Here’s my question: should I finish reading Conqueror’s Moon? Here’s the thing: Julian May has written a few books that I liked very much, a few more that I thought were pretty good, and a few that I thought were dreadful. The last trilogy (the Rampart World books, space opera) started with a book I thought was delicious fun, then had a book I didn’t much like, and finished with a book I didn’t finish. This series is Highish Fantasy, evidently. I like Highish Fantasy (in case you hadn’t noticed, Gentle Reader).
It begins with a prologue where the first-person narrator talks about his exile in old age, and how he feels compelled to write the true story of what really happened. He then gives a thousand years of history of the island where the story will take place, and directs the reader to use a map to follow along properly (coincidentally, there is a map just before the prologue). Now, I don’t really like the frame of all-this-happened-when-I-was-a-lad, but it’s possible that there is some purpose to it other than rubbing the reader’s nose in the fact that the first-person narrator will survive all of the events. Still, it’s not really a very good start. Still, it’s only eight pages.
Then, chapter one begins like this:
Conrig Wincantor, Prince Heritor of Cathra, Earl of Brent, and Lord Constable of the Realm, ate without much of an appetite, picking at the cold roast beef, eel pie, and fine white wastelbread. He had no stomach at all for the cress salad with scallions or the dessert of pears seethed in cranberry cordial. The prince’s only dining companion was his older brother Vra-Stergos, newly ordained Doctor Arcanorum in the Mystic Order of the Brothers of Zeth. No pages served them. They had come to Castle Vanguard on a secret mission, and their presence was unknown to the ordinary inhabitants of the northern fortress.
Now, seriously, is it worth going on at that point? I mean, if I had never heard of the author, the book would already be so far behind in author points that I wouldn’t continue. But I know that the author can write very good books. Unfortunately, I know the author can write (and have published) dreadful books. Should I go on, wading through the Brothers of Zeth, and the Cathras and the wastelbread to get to the good parts that may be waiting? Or should I give the whole thing up as a lost cause and maybe miss those good parts?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Maybe it’s a spoof?
I think the best word in that paragraph is seethed. Though Arcanorum is a close second.
Reading it out loud, “No pages served them” is promptly followed by “And this page isn’t serving us, either.”
I’d give it up. There are better books out there. A similarly bad Katherine Kurtz novel forced me to switch to mysteries for the past 6 months after I made the mistake of reading the whole thing.
Read any Guy Gavriel Kay? His first trilogy was really quite good.
In cases like this, I often check the amazon reviews for a survey of the varying reactions of perceptive and imperceptive readers.
So far, it’s an unusually mixed bag. It looks like the perceptive readers are panning it while the less perceptive ones are eating it up, but there are a couple of reviewers who seem to know a little something about good fantasy who like it.
On the evidence of that sentence, though, it’s hard to give May the benefit of the doubt here. I’d give it up.
Seconding Michael, if there’s any Guy Gavriel Kay you haven’t read, it’d do you better than this for sure. Everything by Jo Walton is well worth reading. R. Scott Bakker’s _The Prince of Nothing_ Trilogy is also excellent high fantasy (at least the first two books — #3 is due out next year).