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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.