Ecko Rising – Occupy Dungeons and Dragons

When we were approached by the friendly folks over at Titan Books to review a copy of one of their new releases, Ecko Rising, I frantically waved my arm around to volunteer. A six-word synopsis put the book firmly in my wheelhouse – “Dungeons and Dragons meets The Matrix.” I was sold; pulp fantasy meets dystopian sci-fi? It’s like author Danie Ware reached into my head and looked past the Megaman rock operas, weird Japanese games and golden retrievers teaching science, and said ‘oh, hey, this’ll work.’

Suffice to say, I was pretty excited about Ecko Rising.

Ecko Rising starts us off in a dystopian, Equilibrium-like future where humanity is under corporate control, ruled by pills and apathy. It’s an easy future to identify with, as its rebels talk like the Occupy movement and its faceless corporate villains. Ecko is our main character, a freedom fighter who plays by his own rules, a very rebellious attitude (he’s kind of a dick) and the cybernetic implants to back up his big talk. Not very far into the story, Ecko is taken from his sci-fi London to a fantasy city called Roviarath. There, he’s not sure if he’s been shoved into a Matrix-like ‘Virtual Rorschach’ or if he’s dead and this is some kind of messed up afterlife.

I’ll definitely say Ecko Rising is a good book, but there were a few key places in which it failed to live up to my expectations.

The Good

First off, Ware is excellent with dialog and interesting characters. Ecko and his sci-fi 99%-er cohorts are fun to read, especially the interaction between Ecko and his burly motorcycle-gang leader Lugan (who is far and away the best). I would I have loved more of this. The majority of the book takes place in the fantasy world, so Ecko’s modern dialect, full of video game references, Cockney slang and cursing, is very entertaining to read juxtaposed with a more traditional style of gritty fantasy speech.

The futuristic London was my favorite setting in the book – it was pretty well nuanced and very well built for the short time we get to experience it. The fantasy world was much the same, though Ware falls into the problem many fantasy authors do, which is using lots of made up words and terms for things in her world, then never clearly explaining to the reader what these things are. Her fantasy world is a cool place – city-states have trade roads stretched between them, ringing a massive grassland called the Varchinde. In the deep grass, bandits and monsters prowl, and the world has a creeping, forgotten fear that is slowly becoming realized. This is pretty awesome and I love the idea of the world itself having a fear. This fear interacts wonderfully with some of the thematic elements of the dystopian future society, which is really clever and something I hope to see explored a lot more in the sequel, Ecko Burning.

The Bad

Ecko Rising utilizes a popular style right now, which is telling the story from the perspective of characters in third person (similar to A Song of Ice and Fire). This is fine and pretty cool – much like with Ecko’s dialog compared to the rest of the cast, I like the juxtaposition a lot. Hooooowever. More and more characters get introduced as we get deeper into the book, and these are characters that have PoVs and events happening around them. It takes awhile for these characters to come in, and when they do, suddenly we’re jolted into a new headspace, a new section of the world and a new piece of a puzzle that starts to get seriously intricate near the end of the book. It was hard to jump into this after such a molasses-slow mid-section.

This issue, however, pales in comparison to what my biggest problem with this book is; Ecko Rising’s female characters are not handled well.

While trying to avoid spoilers, there are two situations of rape in this book. One is by physical force and one is by, well, we’ll call it magical roofies. The latter happens multiple times and is described in sensual detail, the former happens off-screen and to a supporting character.

The off-screen rape bugged me as it seemed like it was tacked on as another list of ‘oh man this guy did some bad stuff,’ as it occurred with a litany of other crimes. It certainly didn’t seem necessary as a plot element on its own and felt, well, throwaway. Throwaway rape is an old fantasy trope  and one I really wish would turn into a Discredited Trope soon. The magical roofie rape also bothered me (let’s be honest here, rape pretty much is always gonna effect me in some way) due to the style in which it’s written and the aftermath it…didn’t seem to have on the character victimized.

Besides the rape, while many of the female characters are in positions of power or are strong/skilled warriors themselves, they still aren’t handled with an equal hand to the male characters. Most of the female characters (even the Big Boss in charge of La Resistance, whom we never see clothed) are physically described with prose denoting their attractiveness (or why they aren’t attractive to a certain standard of beauty). Women are more easily manipulated, even almost all of the female characters who hold authority.

Despite these things (very despite), Ecko Rising was pretty decent. The world-building is great, there are some really interesting characters and the mythos of both worlds is enthralling. It’ll be cool to see more action and explanations in the sequel, Ecko Burning.

I just really hope what I don’t see is more rape. Pretty please?