Portal of a Thousand Worlds by Dave Duncan (Book Review)

Portal of a Thousand Worlds
By Dave Duncan
Published by Open Road, 2017
Price: $18.99 

Every 1000 years the Portal of a Thousand Worlds opens in the Good Land and whatever dynasty is on the throne at the time falls and is replaced. Sometimes barbarian armies come out of the portal to conquer the land, sometimes armies go into the portal and are never heard from again. There are certain portents that herald the approach of the opening. Those portents appear to be happening as the book opens and so different players are trying to strengthen their hold on their power while others are using the chaos to seize it. The current emperor of the land, Absolute Purity, has rarely been seen, and is rumored to be dead, causing a rebellion of insurgents called The Bamboo Banner, who want to march to the capital to cast out his Empress Mother, who is ruling in his stead, and install their own leader.

One of the problems with the throne is that Absolute Purity has not sired a successor. The Empress has decided to carry out a desperate plan to assure the stability of her dynasty. She is going to install an impostor on the throne and try to pass off his issue as the heir to the kingdom.  To carry out this plot, she needs the aid of the Gray Helpers, an organization that handles funeral rites on the surface, but are secretly assassins, bodyguards, and the power brokers of the Good Land.

Besides the Empress, her son, and the Gray Helpers, the other main force in the book is the First-born, known as Sunlight, a young boy who in actuality has lived and died for centuries but is forever reborn with all his memories intact. He is being held prisoner and tortured by the Empress in an effort to learn whatever he knows about the Portal of a Thousand Worlds.

To me, the book came off as a blatant rip off of Game of Thrones. To me, the only real difference was superficial, replacing Thrones's Middle Ages Europe with 19th century China. The Gray Helpers are so much like the Faceless Men it's not even funny. The Gray Helpers help with funerary rites and as a pseudo religious organization and can even shape shift like the Faceless Men. One of the characters, Silky, goes on a journey similar to Arya except that he embraces the culture of his league of assassins whereas Arya ultimately rejected it. The looming and destabilizing threat of the Portal looms over the book just as the White Walkers loom over all the George RR Martin novels without actually appearing that often.

The plotting by various factions in the book to rule over the Good Land was also very reminiscent of Thrones. Maybe we're all just spoiled now. Any fantasy novel written about powerful families and organizations trying to gain power now gets compared to Game of Thrones. It's really become the main archetype of fantasy, taking over the role of Tolkien. All fantasy novels are now merely comparisons or contrasts to its model.

Chapter 1 actually ends with the words "And winter was coming." Not a lie. It seems like such a nod and wink by Dave Duncan it can't be ignored. Is this novel merely an homage to Martin? Some sort of weird parody?

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the book because of the interesting characters. I wanted to see how it all ended. But Game of Thrones is not in any danger of being replaced by this novel, even if it takes Martin 1000 years to complete the next book in the series.

My Grade: B