Why Isn't Everyone Raving About KJ Parker? Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

At last, at last. A book that makes me want to run around shaking people by the shoulders, forcing them to buy it immediately.

KJ Parker is my discovery of the year. After picking up Prosper's Demon (a renaissance-inspired fantasy novella about demonic possession) I was blown away by the subtle richness of his writing and the sheer audacity of his storytelling. Get comfortable, the book seems to say as it shows you around its detailed world, but don't get too comfortable. 

Inside Man, the sequel, was honestly better. It flipped everything we thought we knew on it's head - never cheaply - and created a Dante-inspired hellscape and a philosophical, depressed demon we desperately wanted to trust. 

So then we get to Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, a full novel this time, and the first in a trilogy. We've moved on from Fantasy Renaissance Italy to Fantasy Ancient Rome, which after my summer of Roman reading suited me just fine. 

Orhan is an engineer who builds bridges and aqueducts for the city. His brilliance has seen him rise to a military title despite his race (and former slave status - this being a fantasy novel it also has elements of a race-flipped segregated America). He is more than happy doing fiddles and deals to keep the wheels in his department turning with minimal bureaucratic interference. When the army is ambushed Orhan returns to the city with his engineering team to find their leaders fled and the emperor out of action, making him the highest ranking officer left, with a city of trapped civilians to save.

What follows is a man throwing every idea he has at the project, in which he tries to fend off an army of a hundred-thousand and keep that many civilians fed, watered and calm. Newer, deadlier weapons are created (along with the moral ramifications of such creations), armour must be scavenged, arrows must be made. Where will the water come from when the aqueduct is destroyed by the enemy? Can rival city gangs work together when everyone's life is at stake? How can you pay workers when there is no material left to mint coins? What happens when the enemy starts to dig under the walls? And exactly who is this mysterious army that has dismantled an entire empire in days? 

The cast of characters Orhan has around him are as engaging as he is. There's a drunken but sensible politician, the genius carpenter girl, the barwoman who may be the best strategic thinker in the city after Orhan himself, the embarrassingly heroic bodyguard, and the competent right-hand man who is the slightly less-comical Captain Carrot to Orhan's Vimes/Vetenari combo. 

In fact it's Discworld's shadow that kept tripping me up. The humour and humanity of the book - not to mention the practical detail and common sense - took me back to Pratchett's writing. This would have been fine, except that Parker is a more cynical writer. When a scheme that would have been a 'punch the air' moment for Vimes happens here, it crumbles in the face of cold reality. 

That sense of wrong-footedness continues. As Orhan repeatedly assures us, he is a liar, a cheat, and almost certainly an unreliable narrator. Enemies usually end up being kinder to him than his allies and even whilst leading a city, he isn't one of them, but an oppressed interloper who isn't even allowed to drink at a public fountain on account of the colour of his skin. Naturally that makes the reader like him more, and trust him harder. 

When the enemy reveals himself, Orhan's loyalties are thrown into question, both personal and political. Even as the reader longs for him to fight for his city and for his friends, the enemy's point - why should he protect slavers and oppressors just because he's made himself useful to them? - makes a certain amount of sense. He is a traitor to himself, whichever side he comes down on.

That said, the book never becomes unbearably dark, and it's easy to get swept up in the excitement. I never expected to find raising a chain from the ocean floor wildly thrilling, or to gasp in shock during an argument about glue, but here we are. 

KJ Parker isn't a Happy Ever After author, but a realist. Much of the criticism I've seen about this book is about the ending, which plays with the reader's expectations. Having read his other books I recognised his style at work. As Orhan's role in the conflict ends, the lies he's told us unfurl, and we don't find out what happens with the siege because he isn't there to see it. This might have stung if it wasn't the first in a trilogy, following multiple characters, much as Prosper's Demon and Inside Man work best as two halves of a bigger story. 

But for all of Orhan's self-loathing, it's achingly hard to say goodbye to him.