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igenlodeIt takes a really good book to make you realise just how colourless all the others have been in comparison. This one starts with a bang and never really lets you go.
It introduces more action, setting and backstory in the first ten pages —and without the slightest suggestion of info-dump— than many books manage in several introductory chapters, but it also evokes with grinding credibility the hopelessness of tedium and disaster. It's a sword and sorcery story that doesn't romanticise either aspect, a high fantasy that is keenly aware of the realities of mediæval campaigning, from the ruthless trade policies of merchant rulers to the vital importance of getting into winter quarters before the hard weather sets in.
I've a feeling I read the preceding book in this series, "The Witches of Wenshar", first and without realising that was a sequel to "The Ladies of Mandrigyn", and was somewhat confused. This one seems clearer to me, although that may be because I have now read "The Ladies of Mandrigyn" (though I have very little remaining recollection of "The Witches of Wenshar", as I never owned it -- almost nothing beyond the handful of references in this book, although enough to make me sure I did read it, thirty years or so ago...)
But I still think this book stands reasonably well alone; all we need to know is that the protagonist, Sun Wolf (who has spent his life as a barbarian warrior straight out of central casting, apart from the fact that he's a credible human being) used to be the leader of a mercenary troop before discovering untutored magical talents, has spent the last year trying to find someone to teach him with little success, and in this book is summoned back by his old allies to help them with a suspected magical problem of their own. In many ways this in itself *is* the backstory to the two previous books, rather than requiring them in order to make sense.
This is a book about war, in all its ugliness; the very word 'mercenary' carries overtones of someone who does bad things for money, and Sun Wolf's men are the ruthless looters and rapists of legend who will attack anybody for pay — the sort of cast that normally feature as nameless sword-fodder for the heroes of fantasy literature. They are also his friends, colleagues and substitute family, and Barbara Hambly shows them vividly to us through the eyes of a man who has spent the past year living in the sort of cities he used to sack, and who knows he can never go back to the old life, and yet understands precisely what motivates them and the powerful bonds between men who risk their lives together. There's a breathtakingly daring scene on the author's part where one of his friends comes back from battle wearing a dead child's ribbon as a trophy, and we know exactly whom it belonged to and witnessed her as a sympathetic character only pages before... and yet Sun Wolf, who has taken part in such scenes himself, still perceives him as a friend, and we accept this.
The mercenaries aren't the real evil in this story. They're just professionals earning a living at a hideously dangerous job, and reacting accordingly. There are much more cold-blooded ways of dealing death and destruction than a handful of fighters who think with their swords first and are loyal above all to each other.
For high fantasy, this is grimly realistic; there's a high body-count, mostly through directly human agency rather than the mystical horrors of earlier books, and people who get hurt stay hurt rather than magically swigging down healing potions and fighting again the next day. But oddly enough, it's not that dark a book, perhaps because the bonds between Sun Wolf and his men are so strong — they're enduring dreadful conditions, but so far as he's concerned it's a known world and a friendly one, as opposed to the treacherous and lonely situations he's been through since discovering his magic. The world of wizardry is the alien one, but this time it's for their sake that he is fumbling to master what little of it he knows.
The story doesn't end where you think it will (and it's a testimony to the book's compulsive quality that it didn't even occur to me to look and see how many pages were left!), and while I remembered enough of the plot to be fairly sure the enemy wasn't who Sun Wolf assumed it was, the true identity of their opponent and the entire final section of the novel took me wholly by surprise. And above all it's a world that's very vividly imagined, from its practicalities to its politics and the people who fill its pages.
The final pages suggest that the author had another potential novel in mind, as yet another surviving wizard is revealed, but if so she doesn't ever seem to have written it. I really must try to get hold of "The Witches of Wenshar" again...
Sun Wolf's capture, as Sun Wolf himself reflected at his execution, was sheer, stupid ill luck, which Dogbreath of Mallinsore would have told him was only to be expected under the circumstances.
The arrow that brought him down took him high in the back from the shelter of a pile of stone he'd have bet his last silver bit—which happened to be in his pocket at the time—couldn't have hidden an emaciated corpse. He hit the sand of the dry arroyo bed in a second's whirling disorientation and sickening pain and the next instant got a gritty faceful of gravel, kicked up as his horse bolted. His first thought was, So much for the King of Wenshar's guarding our backs.
His second thought, through a descending curtain of gray weakness, was that, if he blacked out, he was a dead man.
It introduces more action, setting and backstory in the first ten pages —and without the slightest suggestion of info-dump— than many books manage in several introductory chapters, but it also evokes with grinding credibility the hopelessness of tedium and disaster. It's a sword and sorcery story that doesn't romanticise either aspect, a high fantasy that is keenly aware of the realities of mediæval campaigning, from the ruthless trade policies of merchant rulers to the vital importance of getting into winter quarters before the hard weather sets in.
I've a feeling I read the preceding book in this series, "The Witches of Wenshar", first and without realising that was a sequel to "The Ladies of Mandrigyn", and was somewhat confused. This one seems clearer to me, although that may be because I have now read "The Ladies of Mandrigyn" (though I have very little remaining recollection of "The Witches of Wenshar", as I never owned it -- almost nothing beyond the handful of references in this book, although enough to make me sure I did read it, thirty years or so ago...)
But I still think this book stands reasonably well alone; all we need to know is that the protagonist, Sun Wolf (who has spent his life as a barbarian warrior straight out of central casting, apart from the fact that he's a credible human being) used to be the leader of a mercenary troop before discovering untutored magical talents, has spent the last year trying to find someone to teach him with little success, and in this book is summoned back by his old allies to help them with a suspected magical problem of their own. In many ways this in itself *is* the backstory to the two previous books, rather than requiring them in order to make sense.
This is a book about war, in all its ugliness; the very word 'mercenary' carries overtones of someone who does bad things for money, and Sun Wolf's men are the ruthless looters and rapists of legend who will attack anybody for pay — the sort of cast that normally feature as nameless sword-fodder for the heroes of fantasy literature. They are also his friends, colleagues and substitute family, and Barbara Hambly shows them vividly to us through the eyes of a man who has spent the past year living in the sort of cities he used to sack, and who knows he can never go back to the old life, and yet understands precisely what motivates them and the powerful bonds between men who risk their lives together. There's a breathtakingly daring scene on the author's part where one of his friends comes back from battle wearing a dead child's ribbon as a trophy, and we know exactly whom it belonged to and witnessed her as a sympathetic character only pages before... and yet Sun Wolf, who has taken part in such scenes himself, still perceives him as a friend, and we accept this.
The mercenaries aren't the real evil in this story. They're just professionals earning a living at a hideously dangerous job, and reacting accordingly. There are much more cold-blooded ways of dealing death and destruction than a handful of fighters who think with their swords first and are loyal above all to each other.
For high fantasy, this is grimly realistic; there's a high body-count, mostly through directly human agency rather than the mystical horrors of earlier books, and people who get hurt stay hurt rather than magically swigging down healing potions and fighting again the next day. But oddly enough, it's not that dark a book, perhaps because the bonds between Sun Wolf and his men are so strong — they're enduring dreadful conditions, but so far as he's concerned it's a known world and a friendly one, as opposed to the treacherous and lonely situations he's been through since discovering his magic. The world of wizardry is the alien one, but this time it's for their sake that he is fumbling to master what little of it he knows.
The story doesn't end where you think it will (and it's a testimony to the book's compulsive quality that it didn't even occur to me to look and see how many pages were left!), and while I remembered enough of the plot to be fairly sure the enemy wasn't who Sun Wolf assumed it was, the true identity of their opponent and the entire final section of the novel took me wholly by surprise. And above all it's a world that's very vividly imagined, from its practicalities to its politics and the people who fill its pages.
The final pages suggest that the author had another potential novel in mind, as yet another surviving wizard is revealed, but if so she doesn't ever seem to have written it. I really must try to get hold of "The Witches of Wenshar" again...