Subject: Review: _The Chronicles of Scar_ by Ron Sarti

From: [email-masked] (Christina Schulman)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 18:02:27 GMT

_The Chronicles of Scar_ by Ron Sarti
		Review Copyright 1996 Christina Schulman

This seems to be the Year of the Bastard Prince.  _Assassin's Apprentice_
has been very popular, but another such book that hasn't received as much
attention is _The Chronicles of Scar_.  Paradoxically, it's much lighter in
tone than _Assassin's Apprentice_, despite having a much more cynical
viewpoint character.

Several centuries after your standard geological Cataclysm (nuclear
cataclysms seem to have gone out of vogue), America is a decidedly dangerous
place.  The swamps are full of dinosaurs, the result of cloning experiments
by pre-Cataclysm scientists who must not have seen "Jurassic Park," and the
forests are full of savage beastmen.  Technology is restricted to a
pre-industrial level by Codes to which the American nation-states adhere.

Arn is an starving beggar boy in a backwater town of the kingdom of
Kenessee.  When Arn's pubic birthmark is unexpectedly made public, the king
acclaims Arn as his long-lost bastard son, and Arn is raised and educated as
a prince alongside his half-brother Robert.  The rest of the book spends
surprisingly little time dwelling on Arn's beggar origins.  Instead, it
centers on court politics and the impending war that forces him into the
role of reluctant hero.

After a gutter rat becomes a prince, further revelations about parentage are
bound to be anticlimactic, and the gratuitous revelations at the end of the
book should have been hinted at only subtly or not at all.  Most of the
story's Dark Secrets are revealed more deftly, and a minimum of detail is
sketched in about most of the political maneuvering.

The supporting characters have depth and motivation, with the exception of
the Malevolent Queen (there's always a Malevolent Queen, but I suppose there
might not be if the Noble King could keep his pants on) and the Batty Old
Soothsayer (another archetype that croaks her way through all of these lost
prince stories, perhaps in search of a bath and a breath mint).  I would
have liked to have seen more of the dinosaurs and the beastmen, which set
this story apart from the thirty other medievaloid Reluctant Hero fantasies
on the same bookstore shelf.

Sarti does leave a few loose ends; Arn's unnaturally acute hearing, for
example, is never adequately explained.  Eavesdropping is a _terribly_
convenient device for exposition, though, and having acute hearing is safer
than lurking under windows and behind drapes.  Look at happened to
Polonius.  A sequel is possible but unnecessary, and in a daring break with
industry tradition, the cover utterly fails to proclaim this the first in a
trilogy, tapestry, or other sort of series.  I enjoyed _The Chronicles of
Scar_; it's an absorbing story that doesn't take itself nearly as seriously
as the title implies.

%A Ron Sarti
%T The Chronicles of Scar
%I AvoNova Fantasy/Avon Books
%C New York
%D January 1996
%G ISBN 0-380-77939-0
%P 390 pp.
%O paperback, US $5.50, Canada $7.50

Christina Schulman    http://www.pitt.edu/~schulman      [email-masked]
"I'm amazed that anyone would sneer at 'the common man' while displaying 
 detailed knowledged of Star Wars novels." -- Nancy Lebovitz