The Steel Remains

Richard Morgan

Gollancz 2008

Ringil, the hero of the bloody slaughter at Gallows Gap, is a legend to all who don't know him and a twisted degenerate to those that do. A veteran of the wars against The Scaled Folk, he makes a living from telling credulous travellers of his exploits. Until one day he is pulled away from his life and into the depths of the Empire's slave trade where he will discover a secret infinitely more frightening than the trade in fives.

Archeth - pragmatist, cynic and engineer, the last of her race - is called from her work at the whim of the most powerful man in the Empire and sent to its farthest reaches to investigate a demonic incursion against the Empire's borders.

Egar Dragonbane - steppe-nomad, one-time fighter for the Empire finds himself entangled in a small-town battle between common sense and religious fervour. But out in the wider world there is something on the move far more alien than any of his tribe's petty gods.

The Steel Remains is a superbly ambiguous novel. Morgan offers us his own take on fantasy and it is nothing like you have read before. Gone are the black and white morality of Tolkien and the easily identified heros and villains of many a fantasy tale. Gone are the traditional definitions of character. Morgan offers a world filled to the brim with real people – dysfunctional people, morally questionable people, people whose characters and lives cannot be easily defined nor understood.

At the same time Morgan writes with his usual style - hard hitting and visceral, offering solid character development and dark plotting, this is a cross genre tale which mixes fantasy with science fiction, horror and a lot more…