Books Catch Up 3

More books I read this year

1. Madouc

Madouc, princess of Lyonesse, is a disappointment to her family, just like her (presumed) mother was (see Suldrun’s Garden). Unlike Suldrun she is actually a fairy changeling. Taunted by her lack of pedigree she takes advantage of a poorly phrased instruction from her (notional) grandfather King Casimir of Lyonesse to travel through various adventures, meeting her mother the fairy Twisk. Casimir attempts to marry off Madouc, as part of his ongoing plots to become king of the Elder Isles, is thwarted.

Queen Sollace has finally managed to get her cathedral built and is looking for relics; with no better idea Casimir offers rewards for the Holy Grail up to marriage to Madouc. Madouc and her stable-boy Sir Pom-Pom (named by Madouc) take this as an excuse to go and find it themselves. They succeed, it doesn’t help.

In between this Casimir’s plots are thwarted by Aillas, now king of united Ulfland, Troicinet and Dascinet, making him the third power in the Elder Isles. Aillas promises to come to the aid of any other kingdom of the Elder Isles that is attacked, noting that Casimir has no need of a navy as his will defend Lyonesse from any seaborne invasion. They’re all lying of course. Various conferences and celebrations bring Madouc into contact with Dhrun, Aillas and Suldrun’s son, and so her changeling-partner.

The third major plot ties up the magical threat, with Shimrod finishing his affair with Desmei (see The Green Pearl), for her and Torqual to invade the home of Murgen, the grand magician of the Elder Isles. This ends disasterously, with the city of Ys and the Vale Evander in South Ulflands being swamped, though the rest of the Elder Isles (and the world) are saved for now. It then triggers Casmir to make his final attempt to seize the whole of the realm, which is dealt with in a handful of pages.

The heart of the book is the various episodic adventures, written in Vance’s lush, full prose, often undercut with understated jokes. And this is made clear in that the final apocalyptic magical battle is written as just another episode in the picaresque, and the ensuing war is reported in telegraphic form mostly to make room for the final settling of events and the reveal of Madouc’s parentage – which itself is almost offhand.

Read This: Masterful, witty, clever fantasy
Don’t Read This: You thought the first two volumes were too interested in weird creatures and strange encounters rather than wars and great magics, because this one is even more that

2. Lord Of The Isles

A thousand years ago the old kingdom of the isles fell as rising tides of magic overwhelmed it, killing Carus, the last king, and drowning the island of Yole. Tenoctris, a wizard of great knowledge but meagre power is able to survive, and finds herself in the present day, washed ashore at Barca’s Hamlet, an out-of-the-way fishing and sheepfarming settlement.

In the settlement are four youngsters; Garric and Sharina, son and daughter of the innkeeper, who fled the island’s capital during riots that deposed the Count; and Cashel and Ilna, brother and sister orphans. Cashel is probably the strongest man in the district, and can set his hand to anything in a slow and steady manner. Ilna is the best weaver in the district, with a hard and flinty manner.

After Tenoctris, others start to arrive at Barca’s Hamlet. A warship from the Queen comes and claims that Sharina is the daughter of the Count, and so heir to the ancient lineage of the Kingdom Of The Isles. They take her away, along with the hermit Nonnus, a former sealhunter and mercenary, to help her. The magician on the ship tries to shorten their journey, but every time he casts a spell, it goes wrong. Tenoctris has noted that the power of magic is getting greater, but the wizards are no wiser, so everything gets out of hand. Their adventures cover time and space.

Another traveller, Benliman, arrives looking to buy sheep to be exported. But it’s clear he’s actually a nobleman, and has brought his daughter Liane with him; he’s very interested in Garric. Garric has found washed up a medallion of King Carus; it turns out that it’s Garric who is the descendent of the old lineage. Carus’s ghost comes to him, which is helpful as liches – undead watery skeletons – attack.

Benliman hires Garric, and also Cashel to herd the sheep. With them come Tenoctris, who knows that Benliman is using magic and is out of his depth, and Ilna, who is quietly in love with Garric, and jealous of Liane. Both Garric and Liane are better educated, while Ilna is all but illiterate, having had to care for herself and her brother since their father died.

Cashel meets a sprite, and it becomes clear that he and Ilna’s mother was one too – a magical being from another world. Desperately in love with Sharina, Cashel goes off on his own, finding himself and the sprite having adventures with Serians, merchants from another island who have a different culture and religion and so are hated.

Benliman is backed by someone, and tries to use magic on the old royal tombs, which kills him, and Garric, Liane and Tenoctris only just manage to escape. Ilna, unnoticed, is seized by an evil otherworldly being. This unlocks her powers, allowing her to weave cloth that can cause desire or fear or anything else. Finding herself on another island she sells cloths of desire to women, acquiring wealth and power so that she can set a trap for Garric.

The four of them find themselves on episodic adventures, all of them getting thrown off their planned courses and into confusion thanks to wizards. And behind those wizards, other wizards. The first king of the Isles hid the Throne Of Malkar, the greatest magical arefact, and one steeped in evil. Only a descendant of that first king – and so of Carus, the last king – can find it. The logic of magic has Garric locked into finding it, but to use it is to court disaster. All six of them will find their adventures colliding.

There’s a certain amount of repetition in how the characters think about situations – how they consider choices then discard them as something they simply won’t do. Yet as each finds themselves caught up in high or low magic situations, some of which needing violence, trickery, talking or just endurance, the great variation of the Isles and surrounding worlds becomes clear.

Read This: Cool adventure fantasy
Don’t Read This: Everyone separately gets into weird unconnected situations yet somehow all come together at the end

3. The Dragon Keeper

At the end of the Liveship Traders trilogy, the Bingtown Traders and the Rain Wild Traders struck a deal with the dragon Tintaglia. The sea serpents, barred from the cocooning grounds for a long, long time, are helped in the Rain Wilds. They emerge as dragons but something – their great age, the weather, something, has them deformed.

Years later, the dragons are tired of being kept in a swampy field, some of them dying, occasionally having people try to steal dragon parts (rumoured to have magical qualities that the old and ill Duke Of Chalced will pay a fortune for). The Rain Wild Traders are tired of having to pay hunters to feed them. One of the dragons has an ancestral memory of Kelsingra, the city where dragons and Elderlings lived, and nudges the other dragons and the Traders to mount an expedition to take them there.

They hire Captain Leftrin of the barge Tarman, which is a liveship (made of wizardwood, the cut up cocoons of dragons). He’s illegally cut up a cocoon found to improve the ship, but someone has found out and Chalcedians are coercing him to get dragon parts. Hired as a dragon keeper is Thymara, who in common with most of the others has been deformed by the Rain Wilds, with claws and scales; she’s good at climbing into the canopy to gather, but would usually have been exposed at birth and certainly isn’t allowed to marry or have children. But upriver, away from the cities, not all rules can be enforced.

Also joining the expedition is Alise Finbok, a scholar from Bingtown, who is in a loveless marriage with Hest Finbok, the agreement being that she would provide heirs and he would support her work on dragons. She does not realise the reason he wants this is he’s gay; having fallen out with his lover/secretary Sedric, he sends Sedric to accompany Alise. Sedric also has plans to acquire dragon parts, to make a fortune and then run away with Hest to where they can be free.

The dragon stuff is interesting. They want to be lords of the three realms (air, land and sea) and have the innate arrogance, and some of the ancestral memories. But they’re landbound and dependent on humans, with all the wrong instincts. The flaw in the volume is that it’s almost entirely set up. Everyone is moved into place on the expedition, they start going and things develop… then we have to wait for Dragon Haven. Fortunately this was published in 2010 so it’s not as annoying as back in the day.

Read This: Deeply flawed, inadequately prepared characters find wonder and danger on a river trip
Don’t Read This: You don’t care about dragons, and prefer happy marriages

4. Poseidon’s Gold

Falco returns home from Germany to discover that a former army buddy of his brother is lodging with his mother. Said buddy claims that Falco’s brother, Festus, owed him a lot of money from a deal he was putting together before he was killed.

Falco disagrees, throws him out to stay above the neighbourhood bar. (There’s quite a funny bit about how this bar, Flora’s, is the one everyone drinks at despite worse service, worse cleanliness and worse food than the one across the corner; in fact more than once they order food Flora's doesn't have and the waiter has to go across the street to get it from the other place). The next day he goes there and argues with him, trying to learn more about this deal. Later that night the army buddy is killed.

Falco has to prove himself innocent of the crime, the best way being to find the real killer. And to do that he has to dig into his family history. What was his brother doing in Rome on his last trip there, before he got called back to fight, and eventually die, out in Judea. This leads to the world of fine art and, unfortunately, Falco’s father, an auctioneer who walked out on the family. Who has his own troubles, which turn out to be related to Festus’s deal, which is starting to look like a scam. If they can just figure out what it was…

One of Falco’s personal mysteries rather than one where the emperor sends him on a mission, and one located mostly in Rome. There’s a bit of fun about art and artists, from the top to the bottom. And in classic noir style everyone has their own interests and plan, everyone has secrets.

Read This: A fun look at scams, art sales (but I repeat myself), murder and family in Ancient Rome
Don’t Read This: It’s unpleasant people trying to trick each other from top to bottom

5. The Travel Tales Of Mr Joseph Jorkens

Lord Dunsany was one of the founders of the “club tale” style of story, in which a more-or-less reliable narrator tells an outlandish tale, possibly in a gentleman’s club. In this series the narrator (a stand-in for Dunsany) goes to a small and discreet club, where Jorkens, provoked by some event or other member, tells a fantastic story.

We’re told about how he stalked a legendary creature in Africa; how he met a king of a possibly imaginary city; of an African who played cricket for Cambridge and made a deal with a spirit; a charm to prevent you going thirsty; a man who flew to Mars in his aeroplane*; a big diamond**; a man who falls in love with someone who probably isn’t a sorceress***; a haunted man who combines electricity and prayer wheels; some whiskey smuggling; an ancient Egyptian princess; about a man who captured apes and has it turned around on him; how Jorkens married a mermaid****; and how he nearly married a witch. Some of these are rambling reminiscences, some very pointed jokes or have joke-like points being made. Most of them have some point of interest, often not the one the story seems to be directing us to.

Here, at the start of the “club tale” Jorkens displays many variations that might be used. Some short, some funny, some wild, some third or fourth hand. There’s definitely a British Imperial slant going on here; the first story Dunsany wrote because he didn’t want to do a non-fiction big game hunting tale. Dunsany served in the second Boer war and travelled in Africa; he makes a humanising effort to characters he’s interested in.

Read This: Some glorious description, fascinating ideas and maybe, just a little bit of heart
Don’t Read This: It’s long-winded, old-fashioned and occasionally racist

* An interesting idea riffing perhaps a little off other Mars stories of the period; he correctly comes to the conclusion that you need to use the momentum of the Earth to do most of the work, and thus calculate a conjunction. The figures, I regret to say, do not add up.

** Using the backdrop of the 1908 Tunguska event

*** This one is titled A Queer Island; trying to get a young man out from under the stifling influence of his aunts Jorkens takes him out to the Aegean. Unfortunately it appears that they are on an unnamed (and fictional) island in the Cyclades, and not Lesbos which would have been funnier.

**** The Mermaid aving been born at sea Jorkens refers to the widely believed legal fiction that all persons born at sea are part of the parish of Stepney which a legal friend tries and fails to discuss

6. Dark Prince

At the end of Lion Of Macedon Aristotle, Parmenion and Darae manage a partial victory. Alexander of Macedon has been born with the both a human soul and the Chaos Spirit Kadmilos. Now a four year old child he has second sight, but his touch is painful – even deadly.

Alexander is kidnapped and taken to another world. There Hellas is dominated by Phillipos, an alternative version of Philip of Macedon. He is dominated by that world’s Chaos Spirit. Within the world are also the creatures of the Enchantment – centaurs, fauns, harpies and darker creatures. Diminished by war, they hide in the wild lands dreaming of the Golden Child who is prophesised to bring the Enchantment back.

Parmenion is the Death Of Nations, the greatest general in the world. But Phillipos is destruction incarnate, a warrior king, one whose golden eye can see the thoughts of his opponent making him invincible, and whose skin was dipped in the Styx, making him invulnerable to outside force. Even the force of Enchantment cannot stand against him, so how can they rescue Alexander?

We know of course from history that an Alexander became a conqueror. So the story does not end there, at the age of four. Somehow Gemmel makes his story twist to fit the facts, and it is both satisfying and surprising. Parmenion’s life has been tragic, violent and glorious. Darae lied, and betrayed her own principles, that of all life. Alexander is both monster and man. Yet all of them find their way to an ending.

Read This: Magnificent Greek myth and history flavoured heroic fantasy
Don’t Read This: Alexander’s not great, he’s a brutal warlord

7. Hand Of The King’s Evil

The are two djinni in this story. Djinni always tell the truth. We know this to be true.

At the end of Feast Of The King’s Shadow Julianne was kidnapped on her second wedding night. Morakh, leader of the Sand Dancers, has given himself to the ‘ifrit, and takes her at their bidding.

Others have powers that ordinarily would be able to rescue her. Her father, Coren, the King’s Shadow, can slip from place to place. Her friend Elisande has a djinni as a servant – though such a being is both wilful and dangerous. Marron is the Ghostwalker, and can travel from world to world. Yet djinni and ‘ifrit are vulnerable to one another when in spirit form, and to blessed weapons when taking on physical shape. They can see futures, possibilities, and so Morakh and the ‘ifrit have put Julianne in a place where they cannot rescue her.

Rescue her they must. Her husband Hasan leads an army of the Sharai desert nomads. And the place Julianne is imprisoned is on the border of Outremer. With an army on the border, the Sharai will not stop, invading the kingdom.

And these are not the only armies on the march. A preacher has been curing people of a mysterious disease, using a withered hand of a relic. Those cured follow him, and so do some of their kin, including Blaise, once a sergeant guarding Julianne, now seeking redemption from the order of Ransom. A Ransomer army comes as well, looking for entry to the folded land of Surayon, to burn out the heretics. Brought by a djinni, Julianne’s first husband, Imber leads a troop of soldiers.

But the land is folded, impossible to enter. Unless someone with uncanny foresight can create an opportunity.

The ending of the trilogy comes together with plots cutting across plots, the threatened war coming at last, some revelations, as well as magic and sacrifice. In the end there are answers, though not to the questions we might have wanted. And can we know the truth, even if it comes from a djinni?

Read This: A fitting finale, mixing magic, violence, occasionally theology, with clever, slightly mis-matching plots that reveal most of the series’ mysteries (to reveal different, weirder mysteries)
Don’t Read This: A fantasy Levant is not something you want or need

8. The Little Cozy Book

A collection of Cozy Fantasy Flash Fiction stories. You may wonder what this means. Fortunately I am an expert on this topic as I have a story in this volume.

A flash fiction is a very short story, typically defined as 1000 words or less. Cozy Fantasy is a fantasy story that’s generally something more of a slice of life than an epic quest. Something close to home perhaps. Something where the tale is about the character rather than the world.

Or not in some cases.

So we have short stories about cats, about lawyers, about promises and lies, all in fantastic secondary worlds of one sort or another. There are prophecies, thieves, knights and the dead walking. Songs swords and spells. A woman with glass lungs, a warrior who does not wish to fight, a musician whose tunes bring unwanted attention.

The great thing about flash fiction is that you can read it quickly, getting a complete story in a brief time. The sad thing is that the ultra-compressed telegraphic world-building leaves so much unsaid.

Read This: For often-cute, sometimes heart-warming fantasy shorts
Don’t Read This: If you want some epic grimdark shivers

9. Things In Jars

Bridie Devine is a detective in 1860s London. She was brought up by a surgeon who was interested in experiments and strange things. Things in jars in fact. This was in the 1840s. The past and present of the novel will weave together eventually.

Bridie smokes a medicinal brand of tobacco, Prudhoes Bronchial Balsam Blend, and this may explain why she is accompanied by Ruby Doyle, the ghost of a boxer, who wears a top hat, drawers and boots, and whose tattoos move strangely. Or perhaps she’s haunted, and not just by her previous failure of a case, or what happened in her childhood.

Bridie is brought in to try and find Christabel Berwick who has been abducted. She was brought up in seclusion by Sir Edmund Berwick. As Bridie investigates she learns that Sir Edmund collects medical oddities, things in jars, including the Winter Mermaid, a specimen Bridie has seen before, as a child. She investigates from the bottom up, recruiting maids and road sweeping boys. She investigates from the top down, disguising herself as a doctor to watch public displays of surgery.

Christabel Berwick was kept in a room that was slick with water. She ate snails. She didn’t speak. As we learn more it becomes clear that she was adopted by Sir Edmund, because of her unusual aspects.

London is being flooded with water. Unnaturally so as it rains and rains. Bridie moves through the city, both familiar and strange, meeting people stranger still. This may not be a case that can be solved, the mystery of Christabel beyond that of a “domestic investigator.” The novel moves dreamily, discursively, flooding backwards and forwards. We, the reader know who has taken Christabel, and how her nurse tells strange stories that map oddly onto other events. But the more we learn, the less certain we become of Bridie’s part in this. Was she bound up in this from the start?

Read This: Uncanny, gorgeous and grim, Victorian occult mystery
Don’t Read This: Dark violence and abuse, the worst of which is taken from the history rather than the fantasy