Red Sonja: Consumed - Gail Simone

So, full disclosure. I know Red Sonja is a famous comic book character. And I know Gail Simone is a comics author with a strong reputation, and as someone with a highly entertaining Twitter feed. And I know she did some work on some recent Red Sonja comics. But that's all I knew going into this novel, and my expectations were, well, ambivalent. That out of the way...I was wrong. Red Sonja: Consumed is an adventure. It has blood and honour laced all the way through it, sure enough. And Sonja, as a protagonist, is largely focused on herself and her own needs, but she's also brutally honest about it. And its hard to judge her too harshly whilst she's carving up menaces in an arena, or getting into a fist-fight with a bear, or having the occasional unfortunate interaction with the forces of the nearest state. Sonja is who she is, a force of nature, a weapon, a killer. And sitting on her shoulder while she kicks arse and takes names is, in several senses, a bloody good time.

But also. Ah, but also, you see. Red Sonja isn't just a killer, a barbarian, a thief. I mean, yes, she is all of those things. And Simone manages to give her energy and fun with those things whilst not flinching away from what they mean. But Sonja is not just those things. She's a barbarian traumatised by a childhood that took a left turn into the horrifyingly unpleasant. A killer who still stands tall in matters of honour. A thief who has a near-spiritual relationship with her horse. There's more here than just a lone sword searching for profit and the next beer (and the next man). There's a depth and a history and a passion in here that make Sonja ring true, make her seem real. And at the same time, there's a flavour of the classic Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser about her - unapologetically fighting and screwing and drinking her way through today, and dealing with the problems that causes, tomorrow. Same as it ever was when Fafhrd and Conan did it, and more than equally entertaining. Sonja isn't a shy and retiring barbarian, contenting herself with daintily presenting her enemies with some mildly harsh language. This is a woman on the prowl, not afraid to get physical, and not afraid to make an end. She's a creature of passions, both sexual and violently visceral, and those do come up quite a lot in the text - but this is a story with the energy thrown all the way up to eleven, and the over-the-top nature of it all just makes it more fun.

So that's Sonja. And she really is great fun to read. I will say, that whilst I got a flavour of some of the world she travelled in, a little of its politics and history and old stories, enough to give it some context and flavour. I was left wanting more. Some of that we get from a diverse smattering of points of view through the text, dipping into, amongst others, some of her varied antagonists. We get a sense of where the spirit of things is, if not the exact geography. This is a story that is concerned with the story, with the highs and lows and emotions that the characters go through. Its a book of flash and glamour over pain and raw emotion, and if it doesn't delve lovingly into the mechanics of its magic systems, it knows that you can absolutely slow down a wizard by putting a knife between his shoulderblades. This is a story that isn't afraid to give you a protagonist who has no chill and no filter, but who has a vulnerability and a complexity that we can live with alongside the fiery sword, the monster slayer, the troubled lover, the lost daughter.

Ah hell, at the end of the day, this one is just a whole lot of fun. It draws from the sword and sorcery tradition, but puts a unique spin and flavour on it, with the protagonist being as unapologetically self-centred and as skilfully violent as those folks ever were, but also not being afraid to show us humanity and character, rather than caricature. This is a viscerally (and potentially viscera-lly, sorry) entertaining read, and I look forward to seeing more from Red Sonja in the future.