Hugo Nominations: One Bright Star to Guide Them, John C. Wright

[bibliogramma]

Sometimes it's a good thing to know what kind of book you're reading before you get too far into it, but generally speaking, a few hints will do. You don't need a sledgehammer. But from the moment I read this passage on the third page or thereabouts of John C. Wright's Hugo-nominated novella, I had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and where it would end up:

Tommy stared down at the cat. “If you're really Tybalt, the Prince of Cats, the son of Carbonel, please say something,” he whispered. “Say anything. Please!”

The cat began to wash his paws fastidiously.

Tommy said, “It must be you! I know it's you! I remember you from when I was a schoolboy. There was the well behind the ruined wing of Professor Penkirk's mansion. Bombed during the war, and overgrown with moss, the black windows and spooky walls surrounded the well on three sides, and a broken angel was there. We knew it was a haunted well, we were sure of it. Penny and Richard and Sally and I, all of us were playing there when we found the key. It was the Well of the Nine Worlds, and the key opened the gateway…”

Tommy, our protagonist, is a middle-aged man coming home late at night, rather drunk, who has dropped his keys in a hedge and can't find them. Seeing the statue of St. George in the yard of the neighbouring church, he prays: "St. George,” he said in a soft voice, “help me find the key that I have lost. I want to open the door to my home.” And when he reaches into the hedge again, what should he find but a black cat with a silver key on a chain around its neck. No question about it, we are in for a Narnia-type religious fantasy.

And suddenly we are swamped in a torrent of faerie references from multiple traditions - the knight of ghosts and shadows, the wild hunt, the summer country, the fair folk, the harp of Finn Finbarra, tarnkappes and swords reforged and willow women, Melusine and the Winter King.

Called to a quest to save England, Tommy visits Richard, who was part of his childhood adventure, to enlist him and the magic sword he brought back with him from faerie - but he learns that not only has his old friend gone over to the dark side, he's committed sacrifices to the Winter King and forced a participant in sex magic to have an abortion. And he gave away the sword, to a museum. Tommy also discovers that all the countries of the East lie under the shadow of the Winter King (those godless commies!) and that most of the Members of Parliament have been replaced by changelings who serve the darkness (was Labour in power when Wright wrote this?).

He seeks another of his youthful companions, Sally, but she is too afraid to come with him on the quest, although she does give him the shard of glass she has kept as a memory.

From the heirs of his last companion, Penny, he receives a magic book once owned by Myrrdin (you just knew we would get the Arthurian Mythos in here somehow, didn't you? If C. S. Lewis can do it in That Hideous Strength, then damn it, John C. Wright will do it too) with maps, spells and secrets which can only be read in certain kinds of light. Also in the book is a message from Penny, who had foreseen what was coming and left the book so he would find and use it.

At last, after a great deal of talking and flashbacking to the adventure of his youth, Tommy is ready to go get the magic sword and fight the knight of Shadows. But first he has to blood the sword with a willing sacrifice - Tybalt. Despite his qualms, Tybalt finally convinces him it's the only way, so it's off with his head and on to the first real action of the novella, the epic confrontation with Evil, which he wins, sort of, for as Tolkien said first (and better), evil cannot be destroyed, only driven back for a time. As he sits and grieves for Tybalt, along comes Aslan, er, Tybalt Mark II, who tells him that now he must take up a new calling, as a guide to future champions who must fight the good fight in other times and places.

So... Seeing as I love faerie, and Narnia, and Arthurian references, and C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien (both of whom Wright cribbed from freely here), you'd think I'd kind of like something about this tale - but no. I really didn't. Just too derivative of too many things. I think it was a rather serious mistake to put so much of the story into the past, and then load the retelling up with references to names and events and things without giving much context for any of them. The real story was supposed to be in the here and now, but hardly anything happened. And Wright is not Lewis or Tolkien, and really should not try to write like either of them.

Comments

[oursin]

Why would he ask St George? As I understand it, St Anthony is the man for lost things.

[bibliogramma]

Mybest guess on that is that Wright wanted to have the patron saint of England be the precipitating force that plunges Tommy into his quest. As with many other references in the novella, it really doesn't make a lot of sense.