A tale well worth the telling

[bibliogramma]

The Tale of the Five, by Diane Duane:
The Door into Fire
The Door into Shadow
The Door into Sunset

Of all of Diane Duane’s marvellous books, Door into Fire, the first volume of Duane’s Tale of the Five, is dearest to my heart. You see, back in 1979, when it was published, I was a young queer geek who had never before read anything in her genre of choice that had, not just a queer protagonist, but one who was openly in a committed, long-term (and polyamorous!) relationship with his male lover, who lived in a world where what hadn’t yet come to be called alternative sexualities here on Earth were an accepted part of life, welcomed and cherished and supported. Heterosexuality was not privileged in this world. And I was rocked to my soul with the feeling of joy and rightness Duane’s story gave me.

Oh, I’d read books that had queers in them before. They were quietly getting on with their lives in Samuel Delany’s work, and coming out, sometimes quite fiercely, in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books, and had even popped up in a few short stories here and there, by people like Sturgeon and Farmer who liked to press all sorts of buttons anyway. And outside of genre fiction, what queer girl worth her salt hadn’t real that terrifying book of Radclyffe Hall’s, or scrounged up some lesbian pulps by Ann Banion? But I’d never read a book about a place where queer people were just like everyone else, and could be themselves, and be in love, just as happily (or not, but not because of their orientation) as anyone else. They could be heroes, and their tales could end with them living happily, and in love.

And in addition to all of that, Door into Fire and its sequels are great heroic fantasy, too, with an overarching theme that they share with Duane’s remarkable Young Wizards series, a subtle and ultimately more realistic variation on the classic battle between good and evil in which love is engaged in a long defence against despair, the fear of death and the nothingness of entropy.

I’ve heard rumours from time to time that Duane has, or had, plans to write a fourth volume, which would of course be wonderful, although the Tale has reached a comfortable resting point – complete with the genre’s best wedding ever, and I mean it – at the end of the third volume, The Door into Sunset.

But whether she does or not, the three volumes that exist now were, and are, an important part of my becoming who I am, and each time I re-read them (which I do, every handful of years) I am once again caught up in the tale of the Five: Herewiss S'Hearn, heir to Brightwood and potentially, first man in centuries to wield the Blue Flame; his loved Freelorn, uncrowned king-in-exile whose quest is to remove the usurper from the throne of Darthen; Sunspark, the fire elemental who comes to love him; Segnbora, a Rodmistress in search of her own fire; and the dragon Hasai, who, with Segnbora, must defy all the traditions of his people in order to save them.