BEHIND EVERY HERO, THERE’S A HISTORIAN
An ambitious young scholar is sent to research the mysteries of an adventurer’s inn – only to uncover a centuries-old secret in this heart-warming and poignant fantasy.
Mount Vengeance is legendary, a monumental climb with a dragon at its peak.
For most, it’s an adventure, or a quest to prove themselves worthy of fame and glory.
For Ainsworth, it’s perfect thesis material.
Ainsworth Gladsly, ambitious young scholar, research fellow and up-and-coming historian is finally ready to make his mark on the world. When his supervisor learns of a rustic inn at the foot of the legendary Mount Vengeance, she sends him to be the first to to document the exploits of the bold adventurers who face the perils of the mountain – and the dragon said to inhabit it.
But the inn is far from the sophisticated city life he’s grown to love, and even as he grudgingly warms to its rustic charm – and its lovely innkeeper, Honey – the mystery of the mountain refuses to reveal itself. Worse, Ainsworth can’t find evidence that anyone has ever undertaken the climb – every adventurer comes to the inn, stays for a single night, and then returns home.
And with Ainsworth’s reputation as an academic on the line, it’s a mystery he can’t allow to remain unsolved – even if he has to push the adventurers up the mountain himself.
There appears to be a laudable trend in fantasy fiction to eschew the sword-wielding spell-casting protagonists of old and embrace alternative professions. In The Book that Wouldn’t Burn Mark Lawrence gave us librarians, in Legends and Lattes Travis Baldree gave us baristas, in Magic, Maps and Mischief David Green gave us a cartographer. In her debut novel (drafted during the last year of a PhD) Chiara Bullen has given us Ainsworth Gladsly a historian and researcher.
This is a cosy fantasy and like Green’s Magic, Maps and Mischief and Baldree’s Legends and Lattes the plot revolves around found families in a service setting. Rather than Greton’s ‘Shambles-like’ row of shops, or Viv’s new coffee shop, Bullen gives us the eponymous Misnich Inn with its fiendishly diverse staff and its very occasional visitors. Into this setting, Bullen thrusts our hero Ainsworth a somewhat arrogant and entitled scholar and minor mage – full of determination to bring fame to the Inn through his scholarship.
Of course that bold premise is undermined from the outset as a bedraggled rainswept Ainsworth struggles even to gain admittance past the stern faced door guard Ashe and his plans go increasingly awry from that point on. However, the joy of well written cosy fantasy is that the stakes – while they may not reach the world saving heights of epic fantasy – do matter to the protagonists and consequently to the readers to.
World Building
Bullen’s acknowledgements draw attention to the Scottish folk inspiration for her story in its linguistic quirks, myths, recipes and a staggering variety of creatures. For example, the name of the inn is taken from the Scots Gaelic verb to “bolden, bolster, cheer, enourage, hearten or inspire.” While there are orcs and elves – including importantly Ainsworth’s estranged love Enach – Bullen gives us a wide variety of sentient races including a charming tortoise shelled gardener and even Ainsworth has some non-human druidic blood that has gifted him a pair of antlers. However, the reader is immersed in this world rather than lectured on it. The Misnich Inn’s proprietor Honey’s tyflan nature creeps into the narrative with her horns and tail snaking their way into the reader and Ainsworth’s awareness.
One of the joys of fantasy is the opportunity it gives to explore a familiar concept in an uncanny setting. Pratchett’s splendid Unseen University with its eccentric squabbling wizards acting like deranged dons at a Cambridge College, gave us one example of fantasy academia. Bullen takes us in the other direction to the grim underbelly of research life with Ainsworth, esteemed scholar of the Skarrow library, scrabbling for funding for research projects while in a dog-eat-dog world of would-be fellows jostling for opportunity and recognition.
He must distinguish himself as an academic as soon as possible, so that his legacy kept him alive for as long as his almost immortal peers.
And of course research is constrained by ethical considerations when dealing with human or sentient participants, so the emergence of ‘consent forms’ into the narrative did remind me of my own brief stint as a research assistant.
The world’s religion is monotheistic, though Bullen’s choice to refer to the female deity as Matron, did mean some of Ainsworth’s “Oh Matron” expostulations sounded to my mind’s ear like Kenneth Williams in Carry on Doctor.
As is perhaps the nature of cosy fantasy, the geo-politics of the world are very much a secondary consideration. We know of two countries – a Republic and a Monarchy – either side of a great mountain range of which Mount Vengeance is the most prominent peak. That peak is where a reputed dragon lies upon a great hoard and many have been drawn to raid its treasure. The Council of Elrond may have assembled the first great adventurer party, but ever since then the threads of role playing games and fantasy fiction have become more tightly entwined with readers and authors inspired by their experiences of the former, and the latter absorbing more or less explicit elements of RPG adventurer culture. The Misnich Inn is the last way point for adventurers en route to tackle the mountain and its reptilian overlord. Indeed, the multiple-occupancy rooms at the inn are set up for different sized adventuring parties, and we meet a variety of enthusiastic and capable adventurers as they cycle through the Inn.
Plot
The thrust of Ainsworth’s research is to gather accounts from the adventurers who have scaled the mountain, dealt with the various dark creatures lurking within the dragon’s aura and maybe even met the fell beast themselves. Ainsworth himself is no adventurer.
Ainsworth knew his place. He recorded history; he did not make it.
The problem he faces is the dearth of accounts from adventurers since every party turns away from their goal, deciding they have nothing to prove or simply better things to do with their time. (What a different story Lord of the Rings would have been if the Misnich Inn had been at the foot of Mount Orodruin!). This glitch in his plans means Ainsworth has to spend an extended sojourn at the Inn, hoping a long enough wait will either help him find a party who will at last make the ascent and write of their findings, or allow him to discover by what means the adventurers’ ambition is being redirected.
While frustrating for Ainsworth, the hiatus gives him time to better get to know the Inn’s wonderfully diverse staff and also reveal something of his own past – not least the circumstances of his rift with his romantic partner Enach back at the Skarrow library. A bit like The Railway Children the new arrival or interloper in a small settled community finds both he and the community he has intruded on are gradually changing through the interaction.
The story has its twists and reveals, but with enough gentle foreshadowing, that they are more about ‘satisfying’ than ‘surprising’ the reader.
Characters
The story stays rooted in Ainsworth’s third person perspective and he is, at first, a rather unlikeable protagonist whose main redeeming feature is his helplessness. However, it is in the nature of good stories to change their protagonists and is fun watching Ainsworth slowly come to realisations that everyone around him recognised many pages earlier.
Honey, as the innkeeper, and grand-daughter of the innkeeper’s founder makes a gentle foil to Ainsworth’s foolishness and does at least give him a tour of the lower slopes of Mount Vengeance, although even these modest excursions have their dangers.
While these two make engaging drivers of the story, they are well supported by the cast of permanent inn staff and transient adventuring visitors. Of the former Ashe, the taciturn shapeshifting door guard and the one Ainsworth has to work hardest to win over, is the one I liked best. Of the latter the brother and sister pairing of Fern and Fig were my favourites and I was delighted to see them make a reappearance later in the book.
Prose
The narrative is speckled with nice lines drawing out images that feel very Scottish in their misty greyness, speckled with purples.
The blue sky was flushed with an early-dawn blush, the gentle pink and tawny streaks suggesting nothing but peace.
He pointed to the tree’s roots, which emerged periodically from the ground like a whale breaking the ocean’s surface.
But the restful setting, like a writer’s retreat, provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on life, choices and ambition.
It seems to me that life passes in a blur, and trying to look back and decipher it is like chasing smoke in the breeze.
Because although it was not the project he would have picked to propel his career, he was here now. One foot’s already in the muck, his father would say, So you may as well keep walking forward.
“Climbing a mountain is more than simply striving for the peak, Ainsworth.”
But being a cosy fantasy, does not mean an absence of antagonists. Besides the presence of the Dragon louring over the inn from its mountain peak, there are people who would force Ainsworth to consider who he is, where he wants to be and who with.
His conversation was like a strong spirit-utterly intoxicating and dangerously risky. But only later did you feel how indulging in it hurt you.
In Conclusion
No story is just a story. Even in the realm of fantasy – or perhaps particularly in the realm of fantasy – they are a means to explore what Arendt called the human condition. Arguably cosy fantasy does this better than others because it is focused on what matters at an individual level and what matters for Ainsworth is connection, real meaningful connection with other people.
As far as research is concerned, Bullen makes the point that research does not always follow the direction one anticipated. My own final PhD thesis was a very different beast from the one envisaged in the original project proposal, and Ainsworth’s experience is similar.
He announced that, while he had failed in these expectations and the book would most likely follow a different path than they both originally thought, there were other outcomes to show.
And the experience of his research project serves as an allegory for Ainsworth’s own personal development, as his life experiences a shift of gear and a change of track. The unrelenting pursuit of ambition is no substitute for savouring life’s journey, as Ainsworth and many would-be adventurers visiting the Mischin Inn have learned.
In David Green’s Magic, Maps and Mischief the protagonist Greton finds himself driven by the question “What is your heart’s desire?” Ainsworth’s dreams are haunted by the similar question “What do you want.” This puts me in mind of the famous quote by Joseph Heller, when Kurt Vonnegut told him at a party that their billionaire host had made more money in a day than Catch-22 had raised in its entire history.
Heller replied simply, “Yes, but I have something he will never have – ENOUGH.”
And that perhaps defines the happy ending that cosy fantasies like Bullen’s deliver most effectively.
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