The Silk Map: A Gaunt and Bone Novel

The Silk Map is a tiresomely long fantasy quest with Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone, our poet and thief combo, together with their friend Snow Pine, approaching the Monkey god (apart from gender, not unlike the Chinese original). They want help in recovering their two children from a dimensional pocket, hidden within a scroll that has been lost at the bottom of the sea. As the price of helping them, Monkey sends them to find the Iron Moths. For their relevance in mythic terms, think of the fairy stories involving Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin. Now add in the One-Thousand-and-One Arabian Nights stories, particularly those featuring flying carpets, and you have the formula.

This has few redeeming features. The quest trope has been done to death ever since the gaming community progressed beyond dungeons and burst out above ground in pursuit of dragons and treasure. The only way in which it can be redeemed is by the author bringing a degree of wit and style to the prose. Unfortunately, this is densely written to the point of unreadability with a plot that often leaves you thinking, “Why did they do that?” “What, if anything, were they thinking?” and the most profound, “Huh?”