VALADORY

The brave Rommods help other legendary races battle the fierce hordes of an evil wizard in this debut fantasy.

DeRobertis’ rousing epic begins when Sh’vrilil, envoy of Elamendonath, king of the Elves of the Aldemy Forest, arrives at the court of the Rommod King Genonsendorus. The official bears tidings of huge armies of Goblins from the Deep East commanded by the 1,000-year-old sorcerer Eolgamar. The Rommods, who are divided between squat, short hill-Rommods and skinny, taller forest-Rommods, are known for their warlike valor and agree to send an army to help the Elves. The lanky Sharborough Morganforal, the Rommods’ greatest general and adventurer, sets off on a journey with Sh’vrilil, his buddy Blanchard Windswallow, and a few other disposable Rommods ostensibly to bring news of the alliance to Elamendonath but really to travel the Middle-Earth–ish land of Valadory and get into scrapes with its sundry denizens. These include gold-crazed Dwarves obsessed with mead-drinking contests; Gnomes; molelike Dugglards, ruled by the one-eyed King Tolgarrilium the Repellent; Trolls; fire-breathing Demons; faeries; ghouls; shadowy amoeboids; various unclassified monsters; and Dorian Pictarian, who, alas, is no Wilde-an dandy but a demonic Elf hunter. Sharborough and company fight, parley, and piece together Eolgamar’s plan to orchestrate the Goblin hosts and bring perpetual winter by summoning the Ice Giant Bergelmer. Complicating things is Blanchard’s discovery of the magic sword Nragnrath, meant to slay the gods during Ragnarok, which can defeat any foe but also brings ruin to all who unsheathe it. The heroes split up, with Blanchard and Sh’vrilil going south to fight Goblins and Sharborough to the northern wastes to confront Eolgamar.

DeRobertis’ yarn sounds many Tolkien-esque motifs—a heroic quest, an apocalyptic war, an all-powerful but all-corrupting talisman, evil as mindless essentialism (Eolgamar never explains why he hates Elves so much when they seem a fairly agreeable lot)—and adds explicit elements of Norse and Greek mythology to the mix. His writing one-ups Tolkien with polysyllabic titles, archaic usages (sometimes muffed: A vassal would never address his liege as “Your liege”), and curlicued trash talk. (“You have come a long way to die. Know your bane is Fandoril!”). The novel’s action is unstinting as the characters fend off hellhounds after Ogres after harpies in fight scenes that are well choreographed and suspenseful, including a confrontation between Sharborough and a giant spider that turns into a white-knuckle chess match played out with soft sounds and slight tremors. The author has a good sense of military strategy and battlefield tactics, which gives the lengthy, set-piece combat sequences an absorbing intellectual dimension to go with their buckets of gore. (“As the fifth turned to face him, hissing with hate, he cut its sword arm off above the elbow. Then, as it screamed, he turned full circle and severed its other arm.”) In quieter passages—“each year when the Ice Giants were beaten back by the end of winter, faeries would awaken with the melting of snow and help usher in spring”—DeRobertis turns his story’s mythic sensibility into beguiling poetry. Sharborough makes an appealing protagonist, brave yet calculating—“It was always important to recognize one’s own mistakes,” he muses, “and equally important to hide them from those who followed”—and resolved to control his own fate.

An entertaining sword-and-sorcery fable with intriguing characters and cosmic gravitas.