"Beyond the Gap", Harry Turtledove

Beyond the Gap

Harry Turtledove takes us on another adventure of alternative fantasy in "Beyond the Gap", the first in his Opening of the World trilogy. I say "alternative" fantasy because unlike most fantasy books, this one deviates from the genre norms a bit - but that's Turtledove for you.

"Beyond the Gap" is set in a bitterly cold, mountainous land of what we would recognize as pre-Christian Scandinavia. To the north is the ages-old and gigantic Glacier, which has served as an impenetrable boundary since time immemorial. Now, however, the Glacier has started to melt, opening the way to the uncharted lands of the North. What lies beyond the Gap?

Turtledove's band of adventurers - a nobleman, his venomous and promiscuous ex-wife, a mysterious traveler, a barbarian chieftain, a scholar and two sorcerers - make the journey to find out. As characters, they run the gamut from mildly interesting to outright dull. The nobleman (the novel's protagonist) carries the story well enough, but comes across as a world-weary noble barbarian, managing to hit two clichés at once. His ex-wife is a vicious and vindictive woman for the sake of being a vicious and vindictive woman. As a character and erstwhile antagonist, she's easy to dislike and easier to forget.

The strength of the novel is the world Turtledove creates, a romanticized (and yet, often accurate) vista of snow, ice, cold and frequent whiteout conditions.  There is barbarism (eating raw brains, rampant sex and a complete indifference to hygiene); there is an apparently pointless love story (but nicely done nonetheless, and might yet prove important in the books to come).

My main gripe with the book is that sometimes, the writing itself is unimaginative. Case in point: we're told that these barbarians, these Vikings, these warriors, approach sex the way they approach food - messily, greedily, with gusto and with no care for consequences. It makes perfect sense in their world, and so it should. Yet the writing is so sanitized, so clean, it's hard to fully appreciate the almost alien attitude. It's all tell, but no show. I'm not saying a Stephen King or Clive Barker level of gratuity was necessary, but Turtledove's use of sly nudges and winks to describe sex that is animalistic and primal (at best) stopped short of suspending my disbelief.

In other areas, though, Turtledove plunges. He writes colorfully of blood dribbling down chins as the barbarians eat raw kill, and of a fist-fight to the death (literally, until one of the participants dies). The unimaginably vast lands of snow and gargantuan mammoths almost - not fully, but almost - make you want to hit the gym and grow a beard. With two books in the series to go, things should get better.