WyrmeWeald: Bloodhoney by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell (Doubleday, HB, £14.99 – OUT NOW)
The second book in this trilogy, and the follow-up to 2010’s WyrmeWeald: Returner’s Wealth, Bloodhoney is, in short, an astounding achievement. When you consider that the market for this series is the lucrative Young Adult / Teen sector, it is credit to the authors and the publisher that a book of such genre sophistication has been released.
So if you don’t know about this series, here is a quick summary: The WyrmeWeald of the title is a dustbowl realm of unspecified location (a future Earth/ Another planet?) where dragons (Wyrmes) fly free and the humans scrap for an existence beneath them. The style is Fantasy-Western (you’ve not read many of them, I’m guessing…?! No, it’s not like Bravestarr!) and the social structure of this world is what gives the series its grounding. You have the Kith, who are your standard frontier-esque folk, hardy hunters and settlers; then you have Kin, who are human orphans who have been ‘adopted’ by WhiteWyrmes (a lithe, white breed of dragon) to be their symbiotic rider / companion. And then you have the Keld, who are the depraved element of this society – cannibals, bandits, and other such unsavoury types.
The first book, Returner’s Wealth, told the story of young Micah, a kith who had set out into the Weald in search of his ‘Returner’s Wealth’ (ie: his fortune). He fell foul of a WhiteWyrme & kin, and was rescued by Eli Halfwinter, a seasoned kith traveller. Micah and Eli’s adventure leads them through the Weald, and takes in a rogue band of hunters, a particularly unpleasant keld mistress called Redmyrtle, and the kin who injured Micah, Thrace, who the young sap falls for heavily (quite the forgiving sort, is our Micah…)
So, Bloodhoney picks up straight from the last book. The keld council have sent an assassin (the winter caller) after Micah, Eli & Thrace (now separated from her dragon, after she and Micah got… intimate towards the end of the last book; the dragons have a keen sense of smell that detects the intimacy of kith…). Thrace yearns to be reunited with her wyrme, Aseel, whilst Micah simply yearns for Thrace. The three of them hole up in Eli’s winter den to see out the fullwinter (blizzards & frost!). But the winter caller has their scent and is dogged in his determination…
Eventually Micah and Eli split from Thrace, and their journey takes them to Deephome, a kith settlement hidden deep in a valley. Presided over by a self-appointed prophet, Brother Kilian, Deephome appears to be a safe haven against the wild of the Weald, albeit a religious compound of sorts, with lots of strange practices and rituals, like a blood letting…
Alongside Micah and Eli’s strand, Thrace is slightly in the narrative shadow. When she does reappear, it is worth the wait. There is great subplot with a young girl called Hepzibar (who Thrace, Eli and Micah rescued from Redmyrtle at the end of the last book) who is adopted as kin by an equally young whitewyrme, Asa. It is a touching plot development and it is going to be intriguing to see where the authors take Hepzibar and Asa, in the shadow of Thrace and Aseel.
And if you’re wondering what the title, Bloodhoney, refers to, it is the name of a drink made from human blood…
I initially thought that when Micah and Eli stopped at Deephome that the book had reached a cosy impasse – but there is a run of about fifty to a hundred pages where the genius of the plotting shines through. It is so true to the world that Stewart and Riddell have created, yet utterly bleak and dark in its resolution. Some of the sequences the chaps have conjured for this book are so brutal and bloody, it is a credit to the publisher that they made it to the public (there is some serious blood spilt in the first chapter alone). You need that sense of danger to appreciate the peril Micah and Eli, and to a lesser extent, Thrace, are in. This is a cruel world they live in and live is cheap, and the keld are as depraved a fictional creation as I have read, quite possibly since a Clive Barker book (and that is a high compliment indeed!). The showdown near the end with the winter caller (a superb mute villain – reminding me of a mixture of Halloween‘s Michael Myers and Leather Face from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is a fantastically structured sequence, and not what I was expecting at all; shockingly violent and brutal, but beguiling and balletic. In fact, that is what this book delivers constantly – superbly engineered surprises.
Returner’s Wealth was a great book, but Bloodhoney raises the bar. The finale sets up the next book with a tantalising challenge: top this.
Andy “Kith” Jamieson, Editor
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