Green Rider Series: Book One

Green Rider, Kristen Britain

This is the first novel in a series by a relatively new fantasy writer. Some of the tropes are very familiar: the unfairly maligned child/adolescent – in this case, merchant’s daughter Karigan G'ladheon who is expelled from school for fighting after being taunted unmercifully by nasty young nobles – with a great destiny whose life is altered by an event of great import when she finds herself, out of the blue, the only person who can complete an important quest that you wouldn’t really expect she would have the skills to fulfil, but being a plucky and courageous and resourceful and, let’s admit it, lucky young person of destiny, she does pull it off, and saves the day, only of course there’s a bigger quest waiting for her now that she’s taken the first step on the path to greatness. The overall plot, both of the immediate quest – treachery and corruption threatening the court of the good ruler – and of what seems to be the longer series arc – the awakening of an ancient evil – are also part of the standard repertoire of fantasy.

What makes or breaks a story like this is the details, the particulars – after all, a lot of what I said above also could be used to describe The Lord of the Rings or half a dozen other classics of fantasy – and Britain has done a very good job with those. There’s good characterisation, nice fast pacing, an interesting plot, and a slow unveiling of a backstory that holds a great deal of promise for future adventures. The hero is someone you care about and the world she lives in has a character of its own.

There’s perhaps more than a hint of Mercedes Lackey’s Heralds of Valdemar in the pedigree of Britain’s Green Riders, but then, I really like the Heralds of Valdemar, so that’s hardly a drawback as far as I’m concerned. This was a fun read, and I’ll be coming back for more from Britain.

Roland and the Holy Grail

The Kingdom of the Grail, Judith Tarr

In The Kingdom of the Grail, Tarr has created a story that is a thoroughly enjoyable blend of Arthurian legend and the tales of the court of Charlemagne, two of the three canonical subject mattes for medieval storytellers, as named by French poet Jean Bodel: “Ne sont que iii matières à nul homme atandant, De France et de Bretaigne, et de Rome la grant.” In creating a tale with roots in both traditions, Tarr makes use of the great French epic, La Chanson de Roland, while drawing considerable background from Wagner’s opera Parsifal, itself inspired by the earlier epic poem Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, which presents one version of Parzival’s quest for the Holy Grail

Tarr begins with the idea that Merlin, child of a human woman and a demon summoned by a powerful, evil, and near-immortal sorcerer, lives on in imprisonment and has, through the human enchantress Nimue, fathered the line that culminates in Roland, the greatest hero of Charlemagne’s court, and Roland’s adversary, the ancient sorcerer, has been trying for centuries to gain possession of the Grail. Foiled once before by Parsifal, brother to Nimue and trained by Merlin, the adversary is preparing to mount another assault on the Grail kingdom, a place no longer of this world, but still accessible through magic, known as Monsalvat.

The first part of the novel follows the basic plot of La Chanson de Roland, but the pivotal events are revisioned as steps in the struggle between the sorcerer – identified with the character of Ganelon from the Chanson – and Roland. In the second half of the novel, however, instead of dying with his companions at the battle of Roncesvalles, Roland is transported to Monsalvat where he is expected to prepare to lead the forces of the Grail Kingdom against the gathering armies of the ancient enemy that seeks to take the Grail and use its power for evil. Tarr brings these elements together into a most satisfying tale of heroic destinies and the great and everlasting battle between good and evil.

The Marriage of High Fantasy and Political Philosophy

The Fall of the Kings, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman

Kushner and Sherman have, in The Fall of the Kings, given us not only a great historical adventure fantasy and a wonderful love story, they have also given us a profound examination of the nature of a number of passions, from true scholarship to patriotic and religious fervour, and at the same time an exploration of the ages-old questions of how much wildness can a civilisation permit and still remain a workable social, economic and political system, how best to balance the rational and the irrational aspects of the human psyche within the functioning of a society, and what prices must be paid, regardless of which side the balance is weighted on.

Set in the same universe as Swordspoint, but a generation later, the pivotal characters are Theron Campion, the son of Alec, Duke Tramontaine, and Basil St. Cloud, an unorthodox professor of history who believes that primary sources are far more important to the scholar than any number of secondary texts. St. Cloud is researching the ancient kings from the North and their so-called wizards, now dismissed as charlatans. Campion is the descendant of the last of those Northern kings. The fruits of St. Cloud’s work provide vital clues to ancient mysteries, and Campion is the key. Together, they are caught up in mystery, magic, passion, politics and the destiny of their society and its leaders.

The ending of the novel favours one side of the balance, while, perhaps, leaving the back door open for those who will feel themselves compelled to imagine a future different than that suggested. In this sense, the book is, I think, somewhat of a Rorschach test for the reader, in that it may uncover, for those who have not fully considered the question, what kind of answers they automatically incline to when they consider how human society should be governed. For myself, I must acknowledge that my heart had one response to the book’s conclusion, and my head, another.

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The Prize in the Game, Jo Walton

In her novels The King’s Peace and The King’s Name, Walton took the sense and feel and themes of Arthurian tradition and made from them something that is quite enthralling and very much her own. In The Prize in the Game, she works the same marvellous alchemy on the Ireland of the Táin Bó Cúailnge.

The main characters in the story are young princes from several of the five Isarnagan kingdoms - Darag, Ferdia, Atha ap Gren, Elenn, Conal and Emer (the latter two appear as secondary but memorable figures in Walton’s above-mentioned Sulien novels), and the brief years of their coming-of-age time are the book’s focus. The foregrounded prize is the kingdom of Oriel, to which both Darag and Conal, nephews of the ruling King Conary, have a claim, kingship in Tir Isarnagiri being determined according to tanistry rather than primogeniture. Other prizes the youths compete for are the respect of the adults around them, and the friendship and love of their favoured companions among their own agegroup. At the same time, the young princes are pawns in the greater game of power and precedence being played by the current ruling kings of the realms of Tir Isarnagiri. As the princes learn their craft and compete among themselves, they are manipulated, pledged in marriage and used as threats or prizes themselves in the political manoeuvrings of others, their parents and elders, the most determined and ruthless being Maga, King of Connat and mother of Elenn and Emer.

In many of the Celtic-Gaelic legends from which this tale draws its inspiration, every victory carries within it the shape and source of the limitations that will be laid upon the victor; there is always darkness woven into the light and every hero’s deeds led ultimately to her or his doom. Walton has built this element of her source material into her story as well – and indeed, readers of the Sulien books know some of what will happen to these proud young princes. Also, as in her previous books set in this universe, there is a true equality between men and women, which in this novel echoes the Irish legends of the great warrior women of Ireland such as Medb, Aoife and Scáthach.

While this is a stand-alone novel, readers of The King’s Peace and The King’s Name will appreciate the links between the two works, and readers of Irish myth cycles will be delighted by Walton’s skilful invocation of their heart and soul.