My general comment about Robert Silverberg’s stuff is that the world-creation is fantastic, and that the plots are handled moderately well but tend to fall apart before the end, and that the people aren’t terribly memorable. As a result, I like the short stories more than the novel, in a general sort of way, despite my general preference for novels over short stories as a form.
Back when I was a teenager, I thought Lord Valentine’s Castle was the Best. Thing. Evar., even thought that phrase did not exist at the time. I believe that it was Valentine that inspired me to spend all that time learning to juggle, although to be honest I don’t actually recall the sequence of events, and it’s possible that the causality was the other way. Wow, I spent a lot of time learning to juggle. Had there been an internet freely available from my room, I doubt I would have done that. Hm.
Anyway, I read the book again as a grupp some ten years ago or so, I believe, and thought it stank on ice. Just stinky-poo. The world is totally implausible, the characters are only briefly interesting and by two-thirds of the way through melt into an indistinguishable mass of plot-furtherers, and the plot is incredibly disappointing and lame. And that’s in the first book, which is (as you would expect) the good one; there are at least six and probably more by now.
Rereading it again (why? Well, I have been suffering a cold, Gentle Reader, of no great severity but tremendous duration, and as a result have spent substantial time dopey, cross, and in a hot bath: perfect conditions for rereading old paperbacks), I find that there is much to be said for both points of view. The beginning really is terrific, with Valentine memory-impaired in a harbor town, learning (as we are learning) the details of the huge, detailed and preposterous world. The whole learning-to-juggle bit is odd but lovely, a kind of forced metaphor that works surprisingly well. The early stages of the travel, the romance and the friendships, and the gradually expanding sense of scope and depth to the world are all magnificent. Yes, the world is preposterous, but it’s majestic as well, and if you can get past the preposterousness and dig into the majesty, there’s a lot there. His world-creation is not more painterly than draftsmanlike, if you follow me; the world could never actually exist, but it close enough to something that could exist to evoke awe.
Then, you know, there’s the shipwreck and the book almost immediately loses all interest. There are a couple of moments late in the book that are genuinely creepy or majestic or powerful, but they are few and far between, and in the meantime, we lose all the characters we have been interested in, and gain no interesting new ones. And the plot shifts from the moderately interesting stage where Valentine explores the possible paths to his desired outcome to the tedious plodding along the chosen path until its inevitable conclusion. The surpise at the end—The King of Dreams is really a spoiler!—doesn’t actually make any difference in the plot, which is astonishing, when you think about it; our Hero spends the whole book fighting the Villain, and at the end, the Villain is not the Villain at all but a different Villain, and instead of requiring our Hero to change his plan or even rethink his whole quest, it’s just a piece of information.
Ah, well. The lesson here is that in a book with multiple sources of reader pleasure and annoyance, it’s best to read it whilst mostly submerged in nice hot water.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.