At An Uncertain Hour

by Nyki Blatchley

As two armies stand poised for the final battle of a millennium-long war, the immortal, charismatic leader known only as the Traveller reflects on what led him, long ago, to begin this war of liberation. Amid the alarms and encounters of a sleepless night, he thinks back over three thousand years of the loves and hates, the victories and disasters, the moral dilemmas—and the lost love he still mourns. As battle is joined, the tale has a few more twists to throw at the Traveller. "This is an elegant novel, poetically written, with just the right mix of pathos and humour, and the Traveller’s ability to mock himself ensures it never spills over into mawkish sentiment...The supporting cast of characters are well-drawn, but the Traveller rightfully dominates the story." — Joanne Hall, hierath.wordpress.com.

Genres: Fantasy

456 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2009

About the author

I'm Nyki Blatchley, fantasy author and poet. I've been writing since I was four - my first "books" were stories about a horse called Stephen Trotter. During childhood, I shared with my brother an invented world inhabited by animals - the chief country was Catland. In my teens, I began haphazardly creating a world that eventually came to be the backdrop for most of my stories, and an immortal character called the Traveller who wanders through it.

I also wrote large amounts of poetry - quite a bit has been published here and there, and I've also performed it with my own musical backing in many venues in London and elsewhere. During the 90s, my spiritual home was the legendary Bunjies Coffee House in London, once a haunt of the likes of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and David Bowie.

Since the late 90s, I've concentrated more on fiction, writing numerous short stories and novels. Many have been about the Traveller, or else about other characters in his world, and so far about two dozen stories have been published in a variety of magazines, webzines and anthologies. My novel At An Uncertain Hour has been accepted by StoneGarden, and will be published on 15th April 2009. I'm now nearing the end of my trilogy The Winter Legend - which I started in 1969.

Among all this, I found time to graduate from the University of Keele in English and Greek Studies, and work in various jobs, from bookseller to artist's model, though much of my career has been in social care. I currently live just outside London. Interests include (in no particular order) reading, folk music, history (any period, but especially classical Greece and medieval Europe), Doctor Who, cricket (as a viewer only), rock music, historical re-enactment, astronomy, and acquiring general knowledge.

Reviews

[Kitty G Books]

This story is one of my #SPFBO reads, and it was one I was a little hesitant about after reading the blurb as it follows an immortal character known as Traveller who is narrating the story of his life up to the final great battle he is about to fight against the Demon Queen.

I actually quite enjoy some stories being narrated by the lead character, but with this one I felt like there was a sense of already knowing where we will end up, and therefore not having any real 'risk-factor'. Personally, I like to leave things a bit more open-ended and hope that we get a bit more tension throughout the book as to what will happen, because this is all just reminiscing, I didn't get that vibe and I just felt like it was all a bit predictable.

With that said, the life that Traveller has led is a pretty interesting one. He started out young and innocent in a quiet part of the world but quickly gets drawn away into trials of slavery, subjugation, rape, torture and more (trigger warnings for these things). he goes through a lot and along the way develops his immortality, but everything he does is in the name of finding and reuniting with his young first love Anniol.

Overall this was very readable, it had some enjoyable moments, but it also fell into the trap of not being mysterious enough and I found that the 'big reveal' was very easy to anticipate from the start (at least for me). I wish it would have been a bit more mysterious and less like a 'sit down and I'll tell you a tale' book, but I liked it well enough so gave it 3*s in the end.

[Thelivingtunic]

I think there's only one word for how I feel about this book - melancholic.

The vast majority of this book is just one immortal man mostly reminiscing over his life, sometimes telling people stories about it, the night before he and his army go into battle against the Demon Queen. The early chapters tend to jump around a lot to various time periods of his life - from the present of the night before, to his early childhood, to 400 years into the war against said Demon Queen.

For me, personally, it felt like his losses/hard times in life outweighed the good. Obviously conflicts are going to be more detailed and explored and defined to the reader than the times where things were just...good, but the good parts seemed to be quite short in comparison and hurried along to the next tragic hurdle. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, it just felt very melancholic.

The characters around him constantly changed, and that's fine, considering he's immortal. I liked most if not all of them - though the reveal at the end did feel pretty obvious, pretty early on. I wish there had been a little less tragedy for everyone else, but I mean...that's life for you. Some of the story beats seemed to hit just a little bit off - I wasn't overly satisfied at a couple of parts. The parts that are supposed to be the heaviest do have that weight to them, so overall it works pretty fine.

[Joanne Hall]

The title comes from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge, and it’s appropriate in every way. In this case, the mariner is The Traveller, who is indeed ancient, crossing the seas on the former slave galley “Seeker”, propelled by magic and driven to search for the only woman he has ever loved.

The Traveller (he has no other name) is an old man, looking back on his life on the eve of his final battle, his last reckoning with the Demon Queen who has enslaved a continent. How he came to be immortal, how he lost the girl who meant everything to him, how he came to be leading an army half a world away from the village of his birth; these scenes are explored in interrupted dreams and memories. The Traveller assesses his own long life, while the preparations for battle in the uncertain hours before dawn drag him constantly back to the present, to the threatening presence of the Demon Queen that overshadows everything he does.

This is an elegant novel, poetically written, with just the right mix of pathos and humour, and the Traveller’s ability to mock himself ensures it never spills over into mawkish sentiment. The twist at the end might be a little too obvious, but it’s still clever, and the immortal Traveller’s eventual showdown with the Demon Queen is as painful to witness as it is satisfying. The supporting cast of characters are well-drawn, but the Traveller rightfully dominates the story. Maybe he owes something of a debt to Doctor Who, maybe something to Earthsea’s Ged, but he’s a force of nature in his own right.

Nyki Blatchley has been writing about the Traveller in short stories for years, but this is the first published novel. There’s plenty of scope, all kinds of back and side stories hinted at but never fully explored, for this to expand into a series. After all, if a man’s going to live forever, roaming the seas, unencumbered by albatrosses, he’s bound to have enough adventures to fill a few books! “At an Uncertain Hour” is an exhilarating opening.

[Erica Wagner]

I'm usually suspicious of immortal characters in fantasy, because I tend to think the stakes are higher for someone with a more normal lifespan. But the Traveler is a well drawn and convincing character who grows and changes in the telling of the story. The protagonist recalls his life as he prepares to go into his final battle against his long time enemy, and although I knew where the story was going to end up, I got sucked in because I wanted to find out how he got there. The world that the story takes place in is well drawn and believable, so much so that I can't help feeling it exists ... somewhere. The author avoids many of the cliches that are common in fantasy but nonetheless spins a magical tale.