Den Patrick, The Boy With The Porcelain Blade (2014)

DRAMATIS OPINIONAE

TITLE

'The Boy With the Porcelain Blade'

I find myself unable to read this title without immediately picturing Morrissey waving gladioli and crooning against plangent Johnny Marr guitar chords. Surely I can't be the only one? 'The bo-o-oy with the po-orcelain blade/Behind the hatred there's laid/A murderous desire for ...' Wait. What?

LUCIEN 'SINISTRO' DI FONTEIN

Young, charming, a dazzling swordsman, a heart of gold, no ears. I've met Den Patrick in real life and couldn't help picturing him as Lucien. Except for the ears. I believe Mr. Patrick possesses ears.

CHARACTERS

Plenty of these, disposed for convenience onto a three-page list of dramatis personae at the beginning of the book. They are either virtuous or wicked, and they roll very smoothly onto the stage (or page), along their respective grooves, as the story requires.

STORY

Alternating chapters between (a) Lucien's adventures after failing the test, with his improbably brittle sword, that would have granted him admission to the higher echelons of 'The Desmesne', a huge Gothic castle in which the King and his elite govern cruelly and autocratically over some generically lumped-together farmers (actual farmers are not included in this pack), a test he fails by being too noble-hearted to execute certain prisoners, and (b) flashback chapters of Lucien's upbringing inside the Castle Keep.

KEEP

The front and back cover namecheck Gormenghast, but Patrick's world is considerably less ornate and rococo than Peake's. This is a slim tale built for reading speed, set in a pared-down imaginative realm, better on action than on its rather pro-forma touches of 'Gothick' mood. (The cover blurb also implies the book is like a Scott Lynch novel. Like that's a good thing! Right there, on the cover! I mean: seriously. Rest assured, it's better than that.)

PRO FORMA GOTHICK MOOD?

Lucien takes refuge from pursuit in a cemetery at midnight: 'An unkindness of ravens heckled outside the mausoleum, their voices carrying over the windless sky ... the sepulchre was a welcome refuge, shielding him from the night and the questing gazes of House Fontein' [89].

WHAT, AS IN DAME MARGOT FONTEIN, THE BALLERINA?

No.

SWEARING

Cod Italian.

WORLDBUILDING

I was occasionally put in mind of The Fifth Head of Cerberus, but with more pseudo-The-Borgias Renaissance swordplay. A spaceship has colonised a distant world with a hierarchical, rather cruel society. There's some confusion over which characters are humans and which aliens. But where Gene Wolfe writes deeply unsettling ontological ambiguity, Patrick puts the emphasis more on flashy, video-game-ish and sometimes frankly improbable sword-fights.

FRANK IMPROBABLE?

There's a moment where Lucien is charged by a sabre-waving enemy on horseback. Our hero falls to the ground, lies beneath the galloping creature as it passes above him, hacks upward with his (by this point in the story, metal) sword, cuts the cummerbund or surcingle without so much as scratching the horse's belly, and then leaps to his feet. The rider's saddle slips, and the rider falls ignominiously to the ground.

NO, I MEANT: IS THERE REALLY A CHARACTER CALLED 'FRANK IMPROBABLE'?

There is not. I think you may have misread what I wrote.

I SEE THAT, NOW.

Not to worry.

FUN, THOUGH?

Yes. A fun read.