Book Review: Malarkoi (2022) by Alex Pheby

Book Review

Malarkoi (2022)

by Alex Pheby

Book 2 Cities of the Weft Series

   I try to stay away from the "multi-volume" fantasy series world for a couple of reasons:  First, who has the time. Second, the idea of a fantasy author, a genre author, maintaining narrative momentum over a single volume is slight, the idea of a fantasy author being stylistically innovative, or even interesting, slighter.  Third, most fantasy stays in a pretty narrow groove that hasn't received an update since the dawn of human storytelling:  Magic, fantastic creatures, the hero's quest- you can move the furniture around the room and swap in different cultural influences, but all fantasy needs to be familiar to counter-balance all the extra explaining required of how magic works in this book, which creatures exist in this book, etc. 

  There are exceptions- Alex Pheby and his (projected) three volume Cities of the Weft series is one.  Marlon James and his Dark Star Trilogy would be another.  I was thrilled to pick up the hardback UK edition on a recent trip to London- the American edition has a place holder page over at Macmillan and there on questions on the internet about when Tor, the US publisher, is planning on releasing Malarkoi in the United States.  Malarkoi follows Mordew.

  Mordew tells the story of Nathan Treeves, a neglected street urchin living in Mordew, a gloomy city that appears to exist in some far-future, decades or centuries after the collapse of some version of the modern world.   What stands about both books- Mordew and Malarkoi, is that Pheby has actually managed to generate an interesting fantasy world.  You can count these creations on a single hand since the overwhelming majority of fantastical universes are based on one or more present or historical human mythology. 

  I believe that Pheby draws on Gormenghast Series by Mervyn Peake.  Published between 1946 and 1959, the Gormenghast books represent an alternative to the  Northern European mythological world of J.R.R. Tolkien, who was, of course, an early translator of the Icelandic Saga's into the English language.  This world, with it's elves, dwarves and hobbits represents the dominant strand of fantasy.  Peake, on the other hand, draws on worlds of human literature- Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson.  There is also a heavy dose of the gothic, similar to the influence it shows in non-gothic books like those by Jane Austen and the Bronte's.  In other words, this is a world of fantasy constructed by literature- I'm talking about the Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake- and Pheby is a successor in this world of alternative fantasy. 

   Unfortantely, discussing Malarkoi without the background of Mordew is pointless, and if you have read Mordew and not Malarkoi, any discussion of the plot of the latter would function as a spoiler.  But I did want to write to say that I think this fantasy series should be an exception for fans of literature who don't normally read fantasy.