Conn Iggulden - Conqueror

I’ve finally completed this five book slog and I must admit, it took me a lot longer that I would have liked. Based on how quickly I’ve finished my next book, I think it says something about my enjoyment of this series. I did think that Conqueror was the best book in the series in terms of writing however it suffers from the same ongoing issues that plagued the previous books in the series.

I’m not going to dwell too much on this one as, like I said, it’s the best one and it’s probably just my taste that led me to taking so long to finish it.

Anyway onto the stuff I didn’t like. The way Conn Iggulden paints his characters is rather confusing. In the end of the last book, Batu was portrayed as an asshole who believed he was more entitled to lead despite his questionable heritage. However, at the start of this book, Guyuk is immediately made out to be an absolute cunt and Batu is the knight in shining armour who needs to stop Guyuk’s debaucherous leadership of the Mongol empire.

My problem with this is that the best part of writing historical fiction is surely that you can use your own creative whims to fill the gaps between the stuff that is officially documented. So why do we start here and not visit slightly earlier to watch Guyuk’s descent into depravity? Not only would it have made these early scenes easier to understand but it would have made for some interesting reading.

There is the other matter of the ever present, ‘here is that character I forgot about. But he/she is important so here is their funeral.’ This book goes one further by getting rid of Yao Shu by having him leave in one paragraph, and in the past tense, without even a word to anyone despite being ever-present throughout the series. It’s a strange choice because, once again, the character relationships are not something that is overly documented in history. It’s more the events, so I would have thought there would have been more focus on the characters than the events.

The above issues are more writing choices that I didn’t understand but there were a few mistakes that stood out. At one point, one of the Mongol character’s names is spelt incorrectly and towards the end of the book, Hulegu is referred to as Kublai’s older brother, which is careless prose, especially when you are dealing with three brothers at the same time.

And that’s pretty much it. The series has been more enjoyable than it probably comes across in these reviews but I feel I am due a long break from Iggulden and will be exploring different writers over the coming months, as well as revisiting some of my favourites.

Conqueror by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2011. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Conn Iggulden - Empire of Silver

This is forth book in the five book epic that I’ve managed to drag out for far too long, mainly due to the fact that I simply could not get into the book. More on that later, but first – the overview.

In the aftermath of Ghengis Khan’s death, his son Ogedai, is elected to lead over his older brother Chagatai. Ghengis has built a reputation of destroying enemies and not having a home city so, in full respect of his father, Ogedai abandon’s Genghis’s principles and builds a fuck-off massive city in the middle of their homeland. Legend.

The remainder of the story follows Tsubodai as he tries to conquer the entire world while Ogedai sits on his ass at home with a heart condition after his younger, stronger, better looking, more sensible brother, sacrifices himself because some Chinese doctor said it would fix Ogedai. At this point, I was like, what a selfish twat, but I suppose you cannot argue with history.

While the story line follows the historical characters and is loosely based on the events as we know them, is takes bravery to write about a bunch of thugs who went around invading everywhere for no real reason and portraying them as the good guys. Despite this, Iggulden still tries to; albeit very weakly. There is one part where Tsubodai prevents a Russian woman from being raped, not because he is merciful, but simply to prove a point. She will inevitably die a more painful death freezing in the cold after her home was burnt to the ground, but there you go. The lesser of two evils, right?

Compared to the other books that precede Empire of Silver, the first hundred pages or so are actually pretty good. I didn’t notice any writing problems and the writing was well paced. I didn’t even realise how much of the book I had read and that is exactly how it should be. This was also the same for the last 150 pages or so, but there was a big chunk in the middle of the 428 page book that destroyed the pace and felt like a return to the last book in terms of style. There is not really any other word for it but boring. I found myself bored, only reading twenty pages at a time before finding something else to do, including falling asleep.

There are also a couple of new writing errors to pick on. On page 121 the use of punctuation and sentence structure leads to a watermill feeling astonishment at workers wearing soft slippers. There is language choice on page 255, where Tsubodai’s senses are offended twice in the same page where this expression has never been previously used. The writing should not draw my attention away from the story.

There are also the usual inconsequential spelling errors littered throughout. A ‘back’ instead of ‘black’ here, and some misplaced punctuation there, but my main issue with the book is the characters.

Number 1: Yao Shu. The horniest Bhuddist in the East. It’s not so much that his internal monologues about secretly wanting to pork every Mongol wife going wind me up, but more his character change. He wants to pork Sorthatani until the cows come home, but as soon as she gets a sniff of some power, he whips out his hate guns and the horniness goes away. The bit I do not understand is that angry sex with someone you don’t like can be even more satisfying than normal sex with the same person. Use the anger Yao Shu!

Number 2:  Batu. He is just a twat. He is the unacknowledged son of Jochi who, let’s face it, was never really confirmed as Genghis’s son in the first place and for the second half of the book walks around as the self proclaimed Prince of the Nation. Or at least proclaimed by the narrative, anyway. In another show of how big his balls are, he gets annoyed when he challenged Tsubodai’s authority and gets bitch slapped for it. After being raised by the Khan from the gutter, I would expect to see some respect, rather than a sense of entitlement.

Number 3:  Conn Iggulden’s failure to acknowledge a character’s existence unless he feels like it. It happened with Temulun in the last book, where he only wrote her back in to rape and kill her and he does it again here with Genghis’ illusive mother Hoelun. I was thinking to myself when Kachiun died (sorry, spoiler alert, the old man dies) that I’m sure the mother was still popping around somewhere, but we are simply told that she died at some point in the past. I don’t know what she did to piss off the author, but it must have been bad to be written off in such a way, especially when she was a key player to the survival of four of the series’ main characters in the first book and is effectively the mother of the nation.

The historical notes at the end are often a good source for reference material and I always read them out of interest despite them not forming part of the story. I’m glad I did this time because there are some humdingers in there.

According to the notes, Ogedai’s son, Kaidu, was present in at the battles in Hungary but is omitted for fear of introducing too many characters. This would probably explain why Iggulden didn’t focus on Hoelun and Temulun but I feel this is a kick in the teeth. There isn’t a fantastical overload of information in this series as it is, so to remove a piece of history because I’m too stupid to follow it is a very weak justification and also a tad insulting.

Iggulden also omits one of the most famous battles in Mongol history with another weak justification. I don’t really know why. With all the bullshit in the middle of the book, I could have done with some of the more well-executed battle scenes from the end. In fact, I almost feel robbed, especially when writing these scenes appear to be the author’s main strength.

There is one more book in the series and after that, I will be done with Conn Iggulden. After investing in the last four, I can’t stop now. Hopefully the final book offers a thilling finale that will make reading the whole series worthwhile.

Empire of Silver by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2010. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Conn Iggulden - Bones of the Hills

On to the third book of the series and I am actually shocked to say that the writing in this one is much, much improved. And I’m not even being sarcastic.

We now follow Genghis on his travels through the Arab nations as he conquers and kills everyone in sight. Why? Because some Arab dude personally insulted him by killing his ambassadors. So Genghis abandons his conquest of China, turns 180 degrees and marches the entire nation in the opposite direction. I’m all for this ‘never leave a man behind’ attitude. It’s quite cool. But in terms of military decisions, why oh why would you do that? Destroy one enemy first and then move on to the next. More fool them as well because if you don’t attack them straight away, they will probably think you never will. Therefore, it would be a massive surprise when you march over the hill to avenge your friends who were killed five years ago. That said, I haven’t conquered entire countries before, so what do I know?

Despite my opening praise, the writing issues continue on from where we left off in the last book, this time with completely pointless narrative.  On page 52, Koryo is mentioned and it feels like it is mentioned for the sake of it. The paragraph in question is talking about how they were all happy to be home in Mongol lands, eating Mongol food. During the previous two novels, Koryo is mentioned once and the characters spend a few pages there. In fact, Jelme pretty much arrives there just to be called back so I don’t see how they can say they never had such good food in Koryo, which is mentioned first here, and the Chin lands when the men spent all those years away in Chin lands only. It is not even worth mentioning Koryo.

Whereas the inclusion of Koryo as a reference in unnecessary, there a few key characters who come back to forefront after disappearing into obscurity in the previous novels. In my last review I said that you may have been forgiven for forgetting that Genghis had a mother who was completely ignored throughout the second book. Well, another character has been completely ignored since she was born in the first book; Genghis’ sister, Temulun. One may think that Conn Iggulden does not like writing women into his books at this rate.

Anyway, the illusive sister reappears on page 61 only so that the readership can attempt to develop empathy towards her because she is savagely raped and killed some one hundred plus pages later. It’s crazy if the desired effect is for us to care, and I can imagine this is the only reason it’s in here as the sister has no historical relevance and her death didn’t cause Genghis to kill loads more people. It does, however, give his illusive mother a little bit more screen time as she makes another cameo appearance to be upset about another one of her children being killed.

There are a few other small issues regarding the repetition of names and some repeated information on the same page but it is inconsequential versus the author’s complete disregard of his own fictional characters. This is reaffirmed as I didn’t write anything about the last half of the 503 page book because the majority of it is actually well written. My main criticism is that it is a little dull and predictable and this highlights issues with the writer. He clearly had a plan towards certain historical events that he wanted to write about and has had to put in the boring bits to join up the main events of the story. These differentials should be invisible to the reader, however the fact that they are glaringly noticeable worsened what could have been quite a good story.

Bones of the Hills by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2008. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Conn Iggulden - Lords of the Bow

Moving on to the second book in the series and we are now following the full life of Genghis Khan after having a glimpse into his sort of unknown, and completely fictionalised to the point of obscurity, childhood.

The first thing I noticed is that when Temujin decided to change his name to Genghis, lord of the grass, he has a complete personality transplant. I was expecting to read about the coming of the man who founded the Mongol empire but obviously skipping that bit made more sense to the author. We never see the improbable struggle of the young boy becoming a leader who cared so much about his own family that he put himself through pain and suffering. We just see the ruthless Khan of the Mongols who strikes down his enemies, and anyone else who even hints at personally slighting his borderline friends.

So yeah, I thought that the main character was a twat so I was prevented from even trying to enjoy the story. However, it didn’t stop me from identifying the continual writing style I don’t like. During the first chapter we are introduced to Kokchu, the clearly evil Sharman who only has loyalty to himself. In case you couldn’t tell he was evil from the first things he says, we are outright told he has evil intentions in the narrative.

There are continual writing style issues throughout the book which is at least consistent with Wolf of the Plains. The simple interactions between two characters get confused really easily throughout. There is no structure to the narrative at all and it’s made even worse when more than two characters are involved. I gave up trying to follow the interactions in the end and just went with where I thought the conversations were going.

Also, I’m not sure of the historic value behind the work and while I understand that Genghis was a bit of war monger, would he really think that after slaughtering over 90,000 innocent people that the Chinese leaders simply wouldn’t care? I really did think that these books would portray Genghis as a secretly decent guy. The first book went towards this by showing how he struggled against adversity to save his people from Chinese oppression, however after doing so, he decides to kill EVERYONE. It’s a little jarring.

There are several other small issues I have with the 456 page sequel. On page 195 it is really hard to work out who is talking. On page 228, one of the characters, Ho-Sa is either going back to his people or staying with the Mongols. If this was meant to be a sort of cliff hanger, then it is utilising a device that hadn’t yet appeared in the series and is completely out of sync with the rest of the book. If not, it is just another example of bad writing. On page 266, three different characters are referred to as ‘father.’ I signed up for a work of fiction, not a puzzle solving exercise.

The only notable problem remaining is that of disappearing characters. The red bird, which was a symbol of coming of age and presumably reclaimed from Eeluk at the end of Wolf of the Plains, makes a reappearance on page 298 and has presumably been there the whole time. The amount of pointless details the book goes into and useless exposition, you would think they would mention some of the time Genghis spends with the bird, especially seeing as it was apparently so important to him in the first place.

Also, did you know that Genghis has a mother? You could be forgiven for thinking he didn’t as she mysteriously disappears for most of the book but only after coming across as a key character in the early pages when she opposes Kokchu’s Shaman approach. It seems to start a plot line and then abandons it for no reason.

There are a load of others things I noticed but the above and the more irritating aspects. What really got me is where the first book is about a period of Genghis’s life that is little-known, his conquest of China is well documented so I would have expected the book to focus more on developing the characters, making them likable and perhaps investigating their personal interactions more. It feels like a very lazy book, especially with the thoughtless construction of the narrative.

Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2008. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Conn Iggulden - Wolf of the Plains

Ages and ages ago, I bought a book in W. H. Smith at a service station. This book was not Wolf of the Plains. It was Empire of Silver and I picked it up from my bookshelf about three months ago as the next reading project. However, when I opened it up, I discovered that it was the fourth book in a series of which Wolf of the Plains is the first, so naturally I had to buy the other three in order to read Empire of Silver. So a one book project became a five book project. Oops.

The Conqueror series follows the life of Genghis Khan and how he became the fearsome conqueror who build the Mongol Empire and slaughtered a load of people. Kind of like Hitler without prejudice.

It didn’t take long to come up with loads of criticisms, mainly relating to the way the prose is written. I don’t know if this is because I’ve spent the last six months in the Game of Thrones world, but when I got to chapter three, I noticed that the perspectives change about three times on the same page and sometimes within the same paragraph. No warning is given for this change either.

I’m not just basing this on my Game of Thrones experience either. Back when I was learning how to write, 

I was told on more than one occasion that certain parts of my writing were weak because of the change in perspective and that it showed a lack of control. If this is true, it certainly didn’t matter to Conn’s publisher as the story uses loads of perspectives that change throughout the book. If four people are having a conversation, Conn will switch between them giving the readers a sample of what each of them is thinking.

I carried on being annoyed by the way the story was written. The overzealous switching of perspectives is used on several occasions to let us know that a certain character is thinking something evil. This level of overshadowing is the equivalent of my boss telling me I’m going to be fired in a month’s time. I know it’s going to happen but there is nothing I can do to stop it.

By page 150 of the 455 page series opener, I honestly thought that Conn must think his target audience have absolutely no intelligence whatsoever and are not interested in applying any kind of thought to his prose. This is displayed by the constant and obvious overshadowing and underlining of previous incidents. It was one step above having annotated notes at the bottom of the page such as, ‘This is the character from the previous page who pushed Temujin into a pile of manure. He is going to get his shit fucked up later when Temujin kicks his ass!’

Also, the dialogue breaks were a little non-standard. One character would make an action or gesture in one paragraph and then have dialogue in the next. I had to do a double take a few times to work out who was actually speaking. One character would have some dialogue and then the other character would have an action which appears to be an acknowledgement of the dialogue and then this same character responds with their dialogue in the next paragraph. There are too many breaks and it makes the narrative very disjointed in places. In addition, if I have to do a double take to figure out who is talking then the characterisation through dialogue is clearly weak as well.

The last thing that really fucked me off massively was the use of Deus Ex Machina. To be honest I’m not the best at picking up on this sort of stuff but this one was horrendous and factors in the above perspective thing.

Temujin is captured by his old tribe and thrown into a hole to be executed. There is no way for him to escape. However, fortunately in the chapter previous, a character called Arslan, who swore an oath to Temujin’s father, just happens to turn up at the camp and take an instant dislike to the tribe’s new leader. So it was really fortunate that Arslan is there to spring Temujin out of his hole and help him escape. It’s almost worse than the ‘because I said so,’ approach to fiction taken by  Stephen King in the Dark Tower series, although, on reflection, I think this is worse as King’s was a little bit tongue in cheek.

Now, I know what some of you may be thinking; ‘You said Wolf of the Plains was based on the life of Genghis Khan. Surely this must have been based on real events?’ However, I have done my research! Well, that’s not strictly true but I did read the author’s Afterword where he outlines the real-life events that inspired his work of fiction. He makes no mention of this Arslan character and simply states that Temujin escaped. It would have been much more plausible for Basan to have helped him and I’m not sure why this Arslan character has been thrown into the fray anyway, other than to rescue Temujin from the hole.

I will most likely go on and read the rest of the story as it does have some good bits and will, at the very least, teach me a little bit about the Mongol Empire. I’m sure pretty sure I’ll find some new shit to piss me off in the next book. Watch this space.

Wolf of the Plains by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2007. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)