Win the war or lose ...

"Winning the War" won me over and made me angry. Jean-Philippe Jaworski is a talented writer, a brilliant scholar, but his artistic approach is sometimes on the verge of literary posture, literary posture which can easily be confused with outright pretension.

The narrative style is of a rare elegance, but often pompous and puffy. At first it's so well done that it's fun. After a few hundred pages, it's tiring.
The dialogues are good, the vocabulary is rich, sought, but the book is full of long descriptions whose usefulness is questionable. The author tries to sell us the good narrator painter's eye, and he seized this pretext to inflict all the details that surround acute, but it was necessary to show us the entire length? Was it really worth spending a long paragraph to the architecture of "Ciudalia view of the roofs" in the middle of an incredible escape? This is humor? If it is, it is a further demonstration of the limits of comic repetition. For those who hate the endless descriptions, this book may be experienced as a long ordeal. (They always the possibility to read diagonally, you tell me.)

The narration is lively and pleasant, but suffers long lengths (long walk to escape Ciudalia is one example among many others) and some awkwardness, as too long passage in slang or complacent asides to the narrator the reader, sewn with white thread.
I found also quite immature passages without transition from polished prose to filthy dialogues and more generally the desire to shock the reader with free effects.

The universe is very rich, deliberately nebulous, but not final so original than that. In the background we recognize the old Italian republics. Other crops are also all based on those of our past, whether monarchies or medieval caliphate.
However, we can welcome the vision of the policy issued by the author, who is not lacking in salt (and truth, unfortunately).
The way he figures we present deceitful, cruel and racist is very fine. The spread of the elf when Don Benvenuto question the whether the caller is or is not a "wog" is hilarious.
It should also recognize that humor is one of the highlights of the story, black humor, sometimes bawdy, often gratifying.

If the characters are a nice depth (although the author has a tendency to confuse psychology and psychoanalysis), darkness and the pervasive cynicism end up giving a certain artificiality to the story. In this context, the relentlessness that makes Jean-Philippe Jaworski to wreck his main character is both cruel, funny and original. Cruel because you have to be a masochist to inflict such torment his narrator. Funny because after all this Don Benvenuto is a disreputable character and see it's pretty funny taste. Original because the way the author likes to do the opposite of clichés is always surprising. In a classic tale of fantasy, when the hero is about to being caught in an awkward position or to be damaging the portrait, there is always something to save his bet. In this case, miracles do not exist! It is a demonstration of Murphy's Law. This gives the story side to realistic and comical (burlesque limit) very friendly but at the amateur classic fantasy this can cause a lot of frustration ...
The book is very long (almost 1000 pages in pocket), yet, once closed the book you realize that no problem could be summarized in one or two layers, and that this adventure is nothing astounding in outline.
We can also discuss the absence of any romantic dimension to this story, cynicism has still limitations. But hey it's the choice of the author and is probably not a coincidence that the hero chooses at one point to promote its lifeline to his love when a magician online offers to improve the one of the two. It is certainly also not a coincidence if the female is so retracted the story and if the Podesta eventually loose the beautiful daughter of his mentor a scathing "you are a woman." It's quite fun actually, kindly provided to read between the lines.

Despite my criticisms over its length and descriptions, this picaresque narrative is steeped in quality and I finally feel a growing fascination with the adventures of the narrator, thanks to a successful conclusion. The last hundred pages are cleared descriptive slag and we began to dream of a book that would have been the same restraint and the same efficiency from start to finish.
The book contains indeed many other absolutely remarkable passages (one in which the narrator explains why he does not like funerals is one of them). Passages of the correctness can also be cited in which the author describes the painting, the scenes of the whole very well rendered shares, or the part of the story in which wanton and charismatic elves speak in verse very relaxed and natural.

To conclude, I feel like a warm water tap: I'm very mixed. Winning the War is a book of Fantasy in atypical literary ambition, written with talent, dotted with set pieces and memorable projections, which I blame a lack of humility and brevity.
With a little more restraint in literary flights, pruning the superfluous, this book could sustain without blushing comparison with Anglo Saxon greatest authors of the genre, those who do not write to impress but to distract her.
In the end it is a brilliant but pompous book, but jubilant swelling. I feel a bit lonely face dozens of comments in favor of the book, but it really is a book too busy, so I'm getting the spokesperson for all those who have not been able to finish it.

A final word on the technical quality of the book: Folio SF is definitely the worst paperback of all time. Besides the rather questionable coverage, quality of printing is really deplorable. Who said "as usual"?