This Crooked Way (Morlock Ambrosius, #2) in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

Feb 10, 2025 Bryn Hammond rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery

The three Morlock Ambrosius books aren’t a trilogy – in the epic fantasy sense; you can read them independently of each other. This one is a series of novelettes, novellas and interludes, although they do follow a journey to its goal. A Morlock tale is likely to zigzag from humour to pathos to a kick in the guts, and this collection ranges across moods. Because of this, as also because of Morlock’s Merlin-like traits (although our actual Merlin is Morlock’s awful father) it reminds me much of T. The three Morlock Ambrosius books aren’t a trilogy – in the epic fantasy sense; you can read them independently of each other. This one is a series of novelettes, novellas and interludes, although they do follow a journey to its goal. A Morlock tale is likely to zigzag from humour to pathos to a kick in the guts, and this collection ranges across moods. Because of this, as also because of Morlock’s Merlin-like traits (although our actual Merlin is Morlock’s awful father) it reminds me much of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which happens to be my favourite book.

The other person Morlock reminds me of, persistently, is the Doctor from Doctor Who: infinite pockets, brain the size of a planet, fixes any situation with a wondrous splatter of fantasy science. Except Morlock isn’t a fraction as loquacious. His taciturn ‘Eh’ becomes a language in itself, though.

I find there is real wonder, and the real horrible. If a story feels too light, there’ll be a plunge, or a wrench, and I always care. I think I liked most the intelligent flames Morlock keeps as a pet, whose endangerment is as affecting as a sentient slime alien you just met in Doctor Who; and the tale ‘Traveller’s Dream’ which seems to flirt with themes of self-destruction and mental illness, how hard it is to help another person on a dark road.

At the moment Morlock Ambrosius is tied with Doctor Adoulla Makhslood* (whose novel I haven't even read yet) for my most likeable contemporary S&S character. The tales make a big thing of him not being likeable, but that’s elvish trickery by Enge. On the other hand, the plots support his father’s point: ‘You may overestimate the number of women who have looked on him without some mixture of fear and disgust.’ If Enge is even a quarter convinced by this, he is wrong. It’s a necessary fiction: in fact women would flock to Morlock more or less as to Strider the Ranger (in the books, without help from Viggo).

* a character of Saladin Ahmed

I admit it: I liked him at first. That's partly due to the kind of men I'd been buried in for more than a dozen years: half-witted townies who thought a youngish widow was anybody's meat; needle-toothed Bargainers who thought of anybody as meat for their God in the Ground. Morlock wasn't much to look at, maybe, but he wasn't like that. Plus he had very impressive hands: strong and many-skilled. I remember the first time I saw him lacing up both his shoes simultaneously, one hand per shoe, while keeping up his side of a conversation (as much as he ever did, anyway). Or the time my fifteen-year-old Thend bent his knife, using it as a prybar. Morlock took the blade, a steel blade mind you, in his hands and bent it back. It wasn't quite straight, but at least it would fit into the scabbard. Then that night, when we made camp, he set up a kind of portable forge full of flames that talked back to him, and he remade the blade better than before—all without a word of recrimination. And anytime a crow came by he would have a conversation with it, tossing it grain from his pocket for bits of semi-useless information. And he did this stuff like someone buying a pound of cheese: it was perfectly ordinary. How can you not like a man like that?

Well: I learned.

Huh. Morlock gets a low-key stalled romance in this book, but mostly, as I say, we’re meant to believe people are offput by him. Three of these novelettes (?) are told in the point of view of ordinary folk who get caught up with him; this set up a resistance, as I don’t get sick of Morlock, but they did win me round. I was glad to return to Morlock pov, though, and look forward to the next book. ...more

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Nov 30, 2013 Derek rated it really liked it

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery

_This_ is how wizards should battle: not just blood and thunder and lightning but subtle trickery and planning and collections of odd objects which are the things you need to build the things you need. Enge even makes the discussions of magic interesting.

Curiously, in the appendix there's a mention of one "C. Linwood", whose 25-volume legendarium was incomplete at his death. It's a reference to Lin(wood) Carter and his unfinished "Khymyrium" project.

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Nov 24, 2013 Joseph rated it really liked it

This one is at least partially a fix-up of short stories that had appeared previously, primarily in Black Gate magazine, wrapped in a bit of a framing device. Necessarily, that makes it a bit choppy, but I didn't regard that as a bad thing. Much of it is an interesting sequence following Morlock and the same set of characters on various stages of a perilous journey, but each stage is told from a different character's point of view and gives a different interpretation to Morlock. (Although he's a ...more

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