Review: Lamentation by Ken Scholes

Lamentation by Ken Scholes

Ken Scholes is best-known for his short stories, but Lamentation proves that he can paint on a much broader canvas.

The first in a projected five-book Psalms of Isaak series, Lamentation begins with the destruction of Windwir, the glorious urban seat of Androfrancine learning and achievement. A gypsy king, a noble consort, a mysterious fisherman, and a young acolyte all witness the city’s cataclysmic downfall, and the aftermath of political and religious intrigue which follows unfolds through the eyes of these four vividly drawn characters.

Religious symbolism pervades Lamentation, as can indeed be surmised even from its title. The Androfrancine Order looks to a Pope for leadership, and the monastic mentality of learning serves as one of the Order’s highest goals. Like the Papacy of our own world, though, the Androfrancines inevitably play a large role in the politics of the “Named Lands” where the novel is set. Resonances of the “Western Schism” of our own fourteenth and fifteenth centuries echo throughout the novel’s pages. The book’s religious overtones shouldn’t discourage readers, as Lamentation is at its core a Machiavellian drama.

At first glance, the world of Lamentation seems built from the stuff of traditional fantasy. Gypsy kings and overseers ride across the Named Lands’ plains and forests; “magicked” scouts travel unseen; and swordplay marks the preferred form of battle. Yet elements of steampunk and post-apocalyptic fiction lurk just below this traditional veneer. Mechanical birds, stuffed with gears and copper wires, deliver messages among the land’s nobles, and robots roam the world. Called mechoservators in Androfrancine parliance, these robots were rediscovered and reconstructed from an ancient technology. Indeed, one of these mechoservators, Isaak, serves as the novel’s McGuffin, driving the story forward. These mechanical devices, along with allusions to a disastrous “Time of Laughing Madness”, lend the novel a post-apocalyptic feel.

The main strength of Scholes’s writing lies in his ability to fashion complex characters and intimate scenes of interaction. While Lamentation features a few token battles expected in a fantasy novel, the real action unfolds in the tents, mamanors, and meeting houses in well-crafted dialogues between just two or three characters. Even in the midst of all the political scheming and machinations, the human element is rarely overshadowed. Each of the four protagonists undergoes at least one profound transformation during the novel’s course. While some of these developments are expected and easily anticipated, others are not. What at first appears as a black-and-white conflict soon dissolves into swirling shades of gray.

The novel’s intense intimacy comes at a price. The world of Lamentation does not feel as “lived-in” as a fantasy world should. We are told often of the Named Lands’ rich history, but we are seldom shown it. Outside the four main characters and a handful of supporting roles, we don’t encounter many everyday folk, villagers, farmers, or the like. After all, the world’s largest city suffers desolation in the book’s opening pages.

Like a Shakespearean play, however, Lamentation is so strong in its portrayal of basic human character that any such shortcomings are but trifles.