It’s difficult to reckon whether it’s odd or appropriate that Canada, with its reputation for staidness and dry conventionalism, has produced so impressive a roster of front-rank writers of fantasy and science fiction. To an estimable (though by no means exhaustive) list of such writers as William Gibson, Nalo Hopkinson, Guy Gavriel Kay, Charles de Lint, Robert J. Sawyer, and Karl Schroeder should be added the name of Canadian-born New York City writer David Keck.

Is it too early to label a writer visionary based only on a debut novel? Not when that novel’s as impressive as In the Eye of Heaven, a book as commanding in its own right as Neuromancer and The Summer Tree (the auspicious debuts of Gibson and Kay, respectively).

The novel begins with the return of young Durand to his father’s keep. The second son of the Baron of Col, Durand has spent 14 years in service as a page and squire, and has been promised a small holding, the property of a lesser noble whose only son was lost at sea. When that long-missing son returns home, on the very night of Durand’s own arrival, Durand loses his legacy and takes to the road. In the Eye of Heaven then takes on a near-picaresque form that’s unusual in fantasy writing, which is more often premised on grand quests and destinies.

The world of In the Eye of Heaven is a surreal feudal landscape rife with living myth and history, where roads are haunted by “the Traveler” and forests are filled with the undying figures of myth and folktale. Keck immerses readers immediately in this reality, largely leaving them on their own to sort out the novel’s complicated mythos and vast set of characters, each with their own histories and motivations. It’s not easy, but it’s tremendously rewarding.

In the Eye of Heaven could have been bloated and cliché-ridden. Instead, Keck seems to have deliberately underwritten the novel, creating a terse, minimalist tone that is both unusual for the genre and extraordinarily effective. This novel marks the arrival of a genuine new talent in the field.