This week I’ve been looking at two books which might be considered as homage to more established if not recently deceased writers. The first was Kell’s Legend by Andy Remic (often accused of being a David Gemmell clone). This review is for Mike Shevdon’s book, Sixty-One Nails, which is being talked up as something of a Neil Gaiman clone. In fact, C.E. Murphy (and I’m really sorry, but I had to look him up) claims this book is “Neverwhere for the next generation.”

There you go. That set the whole tone of the book in much the same way as Andy Remic’s dedication at the front of Kell’s Legend did for his. And isn’t that a funny thing? How deeply we were influenced before we even read the opening scene. I already wrote a little about what I thought about influences and such in my review of Kell’s Legend, so I won’t go into it here again, but I admit that, for both of these novels, I began them with tentative expectation, followed by a moment of disappointment as they seemed a little too similar to the authors they have been compared to. I felt cheated, in a way. But then, both books kind of slid slowly away from their respective comparisons and mutated themselves into something a little more unique to themselves.

Sixty-One Nails was, quite simply, a surprise for me. More so than Kell’s Legend, in fact. Mainly because as it was going along, I really didn’t think it would really hold to its own and become something unique. I thought it would remain under the Gaiman shadow for the whole novel, unlike Mister Remic’s novel which lurched out of Gemmell’s eventually. I thought this one would die a slow death toward the end.

I have to say I wasn’t overly convinced by the beginning. I like a book to rush into the meat of itself, but our main character, Niall, is not only a little too accepting, he just doesn’t bother with denial and just leaps into everything with a good old English shrug. And perhaps a sausage for breakfast.

What? I’m not human? Jolly good. Soldier on.

It was a little too simple for me. A little too comic-book. Too Gaiman, if you get my drift. You see, I’m a rare bird. For me, Gaiman isn’t a technically great writer. His books don’t do it for me. But what does is his imagination. I forgive his prose because his imagination is simply fantastic, and thus inspires in me a deeply imaginitive experience. With Mister Shevdon, I wasn’t feeling overwhelmed. It may also be my allergic reaction to Fairies (even if they’re spelt Feyre) is akin to a Feyre’s reaction to metal. I wasn’t convinced and with each page I was getting more unconvinced, if you get my meaning.

However, and I can’t see when it occured, I slowly found myself being more and more drawn into the novel as it just kind of plodded along its merry path. The strength of Shevdon’s novel is that he more or less seems to have really well and truly stuck fast to a traditional Fey mythology, and certainly squeezes a few extra drops from English folklore, without twisting it as Gaiman does. It’s this lack of twisting it and buying some literary kudos in the process that makes Shevdon’s feel a lot more natural and as a result a lot more readable as a novel.

I wasn’t, however, overly convinced with the bad guys. They weren’t particularly bad, and I couldn’t really see the big deal for most of the story. There was a half-hearted attempt to make them seem evil, but they didn’t really live up to their reputation. They did, however, fit just snugly into the mythology. Perhaps more cheeky and overly-playful than evil. That, I guess, was the interesting trick. In a sense, the good Fey seemed more hardcore.

By the end of the novel, I was hanging onto the pages, drawing every last scene out as though I were sucking it out through a straw. I really did enjoy the ride. As with Andy Remic’s book, Shevdon really did take hold of the animal that was his homage and work it into something more individual. Being similar, you see, isn’t quite the same as being a clone. At least, it isn’t in my book. That’s if I could write a proper one. Me being a hack, it’s not altogether a successful an enterprise as one might claim…

I liked the imagery in the book, although I feel the main character wasn’t particularly well-developed. I had no sense of struggle from him. I felt he pretty much shrugged himself through everything. He needed a shake. This novel is, however, a pretty good set-up if Mister Shevdon wants to keep writing it as a series. I am interested enough to know what happens next, because that’s what the book felt like, really. It didn’t feel like a book to stand on its own. It felt like one which was simply the set-up for the sequel. A kind of shadow passing in front of the sun. The real meat, hopefully, to come in the next one.

And I do hope the Wraithkin are bad in that one…