Official Review: Ergin the Elf by Jack Logan

[David Dawson]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Ergin the Elf" by Jack Logan.]

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Ergin the Elf portrays the events of a political uprising in an elf world, through the stories of various important figures in that uprising, most especially the eponymous Ergin. It is a short novel, consisting as it does of a prologue (slightly irritatingly entitled The Icebreaker) and 12 chapters. The reader is initially introduced to Ergin as just an ordinary, likeable elf, albeit one with a yearning for a simpler time. The corruption endemic in elf society eventually leads to an uprising, co-ordinated and spearheaded by Ergin and his friends, most notably Sholak and Geggegret. Key to the novel is the insistence of Sholak in particular upon using peaceful means, and only peaceful means, to overthrow the evil Undakka's regime.

There really is no joy in writing a negative review. Anyone who has completed a novel, let alone had the courage and determination to publish it, deserves better than to have it picked over on the internet by someone who has done neither. Unfortunately there is a lot wrong with this book.

My reading of fantasy has not extended much beyond those books that have seeped into the mainstream (Tolkein, Martin etc.), and - I suspect like many people - I am often deterred by the "Borg son of Horg, of the Kantethin's on the Secret Isle of Dularrei" mythology that surrounds the books. It is very difficult to successfully create a fantastical world without it seeming a little, well, Dungeons and Dragons-y. Arguably that is a problem that does permeate Tolkein's work, as well as that of lesser fantasy writers. It is difficult to make up names and places and for them not to sound a bit silly. Sadly, Jack Logan appears a little too fond of his own world, so the reader has to endure repeated similes involving creatures from his mind. This book is a considerable feat of creativity, unfortunately Logan is a little too keen to demonstrate how rich his imagination is to the reader.

While that flaw is endemic to the novel (a sceptic might say to the genre), some of the flaws in the book are far more readily correctable. While deploying his elvish language in speech, Logan often glosses the words he has used immediately afterwards, as in the sentence "My dear Bashwar (which is an elf saying for very good friend)..." It is an excellent example of the occasional importance of grammar. Without square brackets, or moving the definition out of the speech marks, Logan is having his characters translate their own colloquialisms.

The transitions between paragraphs are sometimes horrible: "A change of scene"; "One final point"; "So six months past". They are partly attributable to the conversational style the author often adopts. On several occasions he begins explanations with the phrase "you might ask", but the direct addresses to the reader never quite work.

As rich as the world created is, from time to time the book trips over its own logic. At one point we are told "one season and three halves" are passed. Surely, unless it is established elsewhere what a half is, that simply means two and a half seasons?

There are other instances of bad writing. The reader is told of Ergin's "beautifully brewed waves of laughter"; waves are not brewed. At one point during dialogue a sentence begins with "At the end of the day", which seems more the purview of football mangers than elves. Two pages from the end of the novel a character disappears into space, which would have been fine had the elves' ability to travel in space been clearly established at any prior point in the novel.

The allegory is scarcely subtle, the politics hardly nuanced. And yet it is in that politics that, for me, the novel achieved partial redemption. The ideology underpinning Ergin's rebellion is a slightly wishy-washy anti-totalitarianism, mixed with a critique of capitalism that seems founded more on the sense that money cannot bring happiness than on any economic analysis. Nevertheless, as nebulous as they may be, there are ideas in this novel. There is a heart and there is a conscience. At times Logan touches upon really interesting things, whether the despair of Nelly who is unable to tell his beloved Mother he works for the secret service, or the salient points about the banality of evil and the (very powerful) argument that democracy must be comprised of more than voting.

Irrespective of the technical flaws, I am therefore giving Ergin the Elf 2 out of 4 stars, partially as an acknowledgement that I am far from a fantasy buff and should not be too harsh about the problems with the novel that are actually problems with the whole genre, but primarily because any book that is willing to pursue ideas and to wear its big heart on its sleeve deserves credit for doing so.

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[Timea]

I must say, you wrote a great (negative) review, it is not too harsh, you are to the point and give examples to everything you say. Such criticism, I believe should be constructive to everyone who reads this review.