THE standalone epic fantasy novel is a rare feat of authorial restraint or else the product of limited ambitions. Fantasy novels, after all, tend to come in series, with the trilogy often regarded as the shortest respectable form. These are stories that create and destroy worlds and gods, in which there might be dragons, demons, sorcerers, empires and entire civilisations waiting to be invented. Their expansiveness and seeming lack of limits satisfy a reader’s fantasy of an endless tale: a story that rolls on without a terminus, perhaps accompanying us for years, with sequels to sequels, prequels, side stories, and spin-offs.
As a genre, fantasy has no natural limiting coda. Everything can be included. Fantasy is the literature of invention and imagined extravagance, and it can be so precisely because the factual constraints of realism have been removed. The very best fantasy enshrines the wonder and surprise that reality cannot always satisfy. Epic fantasy, especially, makes a virtue of excess.
Consider some of its great series: Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, fourteen volumes; Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, forty-one novels; Steven Erikson’s ten-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen; Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series; and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, five published novels and still unfinished. Martin’s series has become perhaps the most famous example of the modern fantasy reader’s peculiar predicament: having invested thousands of pages in a story, readers wait, sometimes for many years, for the next instalment, wondering whether the author will complete the saga at all.
Long fantasy series are an investment of personal time and, often, considerable patience. But they can be worth the investment because of their ability to lift readers out of their earthbound realities. Fantasy is the literature of wonder and awe. All those words constitute a commitment on the part of the reader, and epic fantasy asks for an especially substantial one. Defined partly by its magnitude and sprawl, epic fantasy needs space and paper to encompass its vast sweep: its elaborate world-building, its hundreds or even thousands of characters, its invented histories and religions, its monsters and magic and the myriad extravagances that would be intolerable or impossible in realistic fiction. A healthy suspension of disbelief is salient for a reader of epic fantasy.
Yet the standalone epic fantasy novel persists, even if the series increasingly overshadows it. The trilogy or longer sequence has become the norm, but there are still magnificent exceptions: books that construct worlds of considerable depth and tell stories complete enough to end within a single volume. Some of the best standalone novels are every bit as satisfying as large-scale series, as detailed and engaging as the best serial fantasies. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana, Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and, the subject of this review, Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman are among them.
Epic fantasy, however, is not a monolithic genre. Its varieties range from traditional high fantasy, exemplified by J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, to the darker and morally ambiguous fantasies associated with writers such as Joe Abercrombie, John Gwynne and George R. R. Martin. Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy and Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire are particularly influential examples of what has come to be called “grimdark” fantasy. There are also works that combine epic fantasy with other genres and traditions: Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy, for example, brings a distinctly African and Caribbean sensibility to epic fantasy, beginning with Black Leopard, Red Wolf and continuing with Moon Witch, Spider King. James’s presence is significant, as he is possibly the only Caribbean author writing epic fantasy. There are romantasy novels, which place romantic relationships at the centre of the fantasy narrative, and science-fantasy novels, which blend fantasy with the speculative technologies and conventions of science fiction.
Whatever the subgenre, epic fantasy tends to share certain fundamental pleasures: the creation of an alternative world, the presence of the extraordinary, the struggle between competing forces, and the sense that the story is unfolding on a scale larger than ordinary human experience.
Between Two Fires belongs to another branch of the genre: historical fantasy, with a hefty dollop of horror. Its setting is not an invented medieval kingdom but a recognisable historical world. Buehlman’s novel is set in France in 1348, during the Black Death, and uses the plague’s catastrophe as the foundation for a supernatural battle between the forces of Heaven and Hell. The plague is not merely a historical disaster; in Buehlman’s imagination, it is the consequence of a cosmic conflict. The monsters and devils that appear throughout the novel are manifestations of that darkness.
The result is a book that is often lyrical and philosophical while remaining attentive to the fundamental pleasures of fantasy. Buehlman concocts a world of death that increasingly resembles an earthly version of Hell. Everywhere, there is murder, deceit, corruption and spiritual decay. The fallen angels seem to have infected creation itself, turning men and animals into grotesque versions of themselves and transforming nature into something hostile and uncanny. Even the Catholic Church is not immune: its priests and institutions become vulnerable to the demonic forces spreading across the land. It is a harrowing novel.
Into this hellish landscape ride Tomas, a disgraced knight and veteran of many wars, and Delphine, a prepubescent girl whom he rescues from his fellow soldiers, most of whom he kills. Delphine is on her way towards a destiny she barely understands, and Tomas becomes her reluctant protector and guide. Along with a priestly companion met on the way, they move through the death fields of France, witnessing the devastation of the plague and encountering monsters that appear in the guise of men, animals and things that are neither.
In the two main characters, Buehlman establishes two familiar fantasy archetypes: the fallen or honourable knight and the Chosen One. Both are staples of the genre, but fantasy depends as much on the reinvention of familiar tropes as on the invention of entirely new ones. Buehlman’s most interesting variation is that his Chosen One is not the usual adolescent boy destined to become a great warrior or king, but a young girl whose powers and purpose remain mysterious even to herself.
The novel is never boring. It is unrelenting in its grimness, full of terrors, violence, sudden deaths and grotesque transformations. Tomas is an engaging character precisely because he is morally complicated. He has suffered enormously: he has lost his wife and his lands, been excommunicated from the Church and fallen far from the life he once knew. He is not a good man, exactly, but he retains the code and instincts of an honourable knight. Delphine, by contrast, is enigmatic, stubborn and increasingly imbued with fantastical powers. Their uneasy relationship produces some of the novel’s best moments, including entertaining banter that provides occasional relief from the surrounding horror.
Buehlman is particularly good at action. His fight scenes are balletic and bloody, sudden and visceral. The best of them carry emotional weight. Characters die unexpectedly, bodies are broken, and victories often come at a terrible cost. Violence serves the larger atmosphere of a world in which civilisation itself seems to be collapsing.
Just as impressive is Buehlman’s depiction of medieval France. The novel’s historical texture feels convincing, extending beyond scenery to encompass politics, religious practices, food, social customs, and the everyday realities of fourteenth-century life. The supernatural elements are therefore more disturbing because they intrude upon a world that otherwise feels solidly real. The familiar becomes strange. The historical world becomes a stage upon which the mythological and demonic can operate.
That combination makes Between Two Fires an unusually effective historical fantasy. It is at once educational and entertaining, grotesque and beautiful, philosophical and relentlessly physical. Buehlman takes the familiar materials of epic fantasy, the knight, the Chosen One, angels, demons, monsters, quests and battles between good and evil, and places them within one of the darkest episodes of European history. And unlike so much contemporary epic fantasy, it knows when to stop.
There is no enormous secondary cast waiting for its own novel, no unresolved kingdom crisis designed to carry the reader into another volume and no cliffhanger demanding a sequel. The ending provides the appropriate sense of completion. The story is finished.
That, perhaps, is the greatest achievement of Between Two Fires. In a genre increasingly defined by sprawl, Buehlman demonstrates the power of concentration. The novel gives us the scale, wonder, horror, mythology and imaginative extravagance of epic fantasy without demanding that the reader commit to a decade-long literary investment. It tells its story and ends. For a genre that so often privileges continuation, that is no small accomplishment.
