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Terry

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Terry is Currently Reading

Terry is currently reading

Clouds End

by Sean Stewart (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: fantasy, canadian, currently-reading

Reading for the 3rd time

read in January 2011

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Terry said: " 2018 re-read thoughts:First off I should perhaps state that I don’t fundamentally disagree with anything I said in my original review of _Clouds End_ ,except for perhaps one point, and I feel that this book deserves a four star rating, not my origina 2018 re-read thoughts:First off I should perhaps state that I don’t fundamentally disagree with anything I said in my original review of _Clouds End_ ,except for perhaps one point, and I feel that this book deserves a four star rating, not my original 3 which was a bit stingy all things considered.

I’ve probably said it in every Sean Stewart review I’ve done before and I’ll say it once again because it needs saying: it’s a damn shame that Sean Stewart isn’t writing novels anymore. He is, without a doubt, one of the best authors I’ve ever had the privilege of reading. He excels from nearly every angle I view his work whether it be craft, characterization, or the realization of a ‘real’ fictional world. He is an incredible stylist who somehow manages to create writing that is poetic without being flowery; stylistic without being ornate or overwrought. His deft hand with characters allows him, with only a few broad strokes, to create even minor characters that seem to breathe with life and personality. All of Stewart’s characters are real people whose lives are as complex and difficult as our own. Their ‘reality’ is as fraught with pain, anger, joy, and sadness as any I have seen in the real world so that even when they only appear for a few moments or pages, a minor piece of ‘set dressing’ in any other author’s hands, all of his characters provide his vivid worlds with realistic anchors amidst the often wild and amorphous magic that surrounds them. And magic? No one writes magic as convincingly as Stewart. He has a way of expressing the wonder, awe, and pure danger that comes about when the numinous intrudes into the mundane world that I’ve never seen equaled. What is that line from C. S. Lewis in regards to Aslan? “He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.” Well Stewart’s magic is just as wild and even more convincing.

I will forego giving any kind of description of the story and characters here, you can find that in my original review linked above, instead I’d like to discuss my major complaint from the aforementioned review: namely that Stewart was less than fully successful in his attempt to create a truly epic fantasy. Well, from a conventional perspective I still think this is mostly true. The climax or resolution of the main conflict, the war between the Islanders and the Woodlanders, seems too easy, too quickly resolved, but my re-read has prompted me to consider that perhaps this is because it is not the true conflict of the story after all. The real struggle is the one between Brook and Jo after the twinning at the beginning of the novel and all else is merely (is that too strong a word?) a pretext for this to play out. The ‘great war’ that is a backdrop is really just a reiteration of the conflict between magic and the mundane that lies at the heart of Brook and Jo’s story. Now, does this perhaps still mean that the tale is a little less than ‘epic’? Perhaps, but perhaps it would be more fair to say that the ‘epic’ has to be qualified. It is the epic that lives in the contrast between the ‘great’ events of the world at large and everyday life, or as Stewart says himself in the book: “Great fires fall to ash, and great stories turn to small ones.” The great can be a mirror of the small just as easily as the other way around and the two types of story intermingle and grow from each other in a symbiotic way as Stewart implies in the book when he speaks of leaf stories on the one hand and root on the other: the Mist-time tales of great magic and adventure that blaze into life like autumn leaves and demand our attention, as well as the ‘real’-time stories of our mundane lives which are more boring perhaps, but also more solid and the very things that nourish and produce the other type.

In the end I think one could still argue that Stewart did at least ‘side-step’ the epic in this tale if not fully miss it, but I am more inclined to be sympathetic, especially given how excellent the story is overall, and knowing that I am not likely to get any new ones from this master again.

Original review: I love Sean Stewart and I wish he hadn't given up on writing fantasy. His books are always a treat and pay back tenfold the effort put into them by the reader. _Clouds End_ was Stewart's "pure fantasy" novel, not the mixed urban fantasy with science fictional elements type of story that the majority of his works seem to fall into. I have to admit that the first time I tried to read this book I didn't like it. I still think that Stewart wasn't fully successful in realizing what he was attempting , but this novel still has some of Stewart's best writing, character development, and a truly marvellous vision of a magical world.

Stewart has said that he wanted to write an epic fantasy in the mould of Tolkien, but from his own agnostic perspective as opposed to the religiously infused one of Tolkien. The world he creates is truly magical. We start out on the island of Clouds End, a place that exists on the very edge of the magical otherworld known as the Mist. The Mist is the place from which mankind draws their myths and stories, both good and evil, and seems to interact with the human psyche in some sort of symbiotic way, bringing to life the unconscious dreams of those on its periphery. In this sense it is something like Ryhope Wood as seen in Robert Holdstock's classic _Mythago Wood_, though it seems to be creating the world around it in a much more concrete fashion even as it participates in the generation of myths and heroes; for the Mist produces gods and powers, giving physical substance to the folk heroes and villians of mankind. It also changes any humans who enter its depths, making them into Haunts, something akin to the preternatural fae of our more traditional mythologies. We see examples of the former in the world changing figures of the Gull Warrior and Sere, one apparently a folk hero of the island dwellers, the other a trickster god of fire and chaos; the latter comes directly into the story in the form of Jo, a human who had entered the Mist and became a shapeshifter who now longs to regain a human soul.

The main characters are a group of four young friends, all inhabitants of Clouds End, who are drawn into a quest when one of their number, Brook, is "twinned" by Jo and is now mystically bound to her. They decide to follow Jo in her quest to the mainland and become embroiled in a war undertaken by the Emperor of a far land under the malign influence of the fire-god Sere. As usual with Stewart each of these characters are fully realized and interesting people, from the uncertain and apprehensive Brook and solid and dependable Rope, to the adventure seeking and rash Shale and the mercurial and love-lorn Foam. As well, true to form, Stewart's depiction of magic is spot-on. Magic is seen as a numinous and capricious force that touches human lives in unexpected and usually dangerous ways. This is not simply science by another name, it is the unknown and the unknowable taking part in our everyday lives; our dreams and nightmares come to life.

The story is full of exceptional scenes and characters and I found it a joy to read simply for the sake of Stewart's prose, but I have to admit that I don't think it ultimately worked as an example of epic fantasy. The supposed reason for the overall quest, the war being waged by the empire of the forest dwellers against the islanders, seems to peter out without really requiring any intervention on the part of the main characters. It is actually their individual stories that hold more interest, and follow much more reasonable arcs, than the supposed meta-plot of the novel and I think Stewart would have been better served to have simply told their stories without attempting to force them into the context of an 'epic fantasy quest'. Still, I think Stewart has written a worthy book in _Clouds End_ and it is exceptional both for its similarities to his other work and, perhaps moreso, because of its differences.

Also posted at Shelf Inflicted ...more "

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(page 58 of 360)
— Mar 24, 2026 06:39PM

Mar 24, 2026 10:19AM · see review

Terry is currently reading

Borges: A Reader

by Jorge Luis Borges

bookshelves: currently-reading, fantasy, poetry, short-stories

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Jan 17, 2026 02:20PM

Terry is currently reading

The Illuminatus! Trilogy

by Robert Shea

bookshelves: currently-reading, fantasy, occult, sci-fi

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— Oct 26, 2025 06:55PM

Oct 25, 2025 02:32PM

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Terry ’s Quotes

“If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless.

If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

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“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
― Philip K. Dick

tags: discourse, media, postmodern, power, science-fiction

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“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

tags: adventuring, death, time

21774 likes

“You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you. Every you...'

[...]

Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you! All right, God damn you! I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you men. I make you great. I give you the stars.”
― Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination

tags: 1956, ambition, craziness, drive, gully-foyle, gutter-speak, humans, initiation, laziness

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