Mortal Coils - Book Review - The Armchair Empire

Paperback: 608 pages

Publisher: Tor Books; 1 edition (February 3, 2009)

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Mortal Coils

by Eric Nylund

Mortal Coils landed on my desk and I immediately thought about Aldous Huxley, because he had a collection of short stories published in the early 1920’s under the same title. But there’s no similarity between the Mortal Coils in question, by Eric Nylund, and the Huxley collection.

I quickly lost my focus because of the way the book starts, which reminded me strongly of the kind of universe that Lemony Snickett created with a Series of Unfortunate Events (but departs from that within the first couple of chapters) and only picked it up again when I finally had some chunks of time to devote to reading.

The principle tale revolves around Elliot and Fiona Post, twins that at the age of 15 find out there’s a lot they don’t know about their own origins. Without giving the story away, the Post twins are forced from a bizarre home life to an even more bizarre existence as they are put through a number of trials by their “family” to

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establish their lineage, which may or may not be divine or infernal in design. It’s through these challenges (one of which involves a giant sewer ‘gator) that Elliot and Fiona develop their own supernatural powers.

From the shadow of world events and histories there are two, formerly feuding groups of Immortals that wield a variety of supernatural powers “fight” over the

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Post twins and against each. The two Immortal sides are virtually identical in my mind even though they’re supposed to be “good” and “bad” – there’s a certain amoral tendency on both sides but for some reason they have Rules to which they adhere. That aspect of the book is kind of a jumble.

Erik Nylund does a great job creating some really interesting set pieces. The imagery during the bigger fight scenes and large set pieces really did stick with me. Besides a conjured fog that hides all sorts of unspeakable creatures, there’s a great battle that levels a large portion of a city that seems to be tailor made for the big screen. But it’s not just the kinetic parts that really read well, some of the more quiet parts have stuck with me as well. There’s a scene set on a big yacht, which is bobbing up and down inside an iceberg. It’s a simple setup to be sure, but having a very fantastical setting like that creates a mystique about the characters much more than the political manoeuvring and rule following. It conveys much more information setting the scene inside and iceberg than it does having a character talk about how much power they have.

Mortal Coils might not be the best start to a five book cycle, especially if you’re looking for a more high brow literature, but the visuals and the sense of otherworldly action offers enough to have me interested to see what kind of battles we’ll get in the next book.

- Aaron Simmer

(August 21, 2009)