The Company: Book Review

I just finished reading The Company, by K.J. Parker. This is not exactly a fantasy novel, but it certainly has that aesthetic. It takes you back to medieval times, and it captures the aesthetic of what you could call a grimdark fantasy novel; the catch is that there is no magic in the novel. It is a very dark, heavily character driven novel. People often criticize it by saying that nothing happens (until the very end), but that's because they go in expecting large and momentous events to unfold—kind of like a fantasy novel. The plot of this novel is very subtle, and it's more about the character dynamics than anything else. But another thing, which I think a lot of people miss in relation to this point, is that there is a certain way in which the story is told, which affects how people perceive its pace. We will get into the specifics below.

The basic premise of this book is that Kunessin, a former military general, has returned home. He is making contact with all of his old war friends who used to be part of the same infamous company when they were younger. He has a plan: he has acquired an island which he now intends to colonize and turn into a farm for them all. This book details their efforts in establishing this colony on an abandoned island.

As stated, it is grimdark. It offers deep insight into the darker side of humanity. And it is somewhat reminiscent of Dan Simmons, actually, with the amount of detail Parker goes into with the farming. It is very detail oriented, in that way. Apparently, Parker does this with all his books, just as Simmons does with his.

Characters

I

The characters are the centerpiece of this novel. Even more so than that, Kunessin is the centerpiece of the characters. As one of the characters in the book describes him, he brings the four remaining members of the company together much like a magnet brings together metal filings. And this could not be truer. The rest of the characters all willingly give up their lives to go to the island of Sphoe, where this colony will be established.

Kunessin is a character with extraordinary complexities at his very core. His whole life, he seems to have been motivated by the simple life. He wants to live on a farm. Having lost his as a younger man, and being forced to go into the military during the war, he has been fixated on getting his farm back, one way or another. Yet, he has lived his whole life in the military by the time the novel has begun. Not only that, but his attempt to establish a colony and an associated farm, become an extension of a never ending war that he has been fighting his whole life. We see him fight, exploit, and take advantage of people throughout the book, and we learn that this is a pattern—and it even affects his personal relationships. One telling conversation was his confession to Kudei, one of the men in the company, and the man who ended up acquiring Kunessin's lost farm. Kudei's bad reaction, and Kunessin's confusion in response, is even more telling.

At the center of Kunessin there is this contradiction. He wants a simple life on the farm. But he is also in an unending war with everyone around him. I could say that Kunessin is trapped in a cycle of war, constantly fighting and exploiting and hurting others as he chases his ideal, but I think it is more a reflection of his nature, than something that is imposed on him. He might be fighting for a farm, but after a point you wonder whether the farm is the point.

II

Kunessin is such a central character that it is hard to talk about the rest without talking about him. That said, I do have some commentary about some of the other characters.

Aidi is probably the most compelling. His relationship and tension with Kunessin is the most interesting because it resides on an intellectual level. And there's also a level of moral complexity there. Kunessin is the leader of their group, and Aidi is ostensibly the intellectual challenge. But as the story progresses, something more interesting begins to emerge.

Kudei is also interesting for the reasons that I mentioned above. His family is the one that ended up buying the farm off of Kunessin after they were forced to sell it, and this fact resides in the background for the whole of the story. It says a lot about who Kunessin is. The fact that Kudei is mostly indifferent about it also says something.

Muri is more complicated, in terms of writing. He has strange quirks. Parker emphasizes his ability to derive truths from first principles, in the book, even having a scene where he derives Pythagoras' theorem all by himself, without knowing what it was. But Parker does not really take this anywhere. Instead, the other characters apparently don't pay all that much attention to him. In the end, it is this latter point that is leaned upon.

Alces, or Fly, is unfortunately the most uninteresting of the characters. There isn't all that much to say about him. At one point, we learn multiple explanations for his nickname, but that didn't lead to anything, contrary to what I was expecting.

The latter two are lacking, partly because their relationship to Kunessin is lacking.

Fortunately, Kunessin is such an expansive and compelling character that he makes up for most of this.

Morality

I do have some questions about the execution of morality of the story. At one point, in the very beginning, there were questions asked about the indentured servants that were being used on the island. Upon learning that they were being used, one of the characters, I assume Aidi, responded by saying, "Not quite a model society, then." Indentured servitude is perceived as bad by the men, in other words. Why, though? Are there actual reasons for this, or not? How common was this practice, and what would compel someone to oppose the practice, itself? There is a difference between opposing status as a slave and opposing a system of slavery, and not many people are that big in their thinking. Their thinking is within the frame that society places them within. Most slaves want to be the slaver.

I understand the storycraft reasons for this. Our society has a very different moral frame than theirs. If someone, especially on the political left, wants to make a thematic point about class, then they often have to make exceptions like this. I still thought it was eyebrow raising and perhaps even rather telling. My go-to assumption is that people like this would take for granted class systems and slavery and simply translate it over to their island. Perhaps a bit like Liberia, if you know about the history of that country. When thinking about human nature, some people start with moral assumptions and build human nature around that, and others start with human nature and build morality around that.

I think the point Parker was trying to make was much more poignant when the idea of buying wives as slaves was broached. The reaction to that seemed a bit more natural. At the same time, I still think I might differ on how I would write the objections.

Pacing

I did talk briefly at the beginning about this book being slow paced. While this is true—it is no page turner, to be sure—there is a lot going on in terms of character work and dynamics. The plot is more subtle. However, I still think the story feels slow for another reason that has nothing to do with what I mentioned above.

I think the story feels slow because Parker overtells his story. All stories are a balance of showing and telling, and Parker makes some rather baffling choices in this department. Sometimes he is constantly oscillating back and forth; he is telling the story, with occasional smatterings of showing to spice up the story. At other times, he will have a whole scene be portrayed in full.

I could complain about some trivial examples: Muri was consistently said to be unrespected; none of the other companymen listened to him. But I never thought we saw this . . . except for one pivotal moment at the end. Yet, these don't really carry through my point. The best example of this is with a certain climactic scene. I won't give away the details, save to say that it is when the tension between Kunessin and his indentured servants is finally resolved. You would think that this scene would be shown to the reader. Maybe a whole chapter, or a chunk of a chapter, devoted to it. But that's not really what we get. Instead, there are a series of paragraphs that summarize it for us. That's it.

I understand why chunks of this story would need to be told. Storytelling is the art of knowing when to show and when to tell. The point is that Parker's default seems to be telling, unless he feels that the story deems it important . . . with some notable exceptions.

My ultimate point is that this slows down the reading experience. What could have been very tense scenes were actually very rushed and almost anti-climactic. This is not a persistent problem. I don't think Parker dropped the ball on every scene, but there were some.

I recently got into a discussion with Jason Fuhrman about using movies to augment your ability to write books. While books are not a visual medium, and there has been a lot of talk of how we shouldn't be writing our books like a movie, there are some aspects of movies that are worth stealing. Jason brought up the fact the movies are forced to be efficient with their scene construction. They have to grab your attention and fit as much into a scene as possible. I brought up the confrontation between Anton Chigurh and Woody Harrelson in No Country for Old Men. Or the coin toss scene, for that matter.

This relates to what I am talking about here because when you don't show enough, you lose a certain amount of cinematic quality to your writing. Showing is the medium in which scenes are written, not telling, and it is important to place weight on them.

Names

At the beginning, I was annoyed because I kept getting confused by all the names of the characters. I understood that the confusion over the wives was intentional, but even the names of the different companymen were confusing me. I was especially not connecting their first names with their last names; Parker's choice to sometimes use their last names only, and then their first names only, did not help.

Ending

The ending of this book is what everything is building up to. A group of five men, with a lot of history together, are isolated on an island together. Secrets are exposed, tensions rise, conflicts break out, and questions about loyalty and the morality of multiple peoples' actions are asked. This story is like a powder keg. We eagerly wait for everything to go up in flames, and when it finally does, it is like the ultimate purging of emotions that we have all been waiting for. It is the definition of catharsis. Thankfully, the final scene was shown, rather than told.

Conclusion

Overall, I particularly enjoyed this book. It paints quite a bleak picture of humanity that is still realistic, with a compelling main character that checks all the boxes of grimdark, even if this isn't technically a fantasy. I think I will give this an 8.5/10.

Video: https://youtu.be/8a8dlCFMKm4