Elizabeth Moon: Oath of Fealty

Oath of Fealty Cover

The Deed of Paksenarrion was very well done, especially for a first novel series, but it left any number of loose ends. Paks’ “Deed” had left entire countries in disarray. It’s the classic problem for fantasy readers: the Hero comes in, cleans up the bad guys, Good triumphs over Evil and then the Hero rides off into the sunset. How does the world cope with the consequences, the chaos that has been created?

Moon returned to Paks’ world with two prequels in The Legacy of Gird, but both were pretty dark. And the second novel in that arc, Liar’s Oath, wasn’t that good. “Legacy” has never been as popular as “Deed.” And, besides, they offered only the barest hints and a glimpse of what happened in Paks’ time after the events of “Deed.”

Now, at long last, with Oath of Fealty, Moon has returned to the world and time of Paksenarrion. The first of a projected five volume story arc called “Paladin’s Legacy,” this is What Happened Next.

While we have had to wait a very long time to hear the rest of the story, the good news is that Ms. Moon’s formidable plotting and writing skills have improved over the years. “Fealty” is a page turner, even more than “Deed” was.

We follow events across the Eight Kingdoms and even into Aarenis as the impact of Paks’ actions spread across her world. The story picks up the evening of Duke Phelan’s arrival in Lyonya – the last scene in “Deed” – and follows the very different consequences for the Duke’s captains, Dorrin and Arcolin, for the Crown Prince of Tsaia and other major and minor characters from “Deed.”

Paks herself appears, but she is a relatively minor character in “Fealty,” important but not the focus of the story. Despite the lapse of 22 years, the characters and events are consistent; too often, in late-arriving sequels, there are annoying inconsistencies and contradictions. Not here.

According to Moon’s blog, this is the first of a projected five volume arc, “Paladin’s Legacy.” Certainly some of the characters are left in peril at the end of “Fealty,” and there are important plot threads left unresolved. But this is a complete novel, just as the books in the first trilogy were. It is also an immensely satisfying read. Dorrin, in particular, is well-written and has moments that the 22-year younger Moon probably could not have written.

Bravo, Ms. Moon. Exceptionally well done. While Moon has written “Fealty” so it can be read without having read “Deed,” I suggest that “Fealty” will be much more satisfying if you read “Deed” first.

Elizabeth Moon: The Legacy of Gird

The Legacy of Gird Trade Volume

WC is an unapologetic reader of fantasy literature. In this post, WC looks at another set of stories set in Paksenarrion’s universe.

Elizabeth Moon, through the Deed of Paksenarrion, these two stories and three of a projected five novels that follow the Paks trilogy, has created a vivid, complex and believable world, chronicling a span of hundreds of years. As Moon works on the five novel sequel – the “Paladin’s Legacy” series – it’s worth while to look back on the two novels that comprise this trade edition.

Surrender None Legacy of Gird Book1 is a prequel, the story of Gird, the peasant who led a successful revolution against the magelords oppressing his people and who, by the time of The Deed of Paksenarrion: A Novel, has become a saint, the inspiration for the law and government of two countries and a continent-wide religion. It’s not a cheerful story. Gird suffered a series of tragedies before taking up his cudgel and leading a revolution. But the story is very well written, and brilliantly illumines the background of the Girdish in Paksennarion’s time. I give special credit to Moon for making Gird a man who could drink to excess, make very bad decisions and sulk. He’s very, very human, far from a saint. His greatest strength is his bull-headed determination; it’s also his greatest weakness. He’s a flawed protagonist, and if he is a saint by the end of the story, it’s because he is put through the wringer.

Liar’s Oath (The Legacy of Gird, Book 2) is a much less successful story. It is the tale of Luap, a magelord bastard who served as Gird’s scribe, and what happened to Luap after Gird’s death. In Luap, Moon created an even more flawed, unsympathetic protagonist who lies, cheats and steals to keep power. The end of the novel explains some parts of Divided Allegiance (The Deed of Paksenarrion, Book 2), the middle novel ofLiar’s Oath (The Legacy of Gird, Book 2) and in the last paragraph very nearly redeems itself with a surprise, but ultimately Luap comes off as a self-deceiving, unsympathetic man whose life doesn’t seem especially consequential. It may be that Moon has plans for Luap, in the ongoing Paladin’s Legacy story arc. But as it stands now, this is the weakest of the novels set in Paksenarrion’s universe.

It’s been twenty years since Liar’s Oath (The Legacy of Gird, Book 2). Moon has brought her considerably improved writing skills back to this world in the Paladin’s Legacy series, set immediately after Liar’s Oath (The Legacy of Gird, Book 2). The novels so far are Oath of Fealty, Kings of the North: Paladin’s Legacy and Echoes of Betrayal: Paladin’s Legacy. If, like me, you are eagerly awaiting the concluding two volumes – unnamed at this date – then a visit back to this trade volume might be fun. And might help you understand the sequels. But they aren’t Moon’s best work, and Luap’s tale, in particular, isn’t that much fun. Four stars for Gird; two stars for Luap.

Elizabeth Moon: The Deed of Paksennarion

The Deed of Paksenarrion, Trade Volume

WC is an unapologetic reader of fantasy literature. There’s a lot of really bad fantasy literature, but there are some gems, too.

The Deed of Paksennarion is a trade volume of Elizabeth Moon’s frist three novels, a fantasy following the life of Paksennarion Dorthansdotter. Published between 1992-1995, the story starts with Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, which tells how Paksennarion – “Paks” to her friends – escaped from a forced marriage to join a mercenary company, and her adventures there. Paks is a difficult person; she gives unquestioned loyalty, but not always to those who deserve it, and her stubbornness and quick anger will annoy you as a reader sometimes. But she is real, vivid and earthy, and unlike far too many fantasy protagonists, she has flaws. Moon’s military experience – she is an ex-Marine – informs her writing, which lends it realism. But it also serves to emphasize the boredom and tedium of much of a soldier’s life. This first novel ends with Paks patently deceiving herself about her future and her experiences.

The second novel is Divided Allegiance. Paks leaves the mercenary life she has known, rather than allow her services to be sold to causes she dislikes. Naive and inexperienced, she makes serious mistakes, has serious adventures, but begins to learn from them, and finally begins to break out of the stubborn shell of denial and to accept the role that has been cast for her. But she is captured by Dark Elves, who damage her, destroying what she thinks are the core strengths she possesses. The novel ends with Paks in dire circumstances.

The final novel is Oath of Gold, where Paks finally accepts that the gods of her world have tasks for her, and sets out to accomplish them. In a world where good and evil are near-absolute, where gods themselves grant power to characters who are “good” and to characters who are “evil,” aligning yourself with “good” sometimes means suffering at the hands of evil. As Paks grows to understand true courage and sets out to achieve the tasks that her gods have set for her, she grows to become a paladin, the religious knight of fantasy literature, in real ways. Because she is prepared to pay any price to achieve her goals, she becomes capable changing her world.

These were Moon’s first books. They have their flaws, and they are undeniably derivative to the role-playing game, “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.” But saying that Moon wrote a dungeons and dragons ripoff is unfair; filet mignon and hamburger are fundamentally the same product, but a completely different experience. Moon started from the classic characters of AD&D – itself derivative to Tolkein and Lewis among others – and conceived a new universe around it, peopled by gods, demons, elves, dwarves, gnomes and humans. Her universe has a deep and rich history, with its shares of tragedy and loss, some half-glimpsed and some detailed. By contrast, what passes for history in AD&D, for the most part, resides in the players’ heads.

Others have criticized her world as illogical and inconsistent – where did all that steel come from, they ask? The point is valid, but looking for absolute logic in fantasy strikes me as unrealisistic and, in any event, that particular logical flaw can be traced back before Tolkein to T.H. White and Spencer. Moon’s universe is much more self-consistent than most and the inconsistencies do not detract.

Still others criticize Paksenarrion, who at the end is a religious knight, and complain the morally ambiguous Arvid is more interesting. That’s a problem endemic to literature. E.E. “Doc” Smith’s epic villain, DuQuesne, is vastly more interesting than the good guys who fight him; shucks, “Inferno” is by far the most interesting book in Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” We like moral ambiguity; perhaps those who are truly and completely good make us nervous and a little guilty. It’s easier to identify with Arvid.

Moon’s use of a heroine as the principle protagonist was pioneering. And her creation of a sometimes foolish and stubborn heroine at that, blind to some important issues, makes this book much better than most. Moon did not invent the naive or foolish protagonist; think of Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier. But she did pioneer the use of the device in epic fantasy. Like Tolkein and Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea novels, Moon provides glimpses and fragments of deep history for her imagined world, and uses that deep history to inform its present. It’s skillfully done, and makes a reader wish for more stories from Pak’s world.

Overall, this is a compelling story, hardly Tolkein but far superior to 95% of the genre. This is a moving, well-told and well-cast tale. Strongly recommended.

Mikhal’s Story: Chapter 4

A few years ago, WC completed a first draft of a novella. It’s not all that good, and publishers have not been leaping at the opportunity to buy it. But it’s likely good enough to blog… So WC will inflict his fiction – well, his overt fiction – on his long-suffering readers. Chapters will posted on Sunday mornings.

Here’s Chapter 1 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 2 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 3 if you missed it

Warning: the story involves graphic violence.

From Antonin’s Oddities:

One of the more unsavory tricks Gudsawr placed in the sword was an element that recognized when the same person held the sword for a long period of time. The sword would accelerate the time-dilation effect when the sword didn’t move for an hour or two, as when the sword holder was sleeping. At the extreme of the effect, the time-dilation was 5 to 1; one hour for the sword holder was five hours for the rest of the world. Since the effect ceased the moment the sword was moved, it was nearly impossible to detect the trap.

Gudsawr also programmed the sword to react to an extended period of high activity by accelerating the time dilation to as much as 5 to 1. The person wielding the sword would then move much too fast to even attempt to stop in a long battle. And aging rapidly as well, of course.

Chapter 4

The night before the battle, Mikhal woke from a dream in which someone was trying to stab him to an assassin’s knife plunging at him. Before he could react, the knife slid off the shield’s protection and tangled in the palette on which he slept. Still struggling to wake, he brought the sword up in his left hand and swung at the shadowy figure beside the bed. Despite the advantage of speed the blade gave him, the assassin was able to fall backwards and avoid the sword. Mikhal rolled from the bed and cut at the legs of the assassin. This time he cut the man, but only a glancing blow on the foot. The assassin changed tactics then, and threw himself at Mikhal.

The sword protected him again, and the assassin slid down in front of Mikhal, collapsing in a heap at Mikhal’s feet. The noise of the fight had alerted the guards, who came running into the farmhouse. The assassin then tried to impale himself on the sword, but Mikhal turned the blade at a slant, and the man only made a long, shallow cut along this chest and arm. The guards seized the assassin then and pinned his arms. Donal arrived next, followed by Felici.

Mikhal’s arms were trembling. If he had not held the sword as he slept, this man would have killed him.

“An assassin then?” asked Felici.

“Yes, Master Felici, he tried to kill me as I slept.”

“A fool to try to kill an invulnerable man.” Felici turned to the assassin, still held by the two guards. “Who has hired you?”

The assassin spat at Felici, hitting his cheek.

“Take this idiot outside and kill him, Donal,” commanded Felici.

The guards dragged the assassin out of the farmhouse. Mikhal started to object. Felici stopped him with a gesture, saying “We cannot let him live to attempt to kill you again, or to attempt to kill me. And men who stab from the shadows know the risks they take.”

“Who sent him, then?” asked Mikhal.

“Perhaps the Pretender, perhaps someone who knows of the sword and wants it. We will never know. Assassins do not talk. If you torture them, they lie.” Felici shrugged. “The only way to deal with them is to kill those you catch. That way there is at least one less assassin.”

“Then why did he attempt to kill me. Wouldn’t the Pretender, or whoever sent him, know the sword makes me invulnerable?”

“Who knows,” replied Felici. “Perhaps the dead emperor shared some knowledge of the sword with the Pretender. Perhaps they think you sleep without it. Perhaps they think the sword does not work when you sleep. It is pointless to speculate. They tried an assassin and he failed. The world has one less assassin.”

“And now what?” asked Mikhal.

“Now you go back to bed and try to sleep. I think we must see to better guards for those of us who are not invulnerable.”

Felici left the farmhouse, leaving Mikhal alone. Mikhal stared at the palette, looked at the sword in his hand, and shook his head. He was tired to the point of exhaustion, but sleep seemed a long chance. He left the farmhouse to find Donal. Perhaps some exercise might help him sleep. He found Donal just outside the farmhouse door, wiping the blade of his sword on the tunic of the assassin. Blood pooled around the body.

All thoughts of exercise with Donal left Mikhal. “I cannot sleep after that,” Mikhal told Donal, “I’m going to walk around a while.” Donal simply nodded as he instructed the guards to drag the dead assassin off.

Mikhal walked through the camp. With the sword in his hand, he was very conspicuous, and among those who were awake there a trail of muttered comments and strange looks. While he pretended to ignore them, he thought, “They aren’t really muttering about me. It’s the sword. If I matter, it’s only because I hold the sword. The assassin didn’t want to kill me, he wanted to kill the man who held the sword so that he could take the sword. I matter only because I hold the sword and only to the extent I can use it.”

He reached the edge of the camp then. Up the valley were the campfires and torches of the Pretender’s army. It appeared to be much larger than the army Felici had assembled. Mikhal looked at the sword in his hand, almost invisible in the darkness. He thought again of the dead Emperor, and the fight outside the Emperor’s tent when he had escaped. “Ah well,” he thought, “I will know soon enough.”

Donal appeared, with a wine bottle and two mugs. “A swallow of wine will let you rest,” he said. “It will also let me rest. That could have been disaster.” Mikhal accepted the wine and drank it.

“Thank you, Donal,” Mikhal said. “I doubt I will sleep but it may let me lie down.”

He made his way back to the farmhouse, and went in, lying down on the palette for the few remaining hours before daylight. He was still lying there, eyes wide open, unable to sleep, when Felici came to get him at daylight. “The Pretender’s army is assembling for battle. It’s time to fight.”

The battlefield was to be a large hayfield on the west edge of the farm. A small stream meandered through the hayfield, and the ground sloped gently up on either side. The field was dry. A thicket closed the upstream side. Downstream, the stream ran into a swamp. There would be no ambushes or surprise tactics in this battle. A larger army, Mikhal thought, looking at the Pretender’s forces, a much larger army, would fight a smaller force and Mikhal, wielding the sword.

“Mikhal,” Felici said, “You are the leader, Donal will follow behind you, leading our army in a wedge. Remember, you must go where the Pretender’s soldiers are thickest, and strike down as many as you can. Donal and the army will follow you. If something changes, Donal will shout at you. Be sure of whom you attack.”

“We will be in the capital in a week. Fight well.”

Mikhal waited as the soldiers formed up behind him in a wedge-shape. Felici called, “Attack now. A slow walk, you are invincible.”

Mikhal walked slowly towards the army of the Pretender. There seemed to be thousands of soldiers before him, extending up the other side of the shallow valley in rows and to his left and right the length of the stream. A knot of the Pretender’s soldiers came running down the hill at him in a charge. As the first reached him, he swung the sword right and then left, cutting three men in half and maiming two others. He took two steps forward, swung again and gutted two men and cut a sword off at the hilts. The eyes of the men holding their swords stayed in Mikhal’s mind. Disbelief and panic mixed. A step ahead and one to the left, and he killed three more men. He turned slightly left and cut down two men attacking Donal, then back to his right, killing another two. The men behind Donal had pikes, and kept the Pretender’s soldiers from approaching them. Mikhal stood his ground and cut the arm from one soldier and the head from a second.

“Shift ahead and to the left,” called Donal. Mikhal obeyed, and butchered the three men who came near him. “Aim for the leaders, at the flag ahead of you now,” called Donal. Mikhal walked slowly up hill, swinging the sword through soldiers as he would cut grain in his field, leaving dead and maimed men behind. The wedge of soldiers followed him. Ahead Mikhal saw another group of Felici’s soldiers moving from the far right, also headed for the Pretender’s leaders.

The soldiers before him thickened and thinned, but it made no difference to the sword. Once perhaps fifteen soldiers attacked him at once, trying to push him over or bury him, but as he stopped the soldiers with pikes came up alongside him and forced those who attacked to Mikhal’s front. The sword cut them all down.

As he drew closer to the leaders the soldiers attacking him grew more frenzied, and Mikhal swung faster and made longer strokes, moving the sword through a full semi-circle, suicide with an ordinary weapon but, protected by the shielding magic of the sword, safe as anything. Two more times soldiers jumped at him, trying to bury him with their bodies, or to force him down. Each time he continued to swing the sword as the wedge of pikes moved up before him, forcing the soldiers to the front and into the killing arc of the sword.

There was a kind of wall of shields around the leaders, held by soldiers in chain mail and helmets. The sword sliced through the metal shields, cutting arms and chests in the process. Mikhal noticed that in the noise and chaos around, all screams and ringing metal, the sword made no noise at all as it cut shields, mail, helmets, swords and soldiers into pieces.

“One quarter turn left and ahead,” screamed Donal over the noise, and Mikhal complied, moving towards the leaders as the pikes held the surviving shield bearers away. Four men on horseback tried to move away from him, but the press of soldiers and bodies held them where they were. The second group of soldiers, Mikhal noticed, had moved behind the group of leaders, and now turned to attack what was left of the other side of the shield wall. The four mounted men turned towards Mikhal, their faces mostly invisible behind helmets and masks. One man, Mikhal saw, wore a crown on his helmet. Perhaps that was the Pretender? Mikhal moved towards the horses.

Two of the horses charged at Mikhal. He started to flinch away from the spikes on the horses’ armor, but before the first horse could touch him the magic shield shoved the horse to the side. He swung at the rider to his left, and sliced open the horse’s ribs and cut off the rider’s leg. He swung the other way at the horse on his right and cut the horse’s left foreleg off entirely. The horse stumbled and started to fall on him, but fell away down the shield instead. The rider pitched forward in slow motion, and Mikhal spitted him on the sword. As he lifted the sword up, it sliced through the chest and shoulder of the man. A hand seemed to strike his head for a moment, but the blow had no force.

The other two horseman tried to ride away, and Mikhal took three quick steps forward and cut both of them across the waist, from behind. Blood fountained and one man screamed a long, thin shriek before falling from the horse.

“Towards the soldiers to the left,” called Donal, and Mikhal turned that way, cutting another half dozen men and seeing the others before him begin to fall back. Felici’s second group of soldiers forced the Pretender’s men to the left, downhill and towards the swamp. “A full right turn now,” called Donal, “and up the hill.”

Mikhal sliced through another three or four men, moving uphill. There were still Pretender’s men fighting, Mikhal saw, but only in clumps. Under Donal’s directions he moved to one clump after another, killing soldier after soldier. The clumps of soldiers grew fewer and the number of men running downhill and downstream into the swamp grew larger. Felici’s soldiers didn’t follow them, but left them to flounder in the muck and mud. From his higher point he could see men trying to swim in the soupy stuff, and still more bodies of men floating in the water.

“We have won,” Donal said as he came alongside Mikhal. The wedge of men with pikes was moving to the edge of the swamp, pinning the surviving soldiers of the Pretender in the swamp. Mikhal looked back the way they had come up the hill. Dead men and pieces of dead men lay everywhere, and blood flowed in cascades larger than the creek down the hillside. Mikhal had not imagined there was so much blood in the whole world.

There was no blood on his sword, and no blood on him. A little dust filmed him. Nothing more.

Mikhal’s guts spasmed and heaved. He retched and spat the vileness out on the ground. It was invisible on the blood-soaked soil. After a moment, he looked at Donal. He, too, was almost untouched, a few cuts and bruises on his arms. Mikhal watched the blood pool on the valley floor and stain the stream.

In the space of less than half an hour, he had killed perhaps one hundred or more men. He could easily and as effortlessly have killed five hundred.

“We should return to my father,” said Donal, “and see if there is anything else to do.” Wordlessly, Mikhal walked downhill with Donal, red-colored mud sticking to his boots. They crossed the creek that seemed to run now with pure blood, and walked up the other valley side to where Felici waited. It seemed to Mikhal that the sky grew a little lighter and Donal moved a little faster as they climbed the hill. Some trick of the sword, he supposed.

“There will be no organized opposition between us and the capital, and likely only a few guards there,” Felici said. “The Pretender and his army are dead.”

“The Pretender was the one with the crown on his helmet?” asked Donal.

“Yes,” replied Felici. “He was an idiot but not a coward.”

Donal shrugged. “He is a dead idiot.”

Mikhal’s throat tightened and his head throbbed. “Master Felici, I have killed sheep who had more of a chance. This wasn’t a battle; it was a slaughter. The hay meadow looks like a slaughterhouse.”

“War is defeating the enemy as quickly and completely as possible at the least expense to yourself. None of our soldiers were even badly wounded. The Pretender’s soldiers are either dead or drowning. A few are running through the woods, weaponless. Thanks to the sword, we have destroyed a force that outnumbered us seven to one.” Felici paused. “You are displeased?”

“I am sickened. The sword is too powerful. There is no limit to how many it can kill. Master Felici, I am not even tired. I did not even sweat.”

“A weapon cannot be too powerful, Mikhal, it can only be misused.”

“This weapon will never be used in battle again. The day we take the capital, I will throw it in a well.”

Felici gave Mikhal a long look. “As you say, Mikhal. It is your sword. But tonight we must help our soldiers, the nobles and our other allies celebrate our victory.”

“I must get rid of it soon, Master Felici. The sword is eating at me.”

At twilight, Felici gathered the army together. He called Mikhal to come forth and told the soldiers that the one bearing the sword had made the victory possible. He gave Mikhal a helm that seemed to be a metal eagle’s skull with a crown. The eagle’s beak extended as a nose guard, and the eagle’s eyes a kind of mask. Mikhal detested the thing immediately. What good was a helm to an invulnerable man? But the crowd of soldiers cheered like lunatics when Mikhal put it on.

“So this is power and glory,” thought Mikhal as the soldiers screamed and danced. “I want no part of it.”

A few hours later, as Mikhal sat on farmhouse steps, listening to the carousing soldiers, Donal appeared, once again with a wine bottle and two mugs.

“Not to celebrate,” he said as he handed Mikhal the mug of wine, “but to wash the ashes from out mouths. Victory at the cost of too many lives.”

“To ashes,” Mikhal replied. And drank the wine. “Perhaps tonight I can sleep, but only if the wine can put the rivers of blood from my memory.”

“Do not let go of the sword just yet,” said Donal. There are too many chances on the battlefield.”

Is there wine left?” Mikhal asked. Wordlessly, Donal refilled the wooden mug.

“Will you really throw away the sword?” asked Donal.

“Yes. I should have thrown it in a well when the Abbot told me to. It is too powerful, Donal. Too powerful.”

“As you say,” Donal replied, “but it seems a shame.”

Mikhal climbed to his feet. He felt just slightly unsteady. The wine was a warm glow inside him. “I have to try to sleep,” he told Donal, and entered the farmhouse. He laid down on his palette and, it seemed to him, fell asleep immediately.

End of Chapter 4
Chapter 5 will be posted next Sunday

Mikhal’s Story: Chapter 3

A few years ago, WC completed a first draft of a novella. It’s not all that good, and publishers have not been leaping at the opportunity to buy it. But it’s likely good enough to blog… So WC will inflict his fiction – well, his overt fiction – on his long-suffering readers. Chapters will posted on Sunday mornings.

Here’s Chapter 1 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 2 if you missed it.

Warning: the story involves graphic violence.

From Antonin’s Oddities:

Gudsawr embedded in the handle of the sword a small inertia damper, with an effective radius of about three feet, running down the length of the sword as well, but open at the top to allow air to enter. The inertia damper provided power to support a shielding effect and other, less savory uses. The inertia damper necessarily created a time distortion, which in turn reinforced the shield. The combined inertia damper and time distortion made a person holding the sword effectively invulnerable to anything short of a thermonuclear weapon.

Chapter 3

Mikhal woke the next morning still tired, his hand again cramped from holding the sword all night. After breakfast, he went with Donal to the area between the barn and the house, where Donal was to teach him swordsmanship. There was a problem from the start.

Mikhal would not let go of the sword. Donal would not teach him while Mikhal held the sword.

“Mikhal,” Donal finally said in exasperation, “If you do not trust me I cannot help you.”

“Your very father said that whoever holds the sword can make themselves emperor. How can I trust anyone? I mean no offense to you Donal, but how can I know who would not be tempted?”

Finally, on Felici’s suggestion, Mikhal held the sword in his right hand and took his lesson from Donal using an ordinary sword borrowed from Felici. The shield still protected Mikhal, and his movements, even as an amateur with a sword, were much faster than Donal’s, but at least Donal could give a lesson without fear of life and limb.

Despite his initial annoyance, Donal was a patient and careful teacher. Under his guidance that day and the two weeks that followed, Mikhal’s skills quickly improved. To his surprise, he had some aptitude for sword fighting, and Donal told him that with practice he might actually become quite a good sword fighter.

Evenings, Mikhal, Felici and Donald talked about how Mikhal might fight his way to the throne. Felici introduced Mikhal to officers in the Emperor’s army who might be his allies, and to some of the minor nobles of the Emperor’s court. Each time, Mikhal was required to show the guests the power of the sword, and to demonstrate his invincibility. Without exception, each officer and noble scarcely troubled to conceal his scorn for an ignorant peasant. Mikhal could see in the eyes of each the thought of what he might do with the sword, if it were in his hands and not Mikhal’s.

One such evening, after Felici had made Mikhal show the powers of the sword to a Colonel in the Emperor’s army, the Colonel spoke to Felici, as if Mikhal was not present, “Will you take the war to the Pretender or will you wait here for the Pretender to attack you?”

Mikhal interrupted, “Who is this Pretender?” The Colonel stared at him with distaste, whether because a peasant had dared interrupt a Colonel or because of his ignorance. Felici gave the Colonel a look of annoyance.

“Mikhal, the Pretender is Tomas, the late Emperor’s bastard son, and holds some of the power in the empire since the Emperor died. He is one of your obstacles to the throne.”

The Colonel all but rolled his eyes in disgust, “Then you are a long way from being ready for war.”

“No,” said Felici, “We are ready for war. We are a long way from governing the empire. We can win any battle now. With your regiment, we can make the war quick and relatively bloodless.”

“And you will make a peasant Emperor?”

“Mikhal is wiser than he knows, and much wiser than the late Emperor. The Pretender thinks of nothing but his own comfort and wealth.”

“And what do you offer me and my regiment, in return for our support in your war?” asked the Colonel.

“A barony and generalship when Mikhal is Emperor, fair treatment and higher wages for the soldiers you lead, and a better government than you have now.”

The Colonel looked at Mikhal again, a look that Mikhal might give a cow he was asked to buy. After a pause, the Colonel said, “I will give you that support. My regiment will be here in a week. I will have supplies for perhaps four weeks.”

“Talk to Donal,” replied Felici. “He will help with logistics and describe the chain of command.”

The Colonel left the farmhouse then. Mikhal turned to Felici, “You make these bargains with each of these officers and nobles?”

“Yes, Mikhal, it is a part of how we will gain you the throne.”

“It is a dirty business, this Empire. You sell me and the sword like I sell my grain at the market. Except perhaps that in the market the buyer wants my grain. The Colonel tolerates me only for the greed he condemns in this Pretender.”

Felici sighed. “There is truth in what you say, Mikhal, but not all the truth. If we are careful what we promise, and careful about those we pick to help us, we can make an honest and fair government.”

“Master Felici,” said Mikhal, “You speak of making me Emperor, but you will be the Emperor will you not?”

“No Mikhal, you will be Emperor. Like all emperors you will have advisors and ministers. I will be an advisor. You will have the sword, which answers all arguments, and you have both legs, while I do not. I hope you will listen to me, but you will make up your own mind. And you must not call me ‘Master,’ I am just Felici.”

“Then I must understand a great deal more than I do now. Simon told me you were wise, can you teach me wisdom?”

“I will teach you what I can. But I think we should start tomorrow. It is late, we are both weary, and you must train tomorrow as well.”

Mikhal went to his corner of the farmhouse and laid down to sleep. He shifted the sword from his left hand to his right, flexing his stiff fingers and stretching his arm. He thought again of the old Emperor, sleeping in his tent, the sword by his side. He thought of himself, five or seven years from now, as old as the dead Emperor. Would he sleep with the sword beside him, rather than in his grasp, trading the chance of theft of the sword for a night of sleep measured by normal time? Sleep overcame him.

Over the next two weeks, he practiced sword fighting less and talked with Felici more. There was still the endless stream of almost-sneering officers and arrogant petty nobles. A few wealthy merchants visited the farmhouse, too. Mikhal listened to all of the conversations, all of the promises and, each time, showed the powers of the sword. Nearly every day, he would talk with Felici and try to understand the nest of politics and power that was the Empire.

At the end of the second week, the lessons shifted to the history of the Empire. “The first Emperor was a merchant, Mikhal, who controlled most of the trade in salt.”

“Salt,” asked Mikhal, “The sea is twenty miles away, and gives salt to everyone. How can a man be rich by trading in salt?”

“The Empire extends almost three hundred miles inland, Mikhal,” explained Felici, “And what is common here is as precious as water at the southern edge of the Empire. In the wilderness further east, salt is even more valuable. The first Emperor became wealthy selling salt in the east and to the barbarians. With his wealth, he bought the acceptance of the nobles and the army, and so became the first Emperor”

“His son and his grandson did well when they ruled, balancing the army against the nobles and the merchants, until the drought.”

“A drought, Felici?” asked Mikhal.

“Yes, beginning perhaps in your grandfather’s time, no rain fell on the northern half of the Empire for more than six years. The peasants’ farms turned to sand and dust. Men, cattle, sheep and horses all starved. Even manna plants would not grow. Many peasants, in particular, were hard-pressed to survive. Finally, in desperation, a mob of peasants marched on the capital, and stormed the palace. More than ten thousand peasants were killed. Then, with no one to grow manna plants or grain, even where there had been a bit of rain, even merchants began to starve.”

“No one knows why, but perhaps because of all the death and starvation, a plague came then and killed another third of the Empire. And the plague killed the Emperor, the grandson of the first Emperor. Then came a long time of chaos, with no government and no trade and no food. And finally, seven years ago, after thirty years of drought, plague and banditry, a young sergeant in the army chanced upon a sword lying on a hillside. Using that sword, he made himself the new Emperor.”

“The sword I hold,” said Mikhal. It was a statement, not a question.

“The sword you hold,” agreed Felici.

“But the man I killed was an old man, not a young soldier.”

“The sword, apparently, does that. It ages the one who holds it, Mikhal. Look at yourself in the basin. In just the six weeks you have been here, you look a few years older.”

“This solider, he was a good Emperor?” asked Mikhal?

“That’s hard to say. He restored order to much of the Empire, he stopped the worst of the banditry. I think he allowed the merchants and the army too much power, but in part that was because he had to take the army into the country to fight the bandits. He could not balance the power of the army against the nobles. Now most of the nobles have aligned themselves with the Pretender. They see him as someone they can control. And the Pretender controls some of the army.”

“This Pretender is the son of the dead Emperor?”

“Tomas is the illegitimate son of the dead sergeant. Only a few think him the rightful heir. But no one wants more years of chaos. Mikhal, one reason you can become Emperor is that the sword will let you, like the sergeant you killed, quickly become Emperor. A quick end to the quarrel over succession is the best end.”

Mikhal thought a moment. “I created the crisis, didn’t I, when I killed the Emperor to save my own life.”

Felici shook his head no. “Better to say you caused the crisis to happen sooner. The Emperor would have died of old age very soon anyway. He had given no thought to a successor.”

“Felici,” said Mikhal, “I don’t like any part of this. I am the cause of much of the problem, and yet I am to be Emperor. I am to fight my way to the throne, killing as many as I must. I am to sell generalships and nobility, enriching others to make myself powerful. And I am to die of old age in a few years.”

“Have you any better solutions?”

“I would like to find one.”

Felici glared at Mikhal. After a long silence, he said, “I and my sons are committed to your cause now. We have no sword to make us powerful. Our army is small, and would vanish like dew but for you and the sword. The Pretender and those loyal to him would have our heads in a week were it not for the sword.”

Mikhal hung his head. “Felici, I thank you for your work, and your efforts for me. But remember I am a peasant. I think like a peasant. I plant, I grow, I harvest and I sell. I have planted chaos, and I fear how this will end.”

“If you don’t want to be Emperor, you must give up the sword. Give it to Donal. If you don’t want to fight, then run away, but leave us the sword. Likely you will die, but if you take the sword and run away you will kill all of us. You aren’t a peasant anymore, Mikhal. You stopped being a peasant when you ran away rather than pay the Emperor’s taxes. When you were a fugitive, you made a choice and became an assassin. The day we met you made a choice and became a revolutionary.”

“I didn’t understand these things. The Abbot was right when he said I should throw the sword in a well.”

“You have told me many times what the Abbot told you.”

“This cannot be right, Felici.” Mikhal’s voice was trembling.

“You must abide by the choices you have made. You are like the sergeant when he found the sword. Your path is now set.” Felici turned away from Mikhal. “Go and sleep. In three days’ time the Pretender’s army will arrive. There are no choices now.”

End of Chapter 3
Chapter 4 will be posted next Sunday

Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal

Terry Pratchett's Going Postal

The Mob, a British film production company, has made three of Terry Pratchett’s novels into movies now: Hogfather (Amazon link), The Color of Magic/The Light Fantastic (Amazon link) and now Going Postal (Amazon link). With each movie, they do a better job of capturing the essence of a Pratchett novel. Going Postal comes very close to nailing it. The Mob and executive producer Vadim Jean “get” Terry Pratchett.

The pseudonymous Alfred Spangler, con man and swindler, is dead, hung by the neck to dance the rope fandango. But a very surprised Moist van Lipwig awakes in the Patrician’s office. When offered the choice of becoming Postmaster of the dead-as-a-dinosaur Ankh-Morpork post office or the right to leave the Patrician’s office by the door behind him, the bright young con man accepts the duties of Postmaster. When running away doesn’t work – he has a seriously diligent parole officer – Moist settles in to the challenge.

To his surprise, running a big operation like the Post Office is a lot like running a con; to his greater surprise, he even starts to enjoy it. But the competition to the Post Office – the Grand Trunk Clacks, a kind of Middle Ages internet – is run by Reacher Gilt, the one-eyed, black-haired chairman. Gilt takes competition to new extremes. Moist, who has always disdained violence, and Gilt, who will stop at nothing, engage in an escalating struggle. Moist can’t seem to help himself, his reaction to a challenge is to up the stakes. And in a game of Find the Lady, no one is better than Moist.

As a caper story, the setup is perfect. Pratchett shows you all the cups, and defies you to find the pea. It makes the ending immensely satisfying. As an indictment of the immorality of capitalism, the part that works best is your laughter. Nothing that takes itself so seriously as crooked capitalism, and is so self-important, can stand ridicule. Including Reacher Gilt. As in all Pratchett stories, there are very funny scenes, but the mature Pratchett uses humor for a purpose beyond entertainment. The cast is very good, and Richard Coyle as the partially reformed con man is especially good. The movie captures the essence of the story without too much sacrifice of the careful detail Pratchett brings to his stories.

About the only character that I really missed from the novel was Reacher Gilts’s parrot screaming, “Twelve and a half percent.” I worry, though, that the denouement – the reveal – is done too quickly for folks not familiar with the book to understand what Moist Von Lipwig does, the essence of the con. Pay careful attention when the Omniscope appears.

But that’s a minor nit. The movie captures very well the heart of what a Discworld novel is all about. Pratchett uses the Discworld as a mirror to reveal the parts of our world we otherwise cannot or will not see. This is a fine adaptation, nearly flawless, and a delight from beginning to end.

Highly recommended.

Favorite Authors: Roger Zelazny

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be any benefit. Silence, though, could.

Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

How can that opening line not hook you into a story? No science fiction or fantasy writer has achieved the consistent level of quality writing that graced Zelazny’s work. Zelazny died in 1995, but his collected works have recently been anthologized in six volumes (four published at this date). As you read them, you cannot help but be struck by the consistent high quality across the short stories and novels.

Zelazny won three Nebula Awards (fourteen nominations) and six Hugo Awards (fourteen nominations). He is probably best known for his Chronicles of Amber, ten novels set in two series of five, but his best work is Lord of Light, which is on most critics’ short list as one of the ten or so best science fiction novels ever written. Prolific, poetic, wildly imaginative and endlessly inventive, I read and re-read his novels and short stories with delight.

He had a strong influence on writers as diverse as Steven Brust, Walter Jon Williams, Joe Haldeman, Neil Gaiman and Robert Silverberg, and many more. But as much as I like those writers, none of them is quite as good as Roger Zelazny.

Among his many gifts as a writer was his ability to sketch in a world or a situation by hints, rather than exposition. An anti-Robert Jordan, he wrote vividly and precisely, but without indulging in a single wasted word. His writing was poetic but spare, earthy but concise. It is very hard to wade through the latest cookie-cutter plot, 900-page opus, after reading Zelazny.

There is no bad Zelazny. Read anything he had written and see if I’m not right.

OOTS Tomorrow!

Rich Burlew has taken a well-deserved break since August 8. But The Order of the Stick returns tomorrow, easily enough to reconcile me to a Monday. Yes!

Favorite Authors: Barry Hughart

Not many folks have heard of Barry Hughart. He’s only published three novels. But they are among my very favorite books; they are stories I can read and re-read with pleasure, delight and awe. I often call Hughart’s books the best novels you’ve never read.

The first is Bridge of Birds, which introduces us to Master Li, an ancient Chinese scholar with a slight flaw in his character, and Number Ten Ox, his peasant client. Set in an “ancient China that never was,” Hughart leads the reader through Chinese myth and literature, seamlessly blending Chinese culture with a very Western mystery. The plot is a puzzle that hides another puzzle. While our heroes set out to cure the children of Number Ten Ox’s village of a “plague that counts,” they find themselves also solving a great wrong worked against the gods themselves. Full of memorable characters, Bridge will move you between tears and laughter. And the ending is stupendous.

Hughart returned to Master Li and Number Ten Ox, this time with Ox as Master Li’s assistant, in The Story of the Stone. A lunatic, homicidal nobleman seems to have returned from the grave, wreaking havoc in the long-suffering Valley of Sorrows. Once again Master Li and Number Ten Ox must solve a mystery, and once again the mystery is fringed with the supernatural, homicide and genuine, laugh out loud developments. Along the way they meet some truly memorable characters, including Grief of Dawn, a young lady with a deeply mysterious past, and Moon Boy, a sound master and an entirely marvellous creation.

Perhaps the best invention in the novel is the characters’ mind trip through the Chinese Hell, which makes the efforts of Orpheus and Dante look pretty pitiful in comparison. The ending is less of a stunner than Bridge of Birds, but this story is a little more mature and tightly crafted than Bridge.

The third and, alas, last novel by Hughart is Eight Skilled Gentlemen. The execution of the Sixth Degree Hotsteler Wu, captured by Master Li and Ox, is interrupted by the appearance of a demon. That, in turn, leads to an assignment by the Celestial Master himself to investigate a mysterious murder of a mandarin. And once again our heroes have to battle demons, goddesses and an ancient myth that is all to real. This time, the survival of China itself is at stake.

I have this test for fantasy literature: when you finish the story, and look up, the real world seems just a bit dimmer, the colors a shade less bright, than where the author has taken you. By my test, Hughart is a great fantasy author. I only wish he had written more.

Michael Stackpole’s Talion: Revenant

Back in 2001, while stranded in the Los Angeles Airport, and pretty desperate for something to read, I purchased Talion: Revenant by Michael A. Stackpole. It wasn’t very good. No, to be honest it was pretty bad. As was my habit, I wrote a review for Amazon. Eight years later, I got into a “Comment War” with a guy who was a huge fan of the absolutely mediocre novel.

Last night, after an evening involving a false alarm bird rescue, I read Michelle Kerns’ Twenty Most Annoying Book Review Clichés.

So, in a spirit (well, mean-spirited, at least) of accommodation, I have recast my review of Stackpole’s potboiler, using as many of Kerns’ clichés as possible:

Stackpole’s Talion: Revenant is at once a gripping and poignant tale, unflinching and powerful. Compelling yet nuanced, it is a sweeping and fully realized page-turner. A tour-de-force in fantasy tropes, it is readable and haunting. It’s a deceptively simple, nimble and taut story that echoes of J.R.R. Tolkien meets Bulwer-Lytton meets Robert Jordan. The plot is a riveting and timely exploration of collapsed fantasy empires. I’ve little doubt that both Strunk & White spin helplessly in their graves at the writing but, that said, Talion: Revenant still stands as a fine example of poorly written fantasy.

So that gives you all of the clichés but “rollicking.” Even in a satiric review, I cannot attach the word “rollicking” to Talion. In compensation, I have thrown in White’s “nimble” and “taut.”

Favorite Authors: Steven Brust

Before Robin Hobb’s “Farseer” series and before HBO’s “The Sopranos,” there was Steven Brust and his protagonist, Vlad Taltos. Vlad is a mob member and an assassin, as well as a member of a racial minority, in a complex and deeply dysfunctional society.

Dragaera is a world where very long-lived elves wielding powerful sorcery, short-lived humans, a host of other intelligent species and even gods exist in a uneasy, unhappy state of intermittent war and uneasy peace. Vlad lives in a part of the world where the elves rule, and his people, for the most part, live in squalid slums. He takes his hatred for his oppressors and turns it into a career, and assassinates elves at the behest of other elves. He becomes a minor mob boss in the Jhereg, the criminal underground operated by the elves. All of this is accepted behavior in Brust’s vividly imagined world.

Yet, Vlad’s best friends are all among his oppressors. He may loath the Dragaerans in general, but he comes to value them individually as friends and colleagues. Cynical and noble, murderous and ethical, cold-blooded and warm-hearted; he is a mass of contradictions and yet a self-consistent whole.

In addition to a fascinating protagonist set is an complex world, Brust experiments with literary forms. Whether its a homage to Dumas  as in “The Phoenix Guards,” “Five Hundred Years Later,”  shifting narrative points of view as in Athyra, or interlocked chronologies as in Taltos, he uses those techniques to inform his narrative. Brust is a fine writer, with a nice sense of irony and narrative structure. He can also be hysterically funny.

Finally, the stories here are a part of the evolving story of the puzzle that is Vlad Taltos. In publication order – Brust plays games with the internal chronology – are Jhereg, Yendi, Teckla, Taltos, Phoenix, Athyra, Orca, Dragon, Issola, Dzur and Jheggala. The Khaavren Romances, set earlier in the same world, are a Dumas pastiche, including Dumas’s verbosity. They are great fun, but perhaps less accessible: Phoenix Guards, 500 Years After, Paths of the Dead, Lord of Castle Black, and Sethra LaVode.

I enjoy the Vlad Taltos stories very much; I think you will too.