Of the many blights that can befall a people, surely none are more destructive than injustice. Levelled cities can be rebuilt; devastated economies can be revitalized; lethal plagues can be cured; but a people's broken faith cannot be restored. For the trust of the people is not a stone to be shaped, a formula to be reworked, a disease to be isolated. It is the living embodiment of our faith in institutions that we depend upon daily for the proper functioning of our societies. If they let us down, worse yet, if they sell us out to powerful interests, we are left with no choice but to turn to our own, vigilante remedies which, while bringing some immediate satisfaction, only strengthens chaos in the long term. The end result is the night of nihilism pierced by only the occasional shimmerings of truth. This is Mr. Polansky's lesson in Low Town; he teaches it with violence and vigor.
Tucked within a province of a powerful empire, squatting within the throng of a bustling city, there lies a slum called Low Town. This lawless, rat-infested labyrinth is home to the world's unwanted. Orphans and thieves run the streets while angry men, battered women and those who enable them both cohabit in a jungle of unhealthy shops and unhealthier homes. Few outside its clutches care for it, but they cannot escape events within it, events that will spill out and infect them too.
Known on the street as the Warden, the protagonist and narrator of our story is a crime boss in this den of iniquity. During the administration of his ugly trade, he tries to bring some order to the streets, even if it is the order of the blade and the fist. Some may interpret this nod in the direction of structure as a flicker of altruism, but the Warden may well be just scratching an old itch. After all, prior to his mysterious fall from grace over a woman he may or may not have loved, he was an imperial agent, a detective imbued with the imprimatur of the crown to bring about justice. Before that, he was an officer in the imperial army where he was a witness to events so dark and savage that, all these years later, they will not allow him to sleep peacefully. But if order is in the Warden's blood, he faces the worst week of his life, for in his slum surfaces the mutilated body of a young girl, a girl so grievously wronged she evokes even the Warden's seldom-tapped reservoir of sympathy. Much as he loathes the idea, the Warden may well have to return to his post as an imperial agent, for a little while. A crime so heinous, committed on his territory, cannot go unpunished. But is the Warden ready to grapple with the darkness that lies behind recent events? Is his slum ready for the death it promises?
Though Low Town occasionally stews overlong in its own nihilism, and though certain of its characters are far too mechanical to be considered more than automata, Low Town is an exciting and atmospheric tumble through a splendidly savage world of thieves and slumlords, mages and lordlings, each of whom is wrapped up in one egotistical scheme or another. Adopting the more pleasing conventions of the noir detective novel, Mr. Polansky doubles down on darkness by building atop this grim foundation a world of injustice and misfortune, murder and sacrifice, all while spinning a plot in which redemption can only be brought about by bloodshed. The author's cruel wit is a match for his keen eye for melancholy which, together, bestow an authenticity upon the setting, a world forever on the edge of sliding into the abyss.
Though Low Town has much to recommend it, sharing as it does in the dark traditions established by Misters Morgan, Kearney, and Abercrombie, it is not without flaws. The Warden's mountainman of a best friend is a feeble character whose only purposes here are to be alternately sad and tortured. He, like several of Mr. Polansky's other characters, never advance beyond caricature. However, this blot on the work is balanced by the Warden who is drawn with a kind of authentic and well-meaning cruelty, the likes of which has rarely manifested on paper. If Joe Abercrombie was able to put his fiendish hands on Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden, strip him of his magic and torment him for a few thousand years in Hell, Daniel Polansky's Warden might well be the result.
Wonderful noir which balances its fantasy, its mystery and its cultural satire far better than one might expect for an author's first effort. I eagerly await more from Mr. Polansky. (4/5 Stars)
No comments:
Post a Comment