When I found out Clemens was starting a new fantasy series, I was very excited. I’d read his Banned and the Banished series and loved it. The first volume of The Godslayer Chronicles almost lived up to my very high expectations.
The basic premise of Godslayer is a fairly simple one: a man, a former knight of one of the gods witnesses, and is the sole survivor of the slayer on another god, goddess actually. Of course, he gets blamed for it. As she dies in his arms, she imbues him with the power of her blood, including a demon which pops out of his chest to defend him – once he’s broken a bone to release it.
At least two other themes are right out of the Banned series: a group of outcasts struggling against the various bad and misdirected faction, and a young, naive female seems to be the key to the struggle.
What is very interesting about the new series, is the magic. The gods literally walk the earth and have mortal attendants. These attendants collect their various humors (fluids): blood, tears, sweat, feces, urine, semen/menstrual discharge, phlegm and saliva. These humors are the font of magic in the world. Knowing the aspect (earth, air, fire or water) of a god and having the correct humors an alchemist can create magic effects, or imbue items with magic.
One thing that got on my nerves for some reason is the random vocabulary or usage changes. For example the 4 elements are air, water, fire and loam. What’s the point of replacing one of them with a new word? Another example, a tree which is clearly a Banyan tree is called by a made up word, but (so far at least) no other species of trees have been renamed. Lastly, an alphabet for the ancient artificial language which is simply a drop in replacement for the Roman alphabet.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love language flavor, but if you are going to do it, do it right and not half-assed like this. I’m not saying he has to go into Tolkien-esque linguistical overdrive, but at least but a little more effort in, or trim out the goofy stuff like inexplicably replacing one word of a set of terms and not the rest.
For all my gripes, I enjoyed the book a great deal, and am very much looking forward to the next installment. Obviously, as part of a series, the book necessarily ends with much unresolved, but there is not a serious cliffhanger that we have to wait a year or two to learn the resolution of.
I think if Clemens would tighten up a few aspects of his writing and world-building he could write some tremendously good fantasy, but as it stands I can’t see Godslayer as being more than very good – though gripping to be sure.
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