Fantasy immersive for unforgettable journey

Poc! First shock reading: language. Quite delectable. My tail literary esthete enamored of beautiful words and beautiful turns of phrase of joy wriggles. A register of language supported, so, but never bombastic, but never with élongées amphigoric phrases. A maritime lexical field and controlled warrior. And borrowing from Old French, and then lots of Italianisms ... All this to facilitate the immersion of the player in a realistic world and insolently steeped Italian Renaissance period. We almost expect to meet, at the turn of the dark corridors of the House Ducatore, the great figures of the time: a Petrarch, Michelangelo, Machiavelli called a Ciudalia ... And, would not it not the image torn from a distant Florence? Let. JP JAWORSKI is Professor of Literature. This may explain the richness of his style and certainly the few legitimate winks tasty aeil his parents which he punctuates his novel. The richness of its style? Actually, no. Since in Winning the War, all the credit goes to the narrator of the story, the vile and dreadful Don Benvenuto (whose smile looks a bit like that of Pat, you may have noticed ...), and assassin swordsman of trade to the verb as ornate as the handling of his daggers is deadly. And there, at the outset, the reader wince a little ... Because for a scoundrel who was raised in the slums of his city before embarking on a career soldier, the guy writes damn good ... Besides, it's fun, because it has an attention to detail that borders on obsession. His painter's eye, certainly. In any case, his descriptions evoke by their meticulousness, their accuracy, their poetry, their length and sometimes, those more distant a HUGO or - let's be crazy - a GAUTIER (see: the first ten pages of Captain Sunder). Consequence: the prose of Winning the war does not serve us without some pretty comical neighborhoods where our assassin in action while busily deployment of weapons in a bloody duel passes where he plays his life, eradicates head the clatter of blades to suddenly lost in contemplation of the miraculous particularly ornate roof such rotunda or ébaubir front frame so powerfully glazed mullion a gable window ... I caricature? Barely. Descriptions that seem so sometimes too invasive, and slowing the pace of some scenes of action, at the expense of spontaneity.

But I am wrong language. Except for those minor details, except wandering a boring run of some chapters (I think particularly "Exile"), and despite a sometimes hesitant narrative construction due to the damn narration in the first person - focus internal which necessarily restricts the field of view ... the writer is well aware, however, and will even be amused: See: reflection of Don Benvenuto, the narrator, in this P434 - Winning the War is definitely a fantasy novel as one would like to read more often, which establishes the kind of a very pretty pedestal giving it all its nobility.

Amid the colorful cast of characters that pass through the novel, three figures prevail and permanently mark the reader: that of Don Benvenuto first, killer cantankerous and formidable, opinionated but faithful, personality more complex than its beautiful broken face wants to let it show, killer and prodigal prodigy whose criminal exploits pérenniseront legend. Then Celle, Don Ducatore, master games with his skills from Machiavelli, who hatched covertly impossible intrigues and conspiracies to run morbid supremacy of power, which moves one by one on the political chessboard of the old kingdom of his army pawns until early victory with a brilliant all ... Machiavellian. This, finally, of Ciudalia, the dream city, only faithful to caeur our narrator, single carrier secret promises and reassuring landmarks, fascinating city that bewitches its people by submitting to the yoke of its Mediterranean beauty, its pepper cosmopolitanism and sophistication of its cultural life.

There is magic in this novel. Magic, with real magicians. There is also barbaric. Even the elves. And a princess minx autoglotte we would be pleased to leave a distributor of automatic slaps. There are also strong themes that support the complex web of intrigue: that, to name it, the master / slave relationship characterizing the relationship of Don Benvenuto and Podesta Ducatore, relationship can be inherited from the distant submission of valet to his master in the Italian comedy ... Go figure.

In short, all combine to make reading Winning the War a moment of total immersion. Language is tasty. The dialogues, steeped in a sly intelligence. The plot does not spare its share of twists. Our narrator is quite exquisite in its impassive cruelty, quite comical in his scathing replicas. And did a few laps and sometimes invasive systematic descriptions, our journey into the regions of the Old Kingdom friserait the delicate hem Paradise player, well above the hells where belch M., L .... In short, once Winning the War closed, one can not help but say that Sir JAWORSKI with this first novel, set the bar high ... And damn waiting below with a legitimate impatience ...