Lyonesse II: The Green Pearl and Madouc | ||||||||
Jack Vance | ||||||||
Gollancz, 776 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Alma A. Hromic
In a world filled with imitators, writers with original voices this rich and strange are a rare and special breed indeed -- I could
probably mention a bare handful. These are writers who do not merely string words and images together to patch together a different
world. They themselves appear to have at one time lived, and sometimes still keep a current residence, there and their bone-deep
conviction that it is, was, or might still be a reality seeps through into the reader when he picks up a book about such a world. I have
absolutely no doubt, while enthralled by the Lyonesse books, that I am in fact reading some alternate history at whose unfolding I may
not have been personally present but which is none the less real because of that. Warring kingdoms with resounding ancient names,
changeling princesses, duelling sorcerers, tangled webs of politics and enchantment -- Vance treats things which are on the face of it
strange and unbelievable with a glorious matter-of-factness that makes an instance of magic as easily acceptable as switching on the
lights in our homes at night. It's the sense that everything is magic, or perhaps none of it is -- either way, it's merely a question of
shifting your initial parameters and accepting what surrounds you as the definitive version of what's real, what's magic, and what's important.
Fantasy Masterworks has issued the first book in the series, Suldrun's Garden, in a single book but chose to issue the final two
books, The Green Pearl and Madouc, in the Lyonesse trilogy in a
satisfyingly fat volume which completes the saga in a single package. It's a collector's
item. These books will find a permanent place of honour in my own collection, to be treasured and read and re-read, every time my belief
in true magic needs nurturing and reinforcing.
They really are that good.
Alma A. Hromic, addicted (in random order) to coffee, chocolate and books, has a constant and chronic problem of "too many books, not enough bookshelves". When not collecting more books and avidly reading them (with a cup of coffee at hand), she keeps busy writing her own. Following her successful two-volume fantasy series, Changer of Days, her latest novel, Jin-shei, is due out from Harper San Francisco in the spring of 2004. |
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