A tree of immense girth grows from a tufted shoot; a terrace of nine levels rises from a clump of soil; a journey of a thousand miles begins under the first tread.
--Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 64
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| Wolfskin | The Outskirter's Secret | Flashman and the Dragon |
| Flashman and the Redskins | Paladin of Souls | Quicksilver |
| The Steerswoman |
Wolfskin, Juliet Marillier (2002), 489 pp (hb).
This is fantasy masquerading as historical fiction. Let me restate that...it's not really what I'd call fantasy at all, to tell the truth. More like historical fiction with a few mythical/magical elements tacked on at the margins, and more strongly at the end. It's the author's stab at telling a tale of the first Norseman expedition settling in the Orkney islands, and their encounter with the indigenous Pictish inhabitants of those islands.
The wolfskin of the title refers to the elite guards of the Norse leader, men who have made dedication to Thor and serve as the berserk vanguard of the warband. The story centers on one wolfskin in particular, Eyvind, who is sent along on the risky expedition to sail from Norway to the Orkneys. The expedition's initial contact with the folk of the islands is peaceful, and everyone settles down to colonize and co-exist more or less in harmony. Then Eyvind's blood brother Somerled, younger brother of the expedition's leader, lets his ruthless ambition out to play, and conditions head south in a hurry. Can the courageous and beautiful young priestess of the indigenous people, Nessa, and the true-hearted and handsome Eyvind build a bridge of understanding and save these two cultures from strife and conflict? Three guesses, and the first two don't count....
This book was of that frustrating tribe that I encounter now and again--the type that tiptoes up to the edge of being interesting, engaging, even compelling, but never quite makes it over the brink. There were a few times when I almost got involved in these characters and their story, but each time the tale just never really sealed the deal. Combine this with the blandly noble hero--I have nothing against heroes or nobility (of character) per se, in fact I rather like them more than not, but I do have something against blandness--and a romantic sub-plot (that becomes the plot at points) that eventually consumates its flirtation with soppy mawkishness, and I'm left with a tale that was mildly enjoyable (emphasis on mildly) but frustrating in that it felt like it could have and should have been better.
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The Outskirter's Secret, Rosemary Kirstein (1992), 333 pp (pb).
This is the sequel to The Steerswoman, and picks up pretty much where the first book leaves off. Rowan (the steerswoman) and her good buddy Bel (an outskirter, if not the outskirter) head out to, well, the outskirts to try to figure out why the shadowy figure at the head of the wizards has taken an unhealthy interest in Rowan's investigations, and what he/she/it is anxious to keep concealed out in the back of beyond. Backing up just a bit, the outskirts are how the denizens of this world refer to the semi-arid prairie that lie to the east of the settled communities of civilization. It's populated by a number of nomadic tribes, and most of the story is taken up with Rowan and Bel attaching themselves to one of these tribes and traipsing around with them.
This book is interesting in an anthropological sort of way--the author does a fairly decent job of examining the different customs of the outskirter tribes as they try their best to survive in a hostile and unforgiving environment. I'm still not entirely captivated by characters or setting--sorry, Mike--but it's a mildly entertaining read.
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Flashman and the Dragon, George MacDonald Fraser (1985), 292 pp (hb).
Flashman does China and the Taiping Rebellion. He happens to be in Hong Kong for unspecified reasons, where he is soon roped into running a cargo of what he thinks is opium (but turns out to be the--in that time and place--far more incriminating cargo of guns) for a missionary society, of all things. His pilot turns out to be Frederick Townsend Ward (having read Caleb Carr's The Devil Soldier some years ago, I immediately said "ah-hah! We will no doubt see the founder of the Ever Victorious Army again in this tale!" As, indeed, we did. But I get ahead of myself). Before long, Flashy is on a clandestine mission for British intelligence to infiltrate the headquarters of the Taiping Rebellion in Nanjing. That completed, he becomes part of the allied European expedition to Beijing to force the Emperor and his ossified imperial bureaucracy to acknowledge the British ambassador and accept a new treaty. Flashman is soon taken hostage, hustled off to the imperial palace, kidnapped by the power behind throne, Zi Xi (soon to be the Dowager Empress, and absolute ruler of China, in fact if not name, for the next forty-odd years), and serving as the at-that-time-still-young-and-beautiful concubine's exotic foreign boy-toy.
Chinese history of the last two centuries is fascinating and tragic in equal parts, and the setting for this story is a particularly tumultuous time. Add in Flashman's amazing, albeit quite unbelievable, adventures, and it all adds up to another absorbing read.
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Flashman and the Redskins, George MacDonald Fraser (1982), 448 pp (hb).
Flashy's back, in adventure number seven. This is easily the longest of the Flashman Papers, no doubt because it's really two stories smushed together by a fairly thin pretext. The first story takes up the first two-thirds of the book, and follows immediately on the heels of events that concluded episode three, Flash for Freedom. Back then, old Harry, in his assumed character as a British naval spy, had just given highly ambiguous testimony against a slaver and his crew in an admiralty condemnation hearing in New Orleans, allowing the captain to get off the hook and, not coincidentally, royally torquing off members of the U.S. Navy. The current volume opens with Harry hiding out from the enraged naval officers in a house of ill repute ("There is, a house, in New Orleans...."), since the Madame has taken a fancy to him (as Harry puts it, the cavalry whiskers and the big, bluff facade get them every time). Madame soon takes it into her head to pull up stakes and move her operation--lock, stock, and harem--to San Francisco (it's 1848-9, remember). Harry tags along and adventures ensue.
I've noted previously that I think the character of Sir Harry, his constant protestations aside, is very nearly as much an amoral character as and immoral one, but that thesis takes a bit of a hit here, as Flashy indulges in one of the few truly ruthless, heartlessly cruel acts that we see. Madame has set up shop in Old Santa Fe, and Flashman conspires to take off with one of Madame's young prostitutes, with whom he's carrying on a clandestine fling, and head for Mexico. In the event, though, behind the young prostitute's back, he sells her out--for a couple thousand dollars--to a priest who's acting as a procurator for a local native American chief, and heads down the trail without a backward glance. Before it's all over, Harry gets tangled up with bloodthirsty Apaches, etc., but he finally makes it back to England.
The second story, and the last third of the book, happens twenty-five years later, when Sir Harry is in his early fifties. His wife takes it into her head that she wants to see America, and by a circuitous turn of events (involving some well-deserved revenge by one of Harry's old nemeses; see also "young prostitute" in the immediately preceding paragraph) Flashy ends up at the Little Bighorn just in time for Custer's Last Stand--unfortunately for him, on the wrong side, but never fear for our Harry, for it somehow comes out all right.
In line with the earlier installments, an enjoyable adventure, especially if one likes tales of the old American West.
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Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold (2003), 456 pp (hb).
This is the second of Bujold's recent fantasy novels set in a milieu that bears a certain passing resemblance to medieval Spain, following the initial volume Curse of Chalion. This book isn't precisely a sequel to Curse, in that it doesn't really extend or continue the stories of any of the main characters from that book. Instead, a minor character from Curse steps forward to take center stage, not long after the concluding events of the earlier tale. Because I didn't reread Curse to refresh my memory prior to starting this, it took me a few pages to get my bearings vis-a-vis characters and setting, but it didn't take all that long.
The main character of Paladin is Ista, mother of the current ruler of the country Chalion. She has just emerged from the mental fog engendered by the eponymous curse of last book, and retired to her own mother's country estate to try to put her life and thoughts back into some semblance of order. As novel opens, she has realized that she is being smothered by care and kindness, and that she needs to get away. So she seizes on the idea of a religious pilgrimage as a pretext to strike out on the road, with just a small band of soldiers as an escort.
One of the things that made Curse stand out from the slew of paint-by-numbers fantasy dotting the shelves--aside from Bujold's characteristically fine writing--was its interesting theology. Anticipating the protestations from the fantasy-reading part of the gallery--particulary that section that distinctly recalls their cleric saving the day with the odd Holy Smite or Resurrection spell--it's not that religion, with a fictional pantheon of gods and goddesses, plays a part. It's first that the theology is intriguingly constructed, complete with a deadly doctrinal schism between bordering countries, and second, the motives and purposes of the divine players take a central part in the lives of the characters. And all of this without being dry and boring.
Paladin is centered around the Bastard, the fifth member of Chalion's five membered pantheon. Our heroine Ista, in the process of getting back on her feet, has both a demon incursion and a hostile border invasion to deal with, while simultaneously trying to figure out if and how she's going to be a servant to the Bastard. I'm not sure Bujold is capable of writing a clunker at this point in her career--although witnessing the advent of the Brain Eater in other cases, we should all keep our fingers devoutly crossed--but at any rate, Paladin is an enjoyable piece of fantasy writing, and I'll be looking forward to her next tale in the Chalion setting.
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Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson (2003), 916 pp (hb).
I'm so unsure of where to start with comments on this book that I'm tempted to just point to Kozlowski's review and have done with it. That wouldn't be quite cricket, alas, particularly for a book that I've been so eagerly awaiting for so long. Well, three or four years at least, ever since finishing Cryptonomicon, Stephenson's last logorhetic love letter to Geek Nation. I found Cryptonomicon both fascinating and entirely absorbing, so naturally I was anxious to see what he would come up with next. It's unfair, as I'm sure many have already done, to find fault with Quicksilver for not being another Cryptonomicon. Unfair, but still kind of hard to avoid.
Quicksilver, save for a brief framing story that doesn't serve much purpose beyond informing us that one of the main characters survives into old age, takes place during the latter half of the seventeenth century, a time of great political and intellectual ferment. The book is divided into thirds. The first third is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, young scion of a Puritan tribe, who becomes colleague and intimate of Isaac Newton at Cambridge, and from there gets caught up in the nascent scientific revolution, as the wacky proto-scientists of the Royal Society trip about London performing bizarre and sometimes useful experiments. The second third shifts to the peregrinations of Mad Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds, who got his start contracting with condemned prisoners to hasten their end when noose met neck by climbing up their legs with his brother. Now he's wandering around the European landscape, bumping into all manner of interesting people, among them Gottfried von Liebniz and the Sun King, Louis the XIV. The final third loops back, as Jack's companion, the lovely courtesan Eliza, and Daniel Waterhouse get caught up in England's Glorious Revolution--on the same side, more or less, but from different ends.
Within these broad outlines, of course, there's a whole lot of stuff going on, and it can be difficult to keep track of who's important and why if you don't already have some notion of the history of the period. I'm not entirely sure why I wasn't able to warm to this book more than I did, and I've tentatively concluded that at least part of it is because I've read a decent smattering of historical fiction and so I'm used to reading it in a decidedly different style than Stephenson's. Stephenson's giddy and erudite irreverence works very well for near-future Geek Age hipster tales, but seems a bit jarring in the uses to which it's put here. Be that as it may, this is still a very impressive achievement; I suspect it might grow on me with a second reading. And of course, I'll be curious to see what's planned for the two sequels.
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The Steerswoman, Rosemary Kirstein (1989), 279 pp (pb).
I picked this up primarily because Mike Kozlowski was so enamoured by it and its sequels. It's a story about members of a medieval level society coming into contact with higher technology--the users of which, naturally, are known as wizards--although this doesn't really become apparent until relatively late in the story. The protagonist is Rowan, a Steerswoman, and order that is devoted to traveling about, observing what's going on in the world, and then returning their findings to the central archives. Rowan has noticed something odd about the pattern and locations in which certain crystalline type jewels are appearing; she doesn't know what it all means, but the fact that she's started paying attention to it gets the wizards interested in her, in a potentially deadly sort of way.
It takes a little while for the story to really get on track, it seems to me. Once it does, it's a decent story, if not stupendous, and at least it seems to leave some potential for its sequel to pick up a little bit. We'll see.
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