My introduction to K.J. Parker came in the form of her* first novel, Colours in the Steel, which I picked up on a visit to the U.K. around ten years ago. Colours is the first in a fantasy trilogy in which weapons-making and political machinations play large roles, and “magic” is poorly understood and rarely utilized. The original U.K. cover art was frankly dreadful, and I purchased the book only because I had time to read the first two chapters in the bookstore cafe.
Parker subsequently published a second unrelated trilogy in the U.K., but it was her third series that introduced her to the U.S. market (the U.K. editions of the second could occasionally be found in paperback in the big U.S. chains, but do not appear to have been marketed here). The Engineer Trilogy, comprised of Devices and Desires, Evil for Evil, and The Escapement, was one of the first releases upon the creation of Orbit’s U.S. division. A stand-alone novel called The Company followed, detailing the exploits of a group of former army compatriots whose efforts to establish their own colony are derailed by mischance and in-fighting. The Engineer Trilogy and The Company arguably contain no fantastic elements save their invented worlds.
A number of themes permeate Parker’s works — moral ambiguity, pragmatism, deeply flawed protagonists, vengeance — but she is perhaps most recognizable for her expertise in the mechanisms of war. Parker’s characters build things: bows, swords, siege weapons, earthworks, and in the Engineer Trilogy, an entire factory apparatus to build in quantity. The construction of these devices is painstakingly detailed, and apparently polarizing, as some are fascinated and others bored (Publishers Weekly called it “hard slogging” but ultimately rewarding) by the quantity of detail. Parker very clearly does her research, as illustrated by this fascinating article on siege warfare.
Purple and Black, published in 2009 by Subterranean Press, is Parker’s most recent work, a novella in the form of letters between a newly-crowned Emperor and the man he appoints governor to a region beset by insurgency. The format works brilliantly, as the motives and mindset of each gradually unfolds in the text of the missives and in what is left out. Instead of looking directly into her characters’ thoughts as she often does in her novels, Parker instead filters those thoughts through the characters’ own writing, and leaves the interpretation to the reader. The letters function like a clever puzzle box, first offering subtle clues, then gradually revealing secrets.
While the format demands brevity, Parker still infuses the narrative with her unique perspective on the machinery of war. The governor and Emperor, former schoolmates, each discovers he has a great deal to learn about his new role. When the governor, Phormio, captures insurgents for the first time, he writes:
“I looked up interrogation in the book, and it said that many prisoners break down when merely shown the instruments of torture. Fine, I thought; the only drawback being, we have no instruments of torture. So I had [the prisoner] taken round to the millhouse and shown the back end of the countershaft mechanism, and we told him that was the instruments of torture; and of course he didn’t know any better, and to anybody with even the shreds of an imagination all those cogs and wheels and ratchets look absolutely shit-yourself terrifying; and he burst into tears and said he’d tell us everything.”
The Emperor, new to his unsought position thanks to the violent deaths of all of his more senior relatives, of course has his own issues to deal with:
“We’re amateurs, Phormio, obviously. I was never meant to be the Emperor…. Even when I was ten, I could read. I read how, in the past hundred years, there had been seventy-seven emperors, five of whom dies of natural causes (and one of them was apoplexy brought on by news that his brother was rebelling against him). Seventy-two emperors murdered by their families, their soldiers, their friends, their household servants, or torn apart by the mob, or overthrown by armed revolts and executed, usually in a very nasty way. Who the hell would want to get involved in that business, I thought.”
Parker is not for everyone, I think. Her books read more like medieval alt-history than epic fantasy, and some have commented that her protagonists are flatly unlikeable. Her characters often spend more time discussing actions than acting. However, if shades of gray and biting wit are your bag, then Purple and Black provides an excellent entry into Parker’s work. Parker’s newest novel, The Folding Knife, is due in February from Orbit.
* K.J. Parker is a pseudonym for an apparently well-known author. There is at least one interview with Parker available on the internet that presents Parker as male, while Parker’s French publisher’s website identifies Parker as female. As the publisher of Purple and Black refers to Parker as she, I will do so as well. I don’t think it matters much for the purpose of this discussion, but I will happily print a correction if it turns out K.J.’s a he.
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