Tome of the Undergates

Tome of the Undergates

The debut novel from an extraordinarily talented twenty-five-year-old author. Fantasy's next global star has arrived.

Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the Shict despises most humans and the humans in the band are little better). When they're not insulting each other's religions they're arguing about pay and conditions.

So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don't go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demons teals the Tome of the Undergates- a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don't want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods and they want out…

The Tome of the Undergates is a vivid, highly original fantasy epic from an exciting new talent. Readers will adore Lenk and his mismatched band. Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure, this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.

A Letter from Sam Sykes:
At the risk of disappointing hopes that I am some thoughtful and introspective person, my writing of The Tome of the Undergate did not involve a lot of conscious decisions. That is, at the risk of disappointing hopes that I am an entirely reasonable and stable man, it never occurred to me not to write a fantasy story about six thugs, zealots, racists and savages combating fish-headed evangelicals and their slurping, burbling flocks of hairless frogmen over a book that as the potential to ultimately render life, physically or philosophically, pointless.

To that end, I really can't explain why I chose to write it or why things are the way they are in it. If someone reads it, frowns, and asks me: "Now, I get the concept of a race of callous, fratboy-esque, long-jawed females with a penchant for chanting and eviscerating in equal measures… but why are they purple?"

My answer for that, and essentially every other question of that nature about The Tome of the Undergates, is to smile and say: "Why wouldn't' they be?"

The book took approximately eight years to write (originally brewed as a massive dose of paper-wrought carnage, violence, bloodshed and fart jokes), going through two iterations before becoming the creature with far worse carnage and far more vulgar jokes in it that it is today.

Research for the book was likewise not too similar to what I think the image of a writer doing research should be. There was barely any studious note-taking, walking about with an air of scholarly detachment or sitting in a coffee shop, stroking a beard and musing on paper. There was however, more than one visit to an aquarium in which I stood, muttering resentfully, to fish tanks as the smug gilled beasts swam arrogantly past me, flaunting their underwater prowess and taunting me to come into their horrible lukewarm worlds of glass, salt and chum.

This hatred an fear of the ichthyoids menace, nurtured lovingly by the state of mind that believed it to be totally reasonable to hate and fear fish, contributed to some of the more vile creatures made manifest in the book.

It was possibly also this sort of lunacy that made the characters emerge as they are: a band not so much 'mismatched' as 'unintentional social experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong' composed of the aforementioned thugs, zealots, racists and savages with a healthy dose of murderous intent, psychopathic voices and a lot of well placed dismemberment.

It may be evident from that description that I'm hard-pressed to pick a favourite character amongst them. I think I'm drawn to them in that they are distinctly unheroic, possessed of all the questions that do not make a savior of mankind, but rather a person like you or me. Questions like: "Can I choose duty over friendship (when duty, in this case, means the total eradication of our friends' race)?" "If there is a divine force, does it truly love me (and if so, why did he give me an arm that turns people to ash)?" "When does life become unbearable enough that its okay to throw everything away (and start killing)?"

These question make them very hard for me to not like as people, just as their answers make them very difficult to like as a group, resulting in a very worrying trainwreck of emotions and violence that I (and hopefully, you) will have a hard time looking away from.

This culmination of problems, carnage and fish-demons essentially forms the backbone, with the overall philosophies and questions posed forming the tender flesh and marrow and the interrelation reactions between the characters becoming the sweet, sweet blood.

I suppose, therefore, if I had one thing to say about The Tome of the Undergates that would hopefully make you think it worth reading, it would be: "Oh my God… Oh my God."

A letter from Simon Spanton, Deputy Publishing Director, Gollancz:

Why did I fall in love with this book? Why do I hope you'll do the same? It's simple really; it reminded me of the sense of excitement at discovering a fresh new world in the company of a vividly drawn band of adventures that first turned me into a reader of fantasy.

And that word 'fresh' is the key. Yes Tome features a heroic band on a quest to save their world from evil but this is as like an identikit fantasy as The Princess Bride is a like a B movie.

The adventurer Lenk and his mismatched, squabbling companions will endear themselves to you from the outset. Lenk is haunted by a voice in his head and in love with someone who needs to kill the entire human race to prove her identity. The lives of his companions are no less complicated.

And it's this band who will keep you company as they make their way through a magical and truly alien world in pursuit of a demon like no other. From its beginning in desperate fight for survival against loquacious pirates to its end on a desert island Sam's novel never fails to be both exciting and original.

And we haven't even got to the psychotic chanting alien warrior women...

And all of this is just the start: a conversation with Sam about where this trilogy will go in Books 2 and 3 left me, frankly, flabbergasted. If you think this is a wonderfully exciting book set in an extraordinary imagined world just wait 'till you find out what Sam's really up to with this trilogy.

Having said this wonderfully original novel let me have my cake and eat it by suggesting that if you liked Scott Lynch (who I bought with similar sense of excitement) you're going to love Sam Sykes...

Best Wishes,
Simon Spanton
Deputy Publishing Director, Gollancz.

Sam Sykes began writing this book when he was 17. He is now 25. He lives in the US.

Tome of the Undergates
Hachette Australia
Author: Sam Sykes
ISBN: 9780575090293
Price: $32.99