The book reads as a sort of voyage of self discovery both for the writer and for us, the reader, leading you to believe it could just as easily be yourself walking through that mythical forest, down that worn down path to a large empty house. But the book isn't let down, as some fantasy books are I imagine, with lots of talk of trolls and spells and hocus pocus which can all blur together to make one book seem just the same as the one you read last month.
Rather than focusing on the physical adventure, say with lots of long laborious battles, the spotlight is instead shifted to the mental state of the characters which could be considered a quite daring descriptive tool as you are reading what people wouldn't normally dare say to one another, things which just go buzzing around in peoples heads, and helps to get away from that tired cliché of the narrators direction. Another thing that I found stood out was that you normally expect things to follow a logical path, an example being if you set the story in the middle ages then everything in the setting would match. Sort of following on from the phrase 'what you see is what you get'.
Yet nothing could be further from the truth with Tarnish: Bridge Over Clouds.
The plot is engaging but leaves a bitter taste for the reader to swallow. All characters are equal and I found it difficult to distinguish between an evil character and a good character - they're just characters. The language is musical and used to create moods and shocks. By the end, one is supposed to look between the lines, in the spaces, to find the true meaning of the work, and this is highly ambitious.
Compared to the rest, Tarnish rises and sinks unlike anything before it.
I can tell you now that there are none of the goblins, ghouls and gremlins which seem to litter most fantasy novels. That dishevelled old wizard with the staff that doubles as a handy door-stop seems to have taken a well earned holiday in the Algarve. In fact, Escu seems to have dispensed with almost all the precepts for a standard fantasy novel, leaving us with something which, in my opinion at least, is a hell of a lot better.
The story (or stories) of Ogatu, Betrus, Manueric and Pavel are profoundly psychological. Escu takes us progressively further into the minds of each as the book develops, and I warn you in advance, these are not places for the faint hearted. In fact, the very world of the novel, Nimoroa, is hardly somewhere to take the family for a long weekend: The opening scenes are savage, brutal pictures of life, and, if anything, the tone of later passages darkens still.
Indeed by the end of Tarnish, Escu's prose has exploded into a mad stream of imagery and foul language, the realisation of the journey of discovery he and his characters had embarked on. It is an unsettling conclusion, certainly, but an unquestionably powerful one all the same.
Perhaps by the time Escu comes to writing a follow-up, the little wizard, complete with multi-purpose staff, will be back? Who knows? In the meantime, buy this novel, whether you enjoy fantasy or not, as it's more than just your average fantasy novel: it's a journey into the dark, gruesome underworld of the subconscious.
I read relatively little fantasy, so please take my review with a large grain of salt.
Tarnish has a most unusual structure and style that engage you more deeply than would otherwise be the case. Much of the book is written as stream of consciousness, which places you inside the emotions and meandering thoughts of the characters. Yet the style of this writing varies a lot. So, you will sometimes be primarily taken from emotion to emotion . . . while other times you will simply flit from focus to focus and have your own emotional reactions. If one were to gauge this book merely from its writing style, there would be much to praise.
The plot is often difficult to follow. Many sections lead off with internal thoughts that could be those of any one of several characters. After figuring out which character was being written about ("he" is ambiguous in a book with many male characters), I often had to reread the same section to fully appreciate what the author was describing.
The book is marred by more than the usual number of typos, which required me to reread sections in order to identify what was meant.
As the last two paragraphs suggest, this book could have used a better editor.
The story itself is an intriguing one. The plot reminded me of the richness of all those Shakespearean plays where the characters need to go into the forest of Arden to work out their problems with the help of a little magic. But instead of the typical "humans interacting with fairies" style, Tarnish seems to suggest that the humans have the potential for magic, too.
You will either love or hate the book's ending. It builds to a bigger cliff-hanger than I recall reading in many years. What will happen next? I'd love to know. Hopefully, the sequel will be available soon.
After reading this book, think about how much your experiences in life are influenced by where you place your attention. Researchers tell us that we only act on about 2 percent of the cues around us. What would happen if you were more deliberate in selecting the 2 percent that you will pursue?
