The Mythmaker's Notebook

This review is in association with the Indie Blog Off Remnants (IBOR) Competition

The World:

Ten thousand years before the main story begins, a catastrophic event reshapes the world and leaves a dangerous supernatural barrier called the Line at the edge of civilization. The world Jasper L. Walker builds on that foundation is a grim one: a continent organized around Artefacts, a magic system called the Stain used to power them, and the ever-present threat of what lives beyond the Line. The theology of the Stained Church, the uneasy politics among Nobility, the Church, and Untouched commoners, and the existence of the Purists as an anti-magic faction all contribute to a strong setting that will serve as a solid foundation for the trilogy.

The Protagonists:

The Shattered Line has many POVs, a traditional trait of grimdark. Elias, the Ghost of Yamir, is a thief and mastermind who cons his way through the privileged class with a repertoire of false identities and a charming personality. His crew is brilliantly crafted, and the theft and infiltration sequences display a wit that solidly contrasts the darkness around them.

Turen the Reaper carries the second spine of the story. His years-long hunt for Khanis Virkalo, the Butcher of Yill, is the emotional engine of the book. It’s a vengeance arc, and Walker is not interested in making it clean or comfortable. The book truly earns its genre in this arc.

Khanis himself may be the book’s most unexpected achievement. A villain responsible for great atrocities is given enough interiority that he reads as a man whose convictions carry genuine weight, even as they produce catastrophe. It is difficult to pull off, and Walker does a fantastic job in The Shattered Line.

Areas for Improvement:

The novel’s biggest challenge is its prose, which continuously repeats what the scene has already shown. A character acts, and then the narration confirms the emotional significance of what just happened. This habit  robs many scenes of the resonance they’ve already earned. Walker’s voice is strongest in the heist chapters, where he trusts his characters and lets the banter carry the weight. It is weakest in the interior passages, where the emotion of the scenes is mostly conveyed through narration.

Length is the other consideration. At over 250k words, the book is long enough to ask a lot of patience from the reader. The interludes, while often interesting in their own right, introduce whole new cultures and characters that halt the narrative momentum, and some readers will feel that pull more than others. Those who love sprawl will see it as a feature.

The opening prologue is very strong, but it asks the reader to absorb a great deal of darkness before a single sympathetic character is introduced. Readers who make it to Elias’s far more inviting first chapter will find a different book than the one the prologue suggests.

Who Should Read This?

The Shattered Line is for the grimdark faithful.  Readers who came up on Abercrombie, Cook, and Lawrence and want a debut that isn’t trying to be polite. Walker has clearly written the book he wanted to read, a feat most of us in the Indie sector only wish to achieve.

Walker dedicated this novel to his partner Madie.