Apropos nothing, I've always been confused/amused that David Gemmell, after whom the Gemmell Award is named, is held up by so many as the apex of manly, non-SJW bullshit sword-and-sorcery writing, because, like... did these guys ever actually READ Gemmell?
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The guy was prolific, so I can't claim to have read everything he ever wrote, nor will I pretend that there's nothing to critique in what I did. But overwhelmingly, what I remember about his books is a profound sense of empathy for people, and respect for the harm caused by war.
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His female characters had agency and sexual autonomy. There were married women who bantered happily (and sometimes unhappily) with each other about their husbands' failings. There were sex workers who weren't demonised or othered, but empathised with in the text.
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There were stories about how war scars the landscape forever, and a recurring theme of war and violence taking more from the world - magically, spiritually and culturally - than good people could hope to replenish with the same ease.
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Gemmell wrote about rape, but in all the books I read, I don't recall him ever sexualising or sensationalising it. It was an ugly thing that happened, and he made a point of writing that ordinary men could be the culprits; that it could be a crime of opportunity -
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- and not just something obvious Evil Straw Villains did Because Evil. He never exonerated his rapists, but he showed how even men who were generally "good" in other contexts could commit it; & that even if they regretted it later, their victims still had a right to pain & anger.
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Most of all, I recall that his male heroes were deeply human and fallible. A man who was the hero of one book was shown to be a distant, isolating father in the next, someone his son constantly strove to be seen by and to impress, but without success.
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Having been warned, Greek chorus style, against such carelessness, his heroes would fail to protect the vulnerable people in their lives by putting their own selfishness first; failures for which the story would rebuke them, rather than using such deaths purely as manpain fodder.
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His heroes aged, too, and felt the physical effects of age and disability. A once elite archer would feel his vision start to waver; wounded soldiers would struggle with injuries for the rest of their lives.
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It's been many years since I've read Gemmell, but so much of his work stuck with me precisely because of its empathy. And I wonder how those who hold him up as the antithesis of SJW snowflakes can have missed so much of the kindness in his writing.
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