Fantasy books are more like films than one would suppose. Both types of entertainment seem to struggle for original ideas and when one does come along the audience is bombarded by poor imitations. Tolkien gave up high adventure in a fantasy land, although the idea of a quest was as old as the hills, Tolkien was able to wrap the whole thing up in a fully realise world, although his characters were weakly drawn. Martin came along and showed that you could successfully create a character driven story in a fantasy novel.

The majority of the books which pass these old eyes still think that the most relevant thing in fantasy writing is Tolkien, so go on to produce books with characters that have unpronounceable names going on quests only a child would be interested in. The saving grace of the genre are the writers who have taken the hint that readers would really like characters, silly names or not, who have human feelings and motivations regardless of the background to their story, John Gwynne is such a writer.

His first novel, Malice drew a good critical response for very good reasons, Valour (648 pages) is the follow on book and book two of the Faithful and the Fallen series of fantasy books. Valour follows directly on from the previous novel. Like Martin, Gwynne tells the story from the perspective of multiple characters. The twist this time is that the points of view very often overlap each other, rather than just using them to illuminate what is happening around the world.

To catch you up to date the book is set in the war torn world of the Banished Lands, book one created the drama and chaos which his characters now have to try and survive. There are elements here which have been used before, but then the same could be said for Martin and the influence which have affected him.

So what we have here is a book of complex characters, with Cywen struggle to survive and Corban’s flight towards a possible safety. Of course there are many more, but to go through them would be to produce little more than a list.

It is not meant to be disparaging to suggest to George Martin fans that they check out this series whilst waiting for the next Game of Thrones book. Both share a detailed and intricate plotting, good characters who the reader can get involved in and empathise with.

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Charles Packer