Subject: Emerson: Night Threads #4

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1993 05:06:56 GMT

I think the main reason I read Emerson's books is that I keep hoping
she'll come out with something as enjoyable as "Princess of Flames"
again.  She never has, but neither has her work been bad enough to
make one give up hope.

"The Craft of Light" opens a few years after the original Night Threads
trilogy, and proceeds to pick up some of the loose threads (no pun
intended) left over from that series.  If you've read that trilogy, this
looks to be slightly better.  (To my relief and gratitude, Emerson's dropped
that nauseating bit about using rap to counteract magic, for one thing.)  
If you haven't, this book provides enough background.  (Something it 
*doesn't* provide, is an indication that it is the start of a new trilogy, 
and not a one-shot.)

In the first trilogy, three moderns are magicked into a medievaloid
land in which magic works, to aid a deposed Ducal heir.  There is
absolutely nothing about that land to indicate whether it's part of
another world, another time, an alternative history, another dimension,
or what.  Yet, at the end of the trilogy, one of the characters 
announces -- on little or no evidence that the reader is ever shown --
that the land is an isolated counterpart to California in an alternative-
history Earth.

In this book, something is actually done with that.  While this land
has had half a millenium of isolation, the rest of the world is not
that different from our own nineteenth-century.  Americans (they
have only recently -- and peacefully -- separated from England)
are building their railways westward, England is a major world power,
and there is a major (Incan?) empire in South America.  And the
land's isolation is breaking down.

Three major converging plots are launched in book four (as well
as a few minor ones which might become more important).  One
of the three outlanders becomes the target of assassination
attempts linked to some characters who got away in the first
trilogy.  Another comes across evidence of a deliberate foreign
plot to bring down the government through the use of smuggled
drugs.  And the Duke's sister -- a major character from the first
trilogy -- involves herself in a movement to obtain rights for
women in another, repressive Duchy.

I have to admit that I find the last of these irritating.  The
theme appears often enough in modern fantasy that I assume it
must be emotionally satisfying to many readers -- I can't judge --
but it strikes me as silly in context.  I can't think of a
single historical culture that could reasonably be described
as viciously misogynistic, though they abound in fantasies.
Juxtaposing a relatively modern response to such a situation is
mostly a matter of letting wish-fulfillment get in the way
of story-telling.

All told, it's a midlist book that belongs on the midlist.
I enjoyed it well enough to read the sequels.

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope