384 pages
English language
Published Feb. 24, 2005 by Eos.
Unique among his fellow immortals and mortal folk alike, Jant Comet can fly. His talent is a gift and a curse that has earned him a place in the Castle Circle as Messenger to the Emperor San -- soaring high and free above the bloody battlefields of his world, carrying word back to his master of progress and regress in the ever-escalating conflict between man and the awful armies of giant, flesh-devouring insects.But while Jant's duty is to remain neutral in the petty squabbles and power plays of the fifty who will neither age nor die naturally, bitter rivalries that have festered for centuries now threaten to incite a savage civil war. And Jant may be the only being alive capable of stemming the onrushing tide of destruction and the unstoppable insect infestation. For only he can gain entrance -- through extreme doses of the narcotic that owns his soul …
Unique among his fellow immortals and mortal folk alike, Jant Comet can fly. His talent is a gift and a curse that has earned him a place in the Castle Circle as Messenger to the Emperor San -- soaring high and free above the bloody battlefields of his world, carrying word back to his master of progress and regress in the ever-escalating conflict between man and the awful armies of giant, flesh-devouring insects.But while Jant's duty is to remain neutral in the petty squabbles and power plays of the fifty who will neither age nor die naturally, bitter rivalries that have festered for centuries now threaten to incite a savage civil war. And Jant may be the only being alive capable of stemming the onrushing tide of destruction and the unstoppable insect infestation. For only he can gain entrance -- through extreme doses of the narcotic that owns his soul -- into a place of darkest wonders and revelations; a strange and horrific alternate reality that none but Jant Comet believes exists.A literary triumph of the first water -- bold, stylish, and breathtakingly original -- Steph Swainston's The Year of Our War ascends like a rocket to the upper reaches of the imagination and loudly heralds the arrival of a true modern master of the fantastic.
Gloriously imagined world but the story fails to grab me until the end.
This drops the reader right into the thick of the action without the need for a 100-page scene-setting; she assumes the reader to be astute enough to work out what's going on, in her world invaded by insectlike creatures who are covering it with their papery structures. It isn't generic Fantasy by any means, if it is at all; it's something like Iain M Banks's Against a Dark Background in having a Fantasy feel while still being SF. Its winged sociopathic drug-addicted immortal - but not invulnerable; he's terrified of drowning because if he fell in the water his wings would drag him down - is an unlikeable but memorable viewpoint character.
