchant, we are never given a picture of what life is like for ordinary people in this world. It’s one more piece of “atmosphere” that never gets revealed.
That we can only see the real, non-royal life, of this city through the eyes of it’s most wealthy and well-connected citizens is troubling. Are they’re the only ones worth knowing about?
When you create a world with real and rational consequences, there’s a need to deliver all the way down the line. Stopping that realism at the highest levels of power delivers the message that that’s the only place realism counts. Falling back on fantasy tropes for setting (notably monarchies and feudalism) ignores the centuries of political philosophy that went alongside the development of a rational worldview. You can still use them, but you damned well better be sure you’re aware of the consequences. Why glorify the rational and scientific process if you ignore the social and political progress that happened right alongside? One is not more important than the other (and I would argue if one is more important, it’s almost certainly the political change that has happened in the past few centuries).
I don’t mean to suggest that Blood of Ambrose boldly claims that only the wealthy deserve a point of view or that monarchy is a fine system of government. It does, however, stand as evidence to a broader claim that as we bring in our notions of realism to fantastic literature, we apply them selectively. The universe Enge creates operates on rational and scientific principles, even if those metaphysical principles are not those of our world. Enge doesn’t describe the political, social, and cultural ramifications that that kind of rational and scientific world demand, however. The moral and ethical obligations of the novel’s characters are glossed over completely for the sake of an adventure story. As is so often the case, the real-world problems of people living in the 21st century don’t manage to make the jump that their scientific and rational worldview does.
When it comes down to it, this is a pretty harsh reading that could be made of quite a few fantasy novels currently being published. I think I noticed it in Enge’s Blood of Ambrose because of the emphasis on plot over atmosphere in the prose.
All that said, Blood of Ambrose is still a pretty good book. It’s smartly plotted with a unique take on a historical idea about how the world works. I just wish it spent less time with telling me facts about the plot and more time painting the background with a clearer brush, both to evoke mood and atmosphere as well as show the harsh consequences of the usual fantastic political system has on the average, non-privledged citizen instead of pushing such questions off to the background as unimportant.