Bidet Ice

Bidet Ice

Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton

Nothing ruins the world like an impending ice age. (It certainly ruins the hell out of the Summer Olympics.) One day you're kicking it, lounging in a Hannah Montana beach chair, sand and crab gristle nestling between your toes, the sun's warm kiss tickling your face, an alcoholic cherry Slurpee loosening your inhibitions, while you obsessively contemplate whether you have volcano nipples. And the next day you're carrying around Louie-Bloo Raspberry Otter Pops in your shorts while your morning commute consists of bobsledding to work. And you forgot your brakeman.

Soon everything turns whiter than the inside of a bottle of Liquid Paper, the Matterhorn takes up residence in your front yard, a gaggle of Sherpas adorning the summit like a Christmas tree angel in crampons, and Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream cones lose their yummy appeal. And, if that's not bad enough, getting turned into an unwilling Popsicle just might kill you. As well as your family, and your pets. And your pet's fleas. Your neighbors, too. And their families, and pets, and acquaintances. And the cute girl down the street; the one you've had a crush on since the fifth grade, but never opened up to. (Now's the time, Casanova. Comb those unruly eyebrows, and make that love connection.) To make a long paragraph longer, essentially everyone's deader than Gary Coleman's career. (If you want to say, What you talking about, Willis? here, feel free. I won't mock you. Much.)

Which leaves us with this: glaciers aren't fun, and impending extinction ranks somewhere between the last Transformer movie and the U.S. Congress on the Suck-A-Tron scale. So all you can do is grab your parka, stock up on packages of freeze-dried Beef Stroganoff, and hope that you'll see the Thaw.

Because Winter is coming.

Scratch that; wrong series. Apologize, Mr. Martin.

Let's reset.

Because The Freeze is coming. Hurry, you don't want to be caught outside, in the cold, forced to live in disease-infested refugee camps, a miserable frozen death constantly beckoning, lurking within the chill. Safety awaits—a warm bed and food—inside the walls of Villjamur.

If you could only get inside.

I'm going to get positively gushy about Nights of Villjamur. So consider yourself warned; employ slickers if you have to, drool may fly. Bold and outrageous claims will be made; none of them substantiated. None of them supported. Because the Nights of Villjamur is self-evident in its awesomeness. If my newly formed man-crush on author Mark Charan Newton frightens you, hit that back button thingy up top; my rejection will remain between you and Internet Explorer. I'll bask in the warmth of his excellence alone.

So what is Nights of Villjamur? It's foul political schemes, and even fouler human beings; it's heroism and nightmarish monsters, deadly battles and the undead in battle; it's young love and wicked betrayal, deceit and surprise. It's the privy, loo, latrine and that crazy French bidet thing. (Okay, that last statement is a lie. I just wanted to type bidet. It's so fun.)

Both broad in scope and sufficiently detailed, Nights of Villjamur succeeds—like many of the best modern epic fantasy series—because of its adult themes and shrewd political intrigue. There are Machiavellian political shadow games at work here; evil conspires behind the scenes, it does not show its face brazenly. And this is not Dark Lord of the Dead Want To Destroy The World type of evil. This is Screwed-Up, Greedy Human type of evil. It's the evil we see in real people, the evil featured on the evening news, encapsulated in a grainy mug-shot or lurid paparazzi photo.

Newton refuses to work on a strict good-evil dichotomy; the characters are flawed, psychologically and intellectually; similar to the characters we see in Joe Abercrombie's oeuvre minus the outright nihilism. There is an introspective quality to the characters, much like K.J. Parker's books in which wits is the defining weapon. But if there is one author Newton shows the most similarity to, it's George R.R. Martin. Now Nights of Villjamur doesn't have nearly the dramatic impact of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, but it's in respectable spitting distance. Like llama spitting close. So if you're looking for an adult epic fantasy to tide you over until Martin's next volume, this novel should definitely make your shortlist.

Newton's language is beautiful and refreshing; his word choice at times is strikingly unique, experimental and genre-pushing. It's reminiscent of R. Scott Bakker erudite and poetical prose. Which is even more unbelievable considering Newton's in his twenties. There's a level of thought and stylistic refinement in the novel that one should only realistically expect from a much more mature author, one that's semi-retired, is married to one of the Golden Girls, and likes to pot azaleas in his free time.

Now here is where I'm going to go off the tracks, and write something really crazy. Something like: On promise alone, Mark Charan Newton may be the best of the new generation of fantasists. Better than Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, and Peter Brett. Time will only tell. Maybe we'll even know by the time this ice age is over.

Final Grade: 91 out of 100

About the Author

Computer geek, mathematician, philosopher, blogger. Happily married, father of one. Always exhausted.

hey men, would you go to these seminars?

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