‘The Mocking Tower’ – Daniel Abraham

Do you remember a while ago now when I was talking about my habit of picking up books in town, to read on the way home, and then promptly forgetting about them for years? Well, a lazy perusal of the shelves, last night, reminded me that I picked up ‘Part 1’ of ‘The Book of Swords’ a long time ago and… you know the rest.

I’m making steady, although by no means spectacular, progress on my other reads so today was going to be a ‘Short Story Post’ day anyway, discovering this book pretty much sealed the deal. I’m feeling pretty low at the moment so figured a bit of swordplay would be just the thing to get me out of myself and perk me up a bit. As is the case with Daniel Abraham’s books, it didn’t work out quite the way I was hoping but I still ended up having a good read so… I’m ahead of the game.

A thief has come to the Mocking Tower, to brave the might of the Imagi Vert and steal a very special sword… Or has he?

I should have known really, the payoff is always worth it but I never quite get what I expect from a Daniel Abraham story and ‘The Mocking Tower’ is no different. I’m not sure how well it sits in an anthology of swords though… It’s one of those stories that obeys the letter of the law if not the spirit and that’s a good thing here. Abraham walks his own path, as ever, and the smart money, as ever, is on following him and seeing where the story goes.

‘The Mocking Tower’ is a tale of misdirection in pretty much every way actually and it’s really cleverly done, especially when you consider that it’s all wrapped up in twenty six pages. Every time you think you know what’s going on, Abraham pulls the curtain a little further back and you realise that you’re being led somewhere entirely different. And you have to keep reading, just to find out what’s really going on. You’ll get to the end and think, ‘oh’. Then you’ll think about it a bit and think, ‘ohhhh…’  It’s quite the eye opener to look back over the story, once you’ve finished, and realise that the clues were there the whole time. And if that wasn’t enough, there are tantalising little hints of a much larger world that you will never get the chance to explore properly (considering most of it is at war, maybe that’s not a bad thing but even so…)

It's really tough to write about ‘The Mocking Tower’ without spoiling anything (so this will be a really short review) but what I can say is that Abraham takes the standard tropes of a Sword and Sorcery tale and re-casts them under the cold light of the plot. The end result is what you would expect; a thoughtful and cleverly written piece that will have you questioning the value of the quest but glad you followed it through to its conclusion. Like I said at the top, I came across ‘The Mocking Tower’ in the ‘The Book of Swords, Part1’; I’m not sure if you can find it anywhere else.