The Barrow

By: Mark Smylie

Narrated by: Michael Page

When a small crew of scoundrels, would-be heroes, deviants, and ruffians discover a map that they believe will lead them to a fabled sword buried in the barrow of a long-dead wizard, they think they've struck it rich. But their hopes are dashed when the map turns out to be cursed and then is destroyed in a magical ritual. The loss of the map leaves them dreaming of what might have been, until they rediscover the map in a most unusual and unexpected place.

Stjepan Black-Heart, suspected murderer and renegade royal cartographer; Erim, a young woman masquerading as a man; Gilgwyr, brothel owner extraordinaire; Leigh, an exiled magus under an ignominious cloud; Godewyn Red-Hand, mercenary and troublemaker; Arduin Orwain, scion of a noble family brought low by scandal; and Arduin's sister, Annwyn, the beautiful cause of that scandal: together they form a cross-section of the Middle Kingdoms of the Known World, united by accident and dark design, on a quest that will either get them all in the history books or get them all killed.

©2014 Mark Smylie (P)2014 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Genuinely inspired, shockingly erotic, and completely fantastic." (John R. Fultz, author of Seven Sorcerers)

Not for the faint of heart...but a good story

Let me preface this by saying that I love the new genre of fantasy called the "anti-hero" (joe abercrombie is one of my favorite authors) and when I read the blurb for this I thought it would a story similar to that.

It is an it isn't. This story has more sex, more violence, and more treachery (if you can believe it!) that kept you guessing up until the end.

If you like dark fantasy give it a try, but as my title indicates this story is definitely not for the faint of heart!

Pretty Good Grimdark

The first half of the book is a bit lecherous and it's not that I find graphic sex scenes to be offensive, but the length of some of them just seemed kind of disruptive.

After the first half or so of the book, it becomes more of a typical gritty adventure.

The writing and character development are well done and the voice acting is excellent. I would recommend it to anyone looking for grimdark, but keep in mind it's very nsfw and has a few scenes that some might call misogynistic (but written in a way that fits the characters).

A little less rooster, a little more story

Let's get straight to it with the bad on this book. There is a ton of sex in this book, which is fine, I'm no prude but it doesn't add to the story at all. Instead, it provides a view into a fetish that killed the series for me. There are scenes involving reaching individual performance goals, as well as teams of individuals working independently to reach their own goals. In short, there is too much rooster in this book.

I won't buy the 2nd in the series.

The good!
Michael Page was excellent. I really can't say more. The characters had their own voices and they were distinct. 10 Stars out of 5.

The story, aside from it's frequent one on one meetings to tackle a performance related task, was not bad at all. I'd tag it like a prequel, with all of the oddities and weaknesses that a prequel has. This book successfully launched the story of Stjepan Black-Heart, and introduced Erim, who needed a lot more scene time. Erim spends so little time in the story, that ultimately at the end, when Mark tries to hand the series contract baton to Erim, that I was intrigued, but left thinking, "I should know more about this character...?" not knowing if that should be a question or not. The reveals that occur during and after the climax of the book are jarring due to the lack of build up.

Do I recommend this book?
No, not to any friend or family due to the excessive and unnecessary rooster time.

HOWEVER,
If you don't mind a lot of distraction, the story was fun, so go ham. I prefer less sexual intimacy in my dark fantasy books.

The biggest disappointment (Not a spoiler)
Erim is an interesting queer character (I hope I'm using that term right). She's attracted to women, but dresses like a man to dodge all the rules that women are required to follow. The interesting part about Erim, is how mysterious and capable she is. Unfortunately, she spends precious little time doing meaningful thing, so at the end I didn't feel like I knew her terribly well. Additionally, some of the events in the book centering on Erim end up conflicting with the ending, indicating that either Erim was forgotten, or was modified at the end to potentially have a bigger role in later books. Either way the implementation was awkward.

decent first novel a little too disturbing

I must start this review by saying that Mark Smylie has the potential to be a great author. He can create good character depth, write excellent fight scenes, and create an intricate plot but he does have some flaws. First, he likes the gruesomely disturbing scenes a bit too much, he lingers on a few almost pornographicly depraved sex scenes a bit too much. These scenes provide nothing for the novel unless to turn someone on if you like that sort of thing. I understand this is supposed to be a grimdark novel, but he simply goes over the top with it. The other problem with this book is the fact that his overall starting plot is a bit generic and almost seems like a dungeons and dragons theme. However, despite these shortcomings I must say Smylie has the potential to write novels with the likes of Abercrombie and Cook. I would recommend this book to read because it does have some of the more intriguing characters I have ever read about and was fairly enjoyable. Also, the second book in the series is coming out soon and I am planning to get it because I feel it could be a great second novel. Finally, the narrator did a good but unremarkable job, but it was very easy to tell the characters apart. This is why I gave him 4 stars.

loved it

If people would get past their inhibitions about sex, they would see a great story here and realize the the sex that is intertwined well throughout the story is there for a reason other than perversion.

Oh! it's a comic book.

Well this book was...interesting. I tried it out because I had previously enjoyed listening to this narrator, Michael Page. Page does a creditable job with odd material.

I think the key thing to know about this book (which I did not know until after listening to it) is that the author is primarily a comic book writer/artist. This book is set in the same universe as a series of comic books by him. Once I knew that, the over-the-top violence and sex suddenly made a lot more sense. The cruel incest (indeed all the sex in this book is dosed with cruelty to some degree), the unicorn horn strap-on, the maggot-animated zombie, etc...all of these made much more sense to me once I knew they came from the imagination of a comic book artist.

Sympathetic characters are in short supply in this book. The vast majority of characters are shockingly cruel, and the villains are so stereotypically villainous they're beyond caricatures (although one character amusingly comments on that fact at some point). I wonder if the only reason the author manages to make two characters somewhat sympathetic is by telling us so little about them.

Despite all the revolting material, I found myself engaged by the story. The writing is not bad by any stretch. There are, as I say, two characters I found myself rooting for. There is quite a bit of intriguing mystery about curses and maps and hidden tombs and ancient evil kings. There's a believable feeling of history throughout. The world-building is pretty well done.

I can't say I fully understood all the mysteries by the end. I was left with several unanswered questions, and in fact I was a bit unsatisfied by the ambiguous ending. (This is apparently a prequel to the comic book series, but I certainly am not tempted to read it.) There are several revelations at the end in which we learn that many of the characters are not who we were led to believe they were. Some of these turn-abouts are quite fair (i.e. well foreshadowed) and some do not seem fair at all, as if the author decided to change the rules at the last minute. I was reminded of the movie "House of Flying Daggers", in which we learn at some point that the blind girl was just pretending to be blind all along--which raises the question of why the filmmaker chose to show her acting blind when she was alone. Something like that is going on here, I think. Or I just missed something. But I would have to listen to the book a second time to find out for sure, and I'm not sure I want to do that.

Scallywags and Ne'er Do Wells

Here's what I love about this book: scoundrels. Fantasy has gotten pretty dark of late and many books feature anti-heroes and dark or grim types but the members of the underworld featured in The Barrow have have uniqueness and panache. They enjoy their dastardly deeds and they carry them out with a bit of flair. Whereas Game of Thrones (which I enjoy) is largely peopled with bloodthirsty pragmatists the heroes and villains in The Barrow like to take risks and have a bit of fun.

Any chapter with Leigh is a good one. The narrator gave him the most interesting voice. The narrator also did very well with Erim who (as the book's description points out is a woman disguised as a man). That's a tricky one to convey but Page did this beautifully

I spent a few moments at one point wondering if there wasn't just a bit too much of the lurid and prurient in this story; it seemed gratuitous and there seemed to be one too many brothel scenes early on but this was balanced out nicely. The characters were surprisingly complex (which is an absolute rarity in Fantasy).

Masterpiece of Grim

This book is a masterpiece in the genre. This is not disney material. This is a story about "villains" with morals based on a differrent worldview. Collectors of villain books should check this one out.

Distracted by the shiny

I enjoyed the book, I thought the beginning was very tough to get through and it went out of its way to be extremely vulgar in the beginning but it certainly picks up!

hope to see more

A warning, this one is not for those who dislike sex and violence in stories. This is a solid start to what could be more work. However, I see that The Black Heart is in limbo. A dark tale of a dark mission into vile lands. It is both strong in worldbuilding and maintaining the POV of it's characters.