The Human Dress – Graydon Saunders

Excellent book - but the reader has to be willing to do some of the work. The division of book is typical of Saunders’s books: The author tells the story, the milieu and background are visible through the story, and the reader has to pay attention to understand that background. The story doesn’t stop to deliver lumps of exposition; the characters don’t deliver lectures that begin with “As you know…”

The milieu is (approximately) one in which dinosaurs were not wiped out - and humans evolved in a distinctly-unfriendly world. Human settlements are restricted to areas that can be defended - e.g., islands with good-sized cliffs. (There is reference to the Encircling Ocean, so if it our world with a different development, it may be at a time when the continents are differently configured.)

There is magic, but - also typical for the author - it is treated as a technology. E.g., runes and chants can transfer ambient heat and start a fire - but an expert can use similar runes for controlled smelting. Yet another typical is a sense of progress. People know more than they knew a century ago, swords are made of better alloys than those of earlier generations.

There is a second type of magic - spirit magic, and one of its variants is necromancy. At the start of the book, Four Rivers ( a northern settlement with a culture evocative of a Norse society, with Saxon elements) comes under attack from both types of magic. The ships it depends upon for trade - and the mills and yards it depends upon for ships - are exploded, and and towns are attacked by large numbers of almost-unkillable (undestroyable?) undead.

It’s a large book and a long one - but it didn’t want to be a trilogy, and I’m just as pleased that the author didn’t try to make it one. The main story does have three parts. The first is the defense of Four Rivers. When you’re battling large numbers of nearly-indestructible undead, you can’t afford so mount an heroic defense that kills many attackers for every defender who falls; you have to figure out how to mount as unheroic a defense as you can, and keep your defenders alive.

The second part is the quest. Most of the ships that can be rebuilt or scavenged, and more defenders than can really be spared, sail thousands of miles to where they believe they will find the root of the problem. The quest is largely successful - and if some of the success comes from larger-than-life characters pulling larger-than-life rabbits out of unreasonably-large hats, I believe the author is playing fair.

The third part is the return home, and the end of the matter at Four Rivers, and what comes after the end of the matter. The last is important. One of the better things about the book is that the milieu is not timeless. It doesn’t end with everyone trying to live happily ever after as if nothing has changed. A great deal has changed. Adapting and prospering will require an effort.