Sean Russell

The Initiate Brother — (1991-1992) Publisher: Plague and warfare have swept across the the ancient kingdom of Wa, and the peace of the Empire is threatened. Only Initiate Brother Shuyun, a mystically gifted Botahist monk, can save the Empire and his own order from complete annihilation.

The Initiate Brother

War and plague have recently swept across the kingdom of Wa, leaving a new emperor feeling insecure on his throne. He feels threatened by the ancient houses of Wa, and most especially by the revered Lord Shonto, an intelligent and highly competent man. When the emperor appoints Shonto as governor of the northern province of Seh, Shonto isn’t sure if this is an honor, or a trap.

Both men have some excellent allies. Shonto has adopted the lovely and gifted Lady Nishima, the last heir of the former empire, and has recently secured as his spiritual advisor the Botahist monk Shuyun who is recognized by his brothers as the most promising monk in ages. He has also befriended a minor lord from the North who has little influence in that region, but seems to see things more clearly than his elders do. The emperor’s staff includes handsome and clever General Jaku Katta, the famous kickboxer, and Jaku’s clever young brother.

Of course, all of these allies — Lady Nishima, Shuyun, Jaku Katta — have their own human desires and concerns. For example, Shuyun is worried about the Botahist order — the ancient scrolls are missing, and some of his brother monks have disappeared. When he leaves his monastery, he sees things which make him question some of the teachings of his faith.

As you can tell by the names, Sean Russell’s The Initiate Brother, first published in 1991, is an Eastern-flavored fantasy similar to Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven. The Initiate Brother also reminds me of GGK’s work because it’s full of fascinating twisty political intrigue and there’s a large cast of realistic and appealing characters who we get to know well when we’re privy to their internal thoughts. If you’re a fan of GGK, you’re almost certain to enjoy The Initiate Brother (and you probably won’t mind the frequent POV shifts).

The occasional use of short Japanese poems and a strategy game similar to the ancient Chinese boardgame Go, add to the world-building and inspire the story. The plot, which is layered with conflict and intrigue, gradually and inexhaustibly rises to a tense climax at the end of the novel. Then it stops. I was sorry that I didn’t have the sequel, Gatherer of Clouds, on hand to begin immediately, but I will be picking it up soon — it promises plenty of excitement and I look forward to finding out what happens to these interesting people.

I listened to Blackstone Audio’s production of The Initiate Brother, read by Elijah Alexander. Mostly I enjoyed Mr. Alexander’s narration — he has a superb reading voice. However, because the cast of characters was so large, he used a couple of annoying techniques to distinguish minor characters. For example, in this ancient Oriental culture, the merchant Tanaka has a Boston accent and a female nun sounds like a Chicago mobster. More distracting, though, was what happened when Mr. Alexander ran out of voices. Instead of recycling, he gave each new character a peculiar speech tempo which often makes the character seem like he has a speech impediment or, worse, like he is mentally disabled. I doubt that this is what Sean Russell intended for his emperor. Realizing that such a large cast must be problematic for an audiobook reader, I’m willing to overlook this little quirk — and I’ll be happily reading the sequel on audio. —Kat Hooper

Gatherer of Clouds

Gatherer of Clouds is the sequel to Sean Russell’s The Initiate Brother, a story which is not so much about the Initiate Brother Shuyun, spiritual advisor to Lord Shonto, as it is about the entire Shonto household — a household that is seen as a threat by an insecure emperor. And with good reason, for Lord Shonto is an honorable, intelligent, and insightful man who has raised his children to be his equals and who has surrounded himself with a competent and loyal staff and several clever allies.

As the story opens, Shonto, governor of the northern province of She, is preparing for a massive barbarian invasion that the emperor refuses to believe in (since he only paid for a small invasion in order to get rid of Shonto). Should Shonto stay in the north, as ordered, and be wiped out by the barbarian horde? Or should he let his province fall and retreat toward the capital to raise an army that may have a chance to defeat the invaders? This latter option seems the only way to save the empire of Wa, but the emperor will certainly declare treason if Shonto starts recruiting soldiers. There are hard choices and harder sacrifices to make, not just for Shonto, but for everyone involved.

While reading Gatherer of Clouds, I was completely immersed in the lives of Lord Shonto, Brother Shuyun, Lady Nishima, Lord Komawara, and the Jaku brothers, as well as the beauty and elegance of their lifestyles. Each of Sean Russell’s diverse set of characters is vivid, unique, and realistic, and they all learn much about themselves and each other as the stress ramps up. Because we spend so much time with them, and because they feel so real, their inner struggles become our inner struggles. Would we be willing to sacrifice love for duty? When is it right to disobey (or murder!) a sovereign ruler? Are there times when it is better to kill than to heal? What is true religion and how do we recognize when it has become corrupt? When does loyalty become dishonorable? When principles conflict, how do we know which principle is highest? I found myself considering each of these questions as I read Gatherer of Clouds.

In addition to making us think about some tough ideas, Russell also shows us how legends are made. Every one of his characters has the potential to become either a hero or a villain, and Russell shows us that it’s our daily choices that add up to determine our destiny and how we’ll be perceived by history.

If you enjoy character-centered epic fantasy with lots of political intrigue, Sean Russell’s The Initiate Brother is a great choice. I listened to Blackstone Audio’s version and can recommend this format. This was my first experience with Sean Russell’s writing, but I’ll definitely be exploring more of his work in the future. —Kat Hooper

The Swans' War — (2001-2004) Publisher: The cataclysm began more than a century earlier, when the King of Ayr died before naming an heir to the throne, and damned his realm to chaos. The cold-blooded conspiracies of the Renne and the Wills — each family desirous of the prize of rule — would sunder the one kingdom, and spawn generations of hatred and discord. Now Toren Renne, leader of his great and troubled house, dreams of peace — a valiant desire that has spawned hostility among his kinsmen, and vicious internal plots against his life. In the opposing domain, Elise Wills's desire for freedom is to be crushed, as an unwanted marriage to an ambitious and sinister lord looms large. As always, these machinations of nobles are affecting the everyday lives of the common folk — and feeding a bonfire of animosity that has now trapped an unsuspecting young Valeman Tam and two fortune-hunting friends from the North in its high, killing flames. But the closer Toren comes to achieving his great goal of uniting two enemy houses, the more treachery flowers. Nobles and mystics alike conspire to keep the realm divided, knowing that only in times of strife can their power grow. And perhaps the source of an unending misery lies before an old king's passing, beyond the scope of history, somewhere lost in a fog of myth and magic roiling about an ancient enchanter named Wyrr — who bequeathed to his children terrible gifts that would poison their lives... and their deaths. It is a cursed past and malevolent sorcery that truly hold the land, its people, and its would-be rulers bound. And before the already savaged kingdom can become one again, all Ayr will drown in a sea of blood.

The Swans' War

I struggled through these books and I only read them because Stephen Donaldson and Robin Hobb gave them high praise.

What I did like is that the characters were unique, with the exception of Tam and Prince Michael — they seemed to be the same character. All other characters seemed to be woven from a fresh cloak — they were different people who came from different backgrounds but learned to live together.

What I didn't like was that there was a distinct lack of urgency. Sean Russell was building to a crescendo, but when the crescendo was revealed, in the third book, I nearly threw the book to the floor. I had no idea — and the author never gave me the idea — that the crescendo was legitimate. He introduced factors slowly, most of them in the second book.

For a successful fantasy, the author needs to let the reader know what is at stake. I didn't get the urgency until the second book, and even then, I didn't get the REAL urgency until the third book. Nor did I believe it. The strategy of the final book is so radically different than in the first book that if it wasn't for Donaldson's recommendation on the cover, and Russell's dedication to Donaldson in The Isle of Battle, I would not have continued reading. To have taken the time to read the first two books, and then to stop reading 1/3 of the way through The Shadow Roads is a huge disappointment to me. The book sat on my nightstand for days and days — untouched — and I finally realized I had given up.

Also, we should also know more about the arcane properties of the world — for example, nagar and smeagh. I still don't know exactly what they are. I can guess but I can't be certain. That just doesn't work. There was considerable action, but we didn't know what that action was for. Black arrow men shot at Tam and his companions while they rode the river Wyyr, on a constant basis, but while they traversed the river, they ran into boring, archetypal fantasy characters.

Russell's writing style is inconsistent: some is good, some of it is inexcusable: after describing something very specifically, he would say, they moved "this way and that" or "to and fro." His editor should have picked up on that. I believe that Sean Russell lost a broad readership because his writing and plotting was sub-par. I'm disappointed in this effort. —Todd Burger

The Shadow Roads: Decent but anticlimactic close to trilogy

The Shadow Roads brings The Swans' War to a somewhat satisfying close, but its many weaknesses lessen the impact it might have had. The strength is the backstory — the sense of myth surrounding the three children of Wyrr, Death walled away into his own world, stories of loss and transformation. When Sean Russell spends time in this area, whether in detail or just tangentially, it lends a sad sense of grandeur and depth to the work as a whole. Unfortunately, this strength is negated by too many weaknesses.

One is that the characters become more pallid as we come to the end of the story, rather than more intense as should be the case after having spent three books' worth of time with them. The Shadow Roads follows the by-now-familiar multi-stranded structure of most fantasy, with frequent shifts of perspective and setting. But none of them really catch fire. There are so many characters that the individual impact of any one is diluted, and we are all too often too quickly whisked away from one to the other. It isn't that the story is too complex (except one area to be discussed), but that it's too thinly spread. We simply don't spend enough time with any of them to care much about them. And some characters are simply dragged along with little to say or do, so that one wonders why the editor didn't tell Russell to either kill them off or send them home with a message.

The plot is mostly two-fold: the quest to beat Hafydd to a place where he can set in motion the release of Death and the quest to resolve the ongoing and more mundane war between the Renne's and the Wills. The first story is pretty straightforward though it suffers from a somewhat plodding pace (too much time describing river travel that is too similar to previously described river travel), some superfluous characters and plot-lines that are mostly just dropped in and forgotten (perhaps setting up future works?), and an abrupt close with a deus ex machina resolution that is very anti-climatic. The second story, dealing with the more mundane war, suffers from complexity for complexity's sake, where too many people with the same last names have double-crossed or pretended to double-cross too many other people with the same last names who also double-crossed... and so on. It's unnecessarily complex and simply slows the pace and lessens the impact. And here again, the ending is a bit too pat.

All the way through this series, it felt as if it had greater potential than it was actually achieving, with strong prose and at times strong character/myth creation lifting it up out of the sense of average fantasy one often had while reading it, just in time to keep the reader going. The Shadow Roads keeps the strong descriptive prose (too much so at times) and the myth-sense is as strong as ever or even stronger, but it can't save the book from its other flaws. It isn't a bad book, but one certainly feels it could have been much better. Something I'd say about the series as a whole. —Bill Capossere