"Not even death" is not "winning the war": it has neither the cheeky style or traditional heroic figures or decoration after all quite familiar to any fan of Fantasy.
This is the first feat of JPJ: not to have taken the easy and friendly pressure of his readers who would well helpings tour this good Old Kingdom as it remains to say on the subject.
And it is precisely by pure fidelity to Dad Benvenuto I threw myself into this adventure Celtic. It was not originally an imagination that reminded me a lot and, had it been written by someone else, I would have easily spent my turn.
Although took me to ignore my prejudices: Not even death is mesmerizing, dreamlike, dense, clear wish. We plunge with delight into a Celtic universe where the sacred and the profane, the rational and the supernatural, are not worlds apart but collide, overlap, meet.
The narrative style answers and echoes this world or rub "code of the warrior", chivalrous values, intrigues "political" and magic and dreams by digressions of incessant back and forth between different chronologies of events. A mysterious allusion unnoticed causes some pages later a jubilant revelation to the reader because, slowly, piece by piece, the author allows him to piece together the puzzle of this masterful prologue.
It was a gamble, but succeeded thanks to the mastery of the author and his style of qualities that makes him the very end of this first volume of the loop and pose a framework attractive to this trilogy.
The last pages are thus a deliverance and a reward for it must be said, but not out is a demanding reading not to put all hands.
It's a bit cool kiss the second effect: once the book is closed, we remain inhabited, pensive, like levitating between dream and reality.
After Janua Vera and Winning the War, I was Jaworsphile. Since Down but not out, I became Jaworskinomane.
