Book Review: The Ancient Gate by R. S. Penney
Never again.
Review of The Ancient Gate (The War for Ezryn #1) by R. S. Penney
eARC generously provided by author’s manager.
The Ancient Gate is a combining of R.S. Penney’s Desa Kincaid and Justice Keepers series. Multiverse, blah blah, you know the drill. Everyone has to have their own Cinematic Universe or Cosmere knock-off.
This review is not going to be like my previous ones. I have no desire to write a long essay dissecting the book as much of what I said about Bounty Hunter by R. S. Penney (review here) remains the same. Despite almost 4 years and many, many, books he has not developed as an author. I agreed to review The Ancient Gate because I was hopeful he had improved over time, and I was intrigued by the cover art.
Unfortunately I was left disappointed and perplexed. Here we have a book worse than Bounty Hunter. Where Bounty Hunter showed signs of flourish and refinement, scant as they were, The Ancient Gate lacks. How that is possible, I don’t know.
Was it all bad? No. The cover is good, as our most of R. S. Penney’s book covers. Beneath the cover there are some good ideas but, as I wrote in my Desa Kincaid review, ideas are not enough. The writing needs to be of high quality. I am not talking about style here but the execution of said style. Penney’s work is focussed on character movement, feeling, and thoughts in a to-the-point way, a style that is all clear pane where the prose doesn’t impede on the story being told. Perfectly reasonable style, yet the whole way through the story is tripping over the writing. Whether it is cringe worthy dialogue, repetition, over-description, over-telling, showing followed by telling, uneven characterisation, inconsistent tone, or just verboseness. The ideas are let down by writing that required another draft or two.
I want these stories to be well written. There are good ideas nestled within and with a little more time from the author they could shine. I’ll admit the clear pane style is not my go to but I do read some works with that, and similar, styles. Even my own fiction writing is more clear pane than stained glass, and I want to improve, shift, and carve out a distinct voice. I don’t sense that from Penney’s work, I sense fast writing, under-edited, and published too soon.
Cool Ideas
Conscious bacteria able to be symbiotic with humans enabling magic; Bending.
Depression (Bleakness) as a punishment for sin.
Starships that are massive organic creatures.
Bio-matter as recyclable ‘shells’ for minds to inhabit and vacate at will.
These are not new ideas but they are cool ones and lend themselves to intriguing world building and setting up problems for characters to face and overcome.
Bending, like Field Binding, is a well thought out and fun magic system. The rules are easy to figure out, plainly told or shown to the reader, and both magics are used in creative ways whether in combat or solving problems.
*SPOILER WARNING*
For instance near the end of the book our heroes must overcome a fleet of organic starships that can absorb heat in massive quantities. Using a mix of science and fantasy they figure out that while starships, organic and not, are good at withstanding heat they aren’t good with cold because they don’t need to be. Space isn’t cold, per se, it is nothing and thus a good insulator because heat has nothing to pass to. Thus, with Field Binding, Desa can infuse a missile with a Heat Sink that cripples an organic starship. A clever and satisfying read balancing science fiction and fantasy with a unique solution to a life-threatening problem.
The fight scenes between characters armed with Bending and those with Field Binding also generates its own unique problems and solutions and here is where Penney’s ideas are strongest. Interlocking similar but distinct magics with their own drawbacks and advantages creates its own drama.
*SPOILERS OVER*
For all the cool ideas and the combinations that could develop the prose gets in the way.
Problems
The first paragraph of the Prologue:
Michael swung the bat as hard as he could, striking the baseball with a sound like thunder, sending it flying to the outfield. Billy looked up, desperately trying to track it, but the glare of the setting sun got in his eyes. Sweat made his glasses slide down his nose; he had to adjust them.
Every sentence has excess fat. Every sentence could flow smoother. Alternatives to illustrate my point:
Michael swung the bat striking the baseball with a thunderous crack. Billy shielded his eyes as he failed to track the ball in the glare of the setting sun. He adjusted his glasses and mopped his forehead with the back of his hand.
Or.
Michael swung the bat, his knuckles white, and hit the ball. A thunderous crack echoed through the park as the ball sailed high. Blinded by the glare of the sun, Billy failed to track the ball. Sweat ran down his temples and he adjusted his glasses.
Or.
Michael struck the baseball with a thunderous crack. The ball vanished in the glare of the sun. Billy adjusted his glasses, sweat beading on his forehead.
I only aim to illustrate my point and I do not claim my versions are better. The idea is conveyed in the original but it is stilted, especially the last sentence “Sweat made his glasses slide down his nose; he had to adjust them,” and continues throughout the entire novel, such as, “Checking the clock, she noted the time.” Just write “She checked the clock” or “She checked the time.”
In a similar vein we have repetition of showing and telling. For instance:
“Razor said nothing. When it came to Isara, silence was golden. The most innocuous comment could provoke her. And yet, she was also capable of random acts of kindness. You never knew what to expect from her.”
The last sentence adds nothing, or the previous two don’t. Either way the repetition of telling is grating. But instead in this scene was a prime opportunity for showing rather than telling. I won’t quote at length, it’s multiple pages, but the gist is: Isara leads an army. She has tremendous power while also being attractive. She likes to sleep with the soldiers that stare at her, and many die in the experience. A soldier stares at her, another elbows him. We are told, via Razor, she might not have noticed and then that two soldiers are on a mission and are overdue. The quote above follows about random acts of kindness and cruelty. All of this could have been rolled into one scene of showing the reader these things instead of telling them.
A scene where Isara notices the soldier staring at her, goes over to him, sees he is a recruit and strikes up a flirtatious conversation. Asks about him, coos a little and invites him for a drink. Razor hears the other soldiers warn him about her but the soldier is too smitten to hear. And as Isara is walking away threatens those she sent on a mission with execution (or something else) loudly for all to hear the punishment for failing her.
This is merely an idea but the point is the need to show the reader character traits and events rather than tell them. Telling has its place but in this book it is too common. Continuing with repetition consider the sentence “The creature endured blast after blast, but somehow, it survived the onslaught.” If the creature endured then it survived, no need to repeat. Not to mention the commas are redundant.
Next we have inconsistent tone and poor word choice, the example being, “The bat endured it all with ease, laughing off their pitiful measures.” The bat, an organic starship, didn’t actually laugh but the choice of phrase doesn’t fit the circumstance. The scene is in space, in the middle of a battle of life and death, and we have “laughing off”. The tone is all wrong and the phrase doesn’t mesh with the creature being described. This occurs time and time again throughout the story and makes for tiresome reading.
This is only a sample of the problems, major and minor, with the book. I have skipped over inconsistent characterisations, over describing of scenes and layout of the world, and political commentary with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer amounting to little more than warmed up Star Trek. To cover them all would be a significantly longer review which I am not prepared to write.
1/5
Ratings are particular to the reviewer. There is no universal way for us to gauge how we each feel about a story. We can dig into the qualities of the craft and come to some sort of consensus but even then there will be disagreements. The closest is assessing a story on its own internal logic, tone, and apparent aims but even then just watch an EFAP episode and disagreement is still rife.
I’m not a fan of number ratings in reviews but I do rate books on Goodreads and Storygraph. There you can parse out what I like, why I like it, and the ratings work relative to one another, but that’s all. One man’s 1 star is another man’s 5 star. For me, The Ancient Gate, is firmly, 1 star.