More Than Amber
Sep. 11th, 2006 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel09 Sep 06
To Die in Italbar - Roger Zelazny - ibooks, 2002
* * * *
Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against hack fantasy. Indeed, my teenage reading consisted largely of the various Eternal Champions series of Michael Moorcock and David Eddings’ Belgariad, so to some extent it has made me the man I am today (what a dreadful thought). It is unfortunate, however, when a writer becomes more well known for his hack fantasy than his better stuff, as has happened with Roger Zelazny and the Amber Chronicles (a sound idea but overextended, especially in the pointless second series). So it is good to see a book that reprints some of his other stories, even if one of them is distinctly second-rate.
Zelazny’s best work is characterised by the sense of utter bewilderment one experiences on reading the first few pages. His great skill is to take an off-the-wall idea, build a universe around it and then gradually explain it to the reader through subtle info-dumps as the book progresses. To Die in Italbar is a case in point. We are introduced in rapid succession to five utterly different protagonists in different locations. There are various hints of connections between them, but no immediately obvious reason why they should come together. The most striking character is Heidel von Hymack, a sort of walking disease repository whose blood can be used as a cure-all, but who also becomes progressively more contagious until he goes into what can only be described as a detox trance which involves a vision of a blue-skinned goddess (as crazed ideas go, they don’t get much more crazed than that). The other prominent person is Malacar Miles, a one-man terrorist organisation with a telepathic alien sidekick who is waging war on the Combined Leagues (a confederation of worlds that trashed and burned his home planet of Earth). Then there is Morgan, an artist who captures dream images into physical form, Jackara, a fierce young woman forced into prostitution who regards Malacar as her hero, and Dr Pels, a living brain in charge of a spaceship whose body is “dwelling indefinitely at a point perhaps ten seconds removed from death”.
That Zelazny manages to bring these disparate characters together and engineer a satisfying climax in the space of two hundred pages is little short of miraculous. There are some flaws - Zelazny unfortunately suffers from Wolfe syndrome when it comes to female characterisation and the ending is effectively a god game at which the viewpoint characters are not even physically present - but nonetheless it is a very satisfying story.
A Dark Travelling is less so, largely because the concept is pure Diana Wynne Jones and she would have done it much better. The Wileys are a family who look after a device that allows them to travel to parallel worlds (bands) and, in alliance with their cognate selves, attempt to guide societies to Truth, Justice and the American Way (OK, it’s not quite put like that, but you get the idea). Sometimes they succeed - Lightbands - and sometimes they fail, producing Darkbands which are the source of the (rather poorly characterised) baddies. The family members are varied and interesting, but less imaginative than To Die in Italbar (the viewpoint character, James, is an adolescent on the verge of werewolf-hood, his sister Becky is a witch and the exchange student Barry is a martial arts expert). The characterisation is flat and not particularly convincing, the plot is loose and shaggy and there is little sense of tension. At least at just over a hundred pages it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
It’s a pity that the stories in this reprint - one from Zelazny at the height of his powers, the other from relatively late in his career when his ability to discipline his flights of fancy into a coherent story were fading - have been yoked together as it suggests that he is a more inconsistent writer than he in fact is. Still, if it has the effect of getting readers off the Amber Chronicles and on to some of his better work (like Lord of Light), it will be a good thing.
To Die in Italbar - Roger Zelazny - ibooks, 2002
* * * *
Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against hack fantasy. Indeed, my teenage reading consisted largely of the various Eternal Champions series of Michael Moorcock and David Eddings’ Belgariad, so to some extent it has made me the man I am today (what a dreadful thought). It is unfortunate, however, when a writer becomes more well known for his hack fantasy than his better stuff, as has happened with Roger Zelazny and the Amber Chronicles (a sound idea but overextended, especially in the pointless second series). So it is good to see a book that reprints some of his other stories, even if one of them is distinctly second-rate.
Zelazny’s best work is characterised by the sense of utter bewilderment one experiences on reading the first few pages. His great skill is to take an off-the-wall idea, build a universe around it and then gradually explain it to the reader through subtle info-dumps as the book progresses. To Die in Italbar is a case in point. We are introduced in rapid succession to five utterly different protagonists in different locations. There are various hints of connections between them, but no immediately obvious reason why they should come together. The most striking character is Heidel von Hymack, a sort of walking disease repository whose blood can be used as a cure-all, but who also becomes progressively more contagious until he goes into what can only be described as a detox trance which involves a vision of a blue-skinned goddess (as crazed ideas go, they don’t get much more crazed than that). The other prominent person is Malacar Miles, a one-man terrorist organisation with a telepathic alien sidekick who is waging war on the Combined Leagues (a confederation of worlds that trashed and burned his home planet of Earth). Then there is Morgan, an artist who captures dream images into physical form, Jackara, a fierce young woman forced into prostitution who regards Malacar as her hero, and Dr Pels, a living brain in charge of a spaceship whose body is “dwelling indefinitely at a point perhaps ten seconds removed from death”.
That Zelazny manages to bring these disparate characters together and engineer a satisfying climax in the space of two hundred pages is little short of miraculous. There are some flaws - Zelazny unfortunately suffers from Wolfe syndrome when it comes to female characterisation and the ending is effectively a god game at which the viewpoint characters are not even physically present - but nonetheless it is a very satisfying story.
A Dark Travelling is less so, largely because the concept is pure Diana Wynne Jones and she would have done it much better. The Wileys are a family who look after a device that allows them to travel to parallel worlds (bands) and, in alliance with their cognate selves, attempt to guide societies to Truth, Justice and the American Way (OK, it’s not quite put like that, but you get the idea). Sometimes they succeed - Lightbands - and sometimes they fail, producing Darkbands which are the source of the (rather poorly characterised) baddies. The family members are varied and interesting, but less imaginative than To Die in Italbar (the viewpoint character, James, is an adolescent on the verge of werewolf-hood, his sister Becky is a witch and the exchange student Barry is a martial arts expert). The characterisation is flat and not particularly convincing, the plot is loose and shaggy and there is little sense of tension. At least at just over a hundred pages it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
It’s a pity that the stories in this reprint - one from Zelazny at the height of his powers, the other from relatively late in his career when his ability to discipline his flights of fancy into a coherent story were fading - have been yoked together as it suggests that he is a more inconsistent writer than he in fact is. Still, if it has the effect of getting readers off the Amber Chronicles and on to some of his better work (like Lord of Light), it will be a good thing.