Paternus Trilogy – Dyrk Ashton
I can’t remember exactly why I bought the Paternus series, it may have been the high placed finish in Mark Lawrence’s SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Book Off) in 2016, or the numerous positive reviews, or the cool covers. Whatever it was, I’d had the first book in my TBR pile for a while and I’d been looking forward to reading it for a while, suddenly just before Christmas I found myself in the position of owning all three books in the series and there was nothing holding me back. Apart from the small matter of finishing the 6 book series I was reading at the time (Spellslinger by Sebastien de Castell), and then my tradition of starting the year with a truly epic series (I did consider reading Paternus to start the year, but the other series under consideration, Licanius by James Islington, was just that bit longer and at first (second, third and fourth) glance the more traditional epic fantasy series). So, two months after completing the set I was ready to go.
Given my reasons for purchase above, I still wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from the Paternus series, I wasn’t even aware that it was an urban fantasy until I started reading (So when I say ‘reviews’ above, I probably just mean the blurbs on the cover!). Urban it is though, in the sense that it is though very much set on Earth (this Earth, you know, the one we live on) and in the current time.
The story begins in Toledo, Ohio of all unlikely places but expands to include other more exotic and otherworldly locales. In Toledo though, we meet Fiona Patterson, a late teen, teetering on the edge of some serious life decisions. Fiona is on her way home from a date that can best be described as awkward, the other party, Zeke, turned down her slightly forthright advances, the worst part is that Fiona works with Zeke, so avoiding him is going to be tricky. They both work part-time at a residential care hospice, Zeke plays guitar to entertain the patients, Fiona is an intern helping out however she can. Recently the home has been tasking Fiona with caring for Peter, a reclusive elderly patient suffering from dementia, he seems to respond to Fiona and the home’s director is keen to explore this bond. Fiona arrives at work the next day to find Zeke is on duty and steels herself to face him, they’re part way through an awkward intermittent conversation over and around patients, when an unsavoury group of men arrive in reception claiming to be family members of Peter. Within moments all hell has broken loose, the security guards are lying dead on the floor, the group commence an assault on the hospice’s secure areas and Fiona and Zeke find themselves running for their lives with Peter in tow.
The author has done some serious research into the mythology of a multitude of cultures, they have then taken aspects and figures from these myths, interwoven them together in a new history and tied in the events of these books set in the present day as the culmination of the story. It’s really very clever. It does result in the first book doing some heavy lifting, in terms of introducing the concept and detailing the background/s of various characters. At times that scene setting can feel a little heavy handed, particularly when the author starts producing the Latin names of various animals, but on the whole and with the benefit of hindsight, very little is unnecessary and, for me anyway, it was quite educational (I don’t think I’ve ever used my kindle’s ability to highlight words and view a brief Wikipedia entry so much). What I found a little odd was the juxtaposition of this intellectualness, with a certain amount of narrative coarseness. There’s a whole paragraph dedicated to describing one characters testicles, and indeed revelling in that description, it may be natural British reserve, but certainly at first this was jarring. Perhaps this effect would have been less pronounced if I’d approached this series straight after a more raucous series like The First Law or A Song of Ice and Fire, rather than the more reserved Licanius trilogy.
As the series progresses more and more characters are introduced (seriously, pick a monster, any mythological monster, they’ll be in here in some form, if there’s someone missing, you just haven’t finished the series yet) some shine brightly for brief moments, others stick around for the long haul. Despite the ever-expanding cast, I don’t recall once having to backtrack to remind myself who anyone was, which probably means the expositional work is time well spent, and reflects well on the author. As the number of characters increases so does the level of action, and by action I mean huge fight sequences, for me this is where Paternus excels, the best analogy I can give you are the overblown action sequences in the live action Transformer films, the ones in which one titanic robot smooshes another, crashing through buildings and generally creating mayhem (given the types of characters involved, Clash of the Titans might be a better analogy, but as I haven’t seen the new one I can’t confirm. The old Ray Harryhausen version had the correct sorts of creatures, but it’s lacking in general carnage). Nothing is off the cards here, there’s monsters fighting monsters, monsters fighting humans, in tanks, helicopters, fighter jets, pretty much everything you could wish for. During particularly large action sequences, the narrative jumps around between different characters on different sides, sometimes in very quick cuts, it’s a technique which builds momentum really well and actually helps keep track of exactly what is happening, particularly if there is something pivotal occurring.
If someone decided to turn Paternus into a big Hollywood blockbuster, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. I would be surprised if they managed to do it justice, it’s just too extravagant, and too monumentally bombastic. It’s a phrase that I seem to be using a lot recently but, I really enjoyed this series, it picked me up, swept me along, churned me around, and then spat me out at the end wondering, what the hell just happened?!
As an added bonus, if you have Kindle Unlimited you can currently read the whole series for free.