From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Mar 10 10:32:38 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.sf.written:4389 rec.arts.sf.reviews:58 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!seunet!mcsun!uunet!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!bionet!raven.alaska.edu!never-reply-to-path-lines From: alexis@panix.com (Alexis Rosen) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: PC Hodgell's God Stalk -- the best and worst books of the year... Message-ID: <1992Mar9.220205.4304@raven.alaska.edu> Date: 9 Mar 92 22:02:05 GMT Sender: wisner@raven.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network Lines: 107 Approved: wisner@ims.alaska.edu [This turned into a review so it's being crossposted to rec.arts.sf.reviews.] mab@wdl39.wdl.loral.com (Mark A Biggar) writes: >dresnick@athena.mit.edu (David I Resnick) writes: >>Was there ever a third book in this series? I just read the first >>two, and enjoyed them, however matters are left hanging at the end of >>the second book, which was published in 1985. >According to Locus the 3rd book should be out this summer. I've been lurking here on and off for years, but I don't think I've posted here since the big reorg. No, not Kent's baby. The _big_ one. In '86 or so... But God Stalk has been on my mind again lately and it's worth posting about. This is either the best news in Fantasy this year, or the worst. God Stalk stands completely on its own, although there is definitely room left for a sequel. It is without question one of the finest fantasy novels I've ever read. The writing is wonderful, at turns incisive, amusing, deep, precious, folksy, or grandly epic. At all times, it is exactly what the story needs. The story itself is a wonder, something new and unique built from faded and worn parts, living in a borderland between genres of high fantasy, alternate worlds, alien races, and magical cities. The main characters are intense, deeply convoluted personalities with as many complexities and ambiguities, as many nobilities and weaknesses as any people you're likely to ever meet. The secondary characters too are well developed, each with their own signature quirks, each with their own lives, and each contributing to the novel without being obvious plot devices. The protagonist of God Stalk is that rarest of species, a strong female lead who resembles neither Scarlett nor Conan. Jame is a fearsome fighter, without being invincible, smart without being infallible, and stong-willed enough to warp her entire surroundings even without the benefit of complete self- confidence. She has significant problems which she works on throughout the book, but she doesn't become a one-dimensional hero bent on The Quest. Tai-Tastigon, her city, is one of the great creations of fantasy. It rivals Lankhmar, Melnibone, and Amber with ease, and puts relatively amateur efforts like Sanctuary to shame. Its societies, with their myriad facets and layers, feel far more real than do those in the other cities. It has an intense personality and character of its own. Tai-Tastigon, a truly weird and wonderful city, feels larger and more real than most worlds. In this respect it brings to fantasy something more common in the great works of SF. Hodgell wrote a novellette (novella?- I'm not sure) called "Bones", which was printed in the collection "Elsewhere... Vol. 3". It takes places during the course of God Stalk, and is in all ways of a piece with it. In fact, it seems quite possible that it was a chapter cut originally from the novel, although there's no way to be sure. "Bones" explores more of Tai-Tastigon in great detail, as a simple side effect of telling its story. It also fleshes out the character of Jame's master, Penari. The central magical device in the story is a wonderful one, though not entirely new, and it fits perfectly into the larger framework of God Stalk. In both God Stalk and Bones, one of Hodgell's greatest strengths is her rich use of the language. In her writing, many Places and Things and People are written with Capital Letters, and they carry the Weight of History and Legend. Rich, colorful phrases full of cultural meaning are used where simple collections of words would do. Other writers have tried this with varying degrees of success. Tolkien, of course, was the greatest. Burroughs too was successful, although his writing can't compare to Tolkien's (or Hodgell's). Moorcock uses these techniques the most, and often wears them out. While I won't stand Hodgell up to Tolkien in the epic sweep and grandeur of her writing, I think she comes very close to him in creating a personality and history for her culture, by filling its language with character and color. All of this may help explain the total devastation I felt when I read Hodgell's second book, Dark of the Moon. The less said about this disaster, the better. In short, not one of the positive qualities in God Stalk can be found here. The best that can be said of the writing is that it's not bad, but there's no magic, no spark of life that makes the story jump off the page. Worst of all, she takes a wonderful and strong character, Jame, and turns her into a weak and spiritless pawn of whatever forces are closest to her. The only good thing I can say about Dark of the Moon is that it doesn't spoil God Stalk at all. I've read God Stalk several times since Dark of the Moon came out, and it's still as fresh and alive as it ever was. There was at least one other short story published by Hodgell, whose name escapes me. It's very close in feeling to Dark of the Moon, though perhaps not as bad- I've never been tempted to dig it up and reread it, though if I can find it, I may look at it again just to confirm my initial judgement. I think it would be too painful ever to go back and reread Dark of the Moon. %A Hodgell, P.C. %C New York %D August 1983 %G 0-425-06079-9 %I Berkley Books %O Originally published in hardcover by Atheneum in 1982 %P 284 pp. %T God Stalk --- Alexis Rosen Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC. alexis@panix.com {cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis From new Thu Jun 16 18:49:42 1994 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: "Seeker's Mask", by P.C. Hodgell Message-ID: Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 1994 07:40:18 GMT Lines: 168 "Seeker's Mask" is the too-long-awaited third book in P.C. Hodgell's 'Jame' series. The first book, the out-of-print "Godstalk" is one of the all-time most enjoyable fantasy novels, and our introduction to the world of Rathillien, to the Kencyrath, and to Jame. The Kencyrath are a union of three species -- two of them nearly human -- bound by the Three-Faced God to fight Perimal Darkling, a force (sentient?) of Chaos which threatens to destroy the universes. After binding them, the God left them to their battle. After thirty millenia of losing battles and retreats from one universe to the next, the Highlord of the Kencyrath turned his coat, betraying most of his people to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality of sorts. The survivors retreated to Rathillien, the next 'threshold' world on the Chain of Creation. Jame is an enigma. She first appears fleeing out of the Haunted Lands -- the abandoned territory closest to Perimal's border -- but part of her memory is gone. She is Shanir -- one of those Kencyrath who are particularly (and unwelcomely) close to their God. Such closeness manifests itself in dangerous powers, in physical differences, and in rotten Karma. (The Kencyrath don't 'worship' their God, or even like it. They just obey because they weren't given a choice.) "Godstalk" is the story of Jame's year in the city of Tai-Tastigon, wherein she apprentices in the Thieves Guild, begins to learn some of the secrets of Rathillien, and gets a lot of people killed before she flees the city. It's the best of Hodgell's books -- well balanced between humor and drama, with engaging characters, a very strange city, and a complex mystery in the background. The sequel to "Godstalk" is "Dark of the Moon", a much...well...darker book. It alternates between Jame's story, as she travels towards the Kencyr homeland and that of Torisend, her twin brother. Sort-of twin: Somehow he's a decade older than she is. He came out of the Haunted Lands years earlier and managed to persuade the feuding Highborn families to accept him as the heir to their vanished Highlord. (That he survived his ascension by more than a few months came as an unpleasant surprise to most of those Highborn.) We learn more about the Kencyrath in this book -- not least that the rigid honor by which they define themselves has for many become a facade. And, through Jame's travels we begin to learn that Rathillien itself is a more complex world than it seemed -- one which is fighting Perimal Darkling -- and perhaps the Kencyrath -- in its own way. "Dark of the Moon" ends with Jame rejoining Torisend. The reunion is not a comfortable one (he hates and fears her Shanir heritage, not least because he is repressing knowledge of his own) and ends with his sending her off to become a proper Highborn lady. Okay, you didn't really need to know all this, because "Seeker's Mask" is only out in a limited-edition printing, so it's safe to assume that anyone who gets it has read the first two volumes. That seems to be what Hodgell thought, too, because "Seeker's Mask" makes little allowance for new readers. It's too bad: "Seeker's Mask" starts poorly and then gets better and better, but it could do with ten pages of introduction and about a hundred pages less text. (Or a hundred pages more. More on this later.) (There are also three short stories: "Bones" is an odd episode in Tai- Tastigon. "Stranger Blood" takes place about a decade later than the first three books. And "Child of Darkness" takes place on Earth, and ties into the rest of the series...oddly.) "Seeker's Mask" begins at Torisend's keep of Gothregor, where he has sent Jame into a far worse situation than he intended. She has been taken in hand by the women there, who mean to train her to obedience, whatever it takes. By the time Jame departs Gothregor, she has invisible assassins and enraged pursuers on her trail, and a wound on her cheek that could trigger a civil war if it is seen. She keeps it hidden behind a mask. The bare plot of "Seeker's Mask" consists largely of an at least temporary tidying of loose ends left over from "Dark of the Moon". One by one, as she travels, Jame pulls in artifacts and characters she left scattered around Rathillien. (In some cases 'scattered' was more comfortable. For instance, last time she saw Bane, he was merely a demon.) In the process Jame moves towards an identity she can live with, within the Kencyrath. In "Dark of the Moon" we began to see the rot within the Kencyrath. Since the betrayal two millenia earlier, Kencyr honor has become a rigid facade behind which the power-mad can play with human lives, as long as they stick to the tattered letter of their code, and repressive Custom has taken on the status of law. We see more of this corruption in "Seeker's Mask", but we also see that the Kencyr still have considerable if hidden strengths. Much the same is true of Rathillien, as a whole. Its very reality is being eaten away by Perimal Darkling, but it also has tremendous native reserves of power which are being marshalled in its defense. There is a satisfying symmetry to "Seeker's Mask", a progressive unveiling of Jame, of the Kencyrath, and of Rathillien. The book also has Hodgell's accustomed combination of action and slapstick. The humor is largely situational: The drama is real enough, and the stakes are high enough, that one can almost fail to realize what an ensemble Hodgell has put together with a straight face: Jame is fleeing invisible assassins, vengeful monsters, and some gods (?) that keep trying to swallow her (but will behave if spoken to sharply), while lugging around a large tapestry, a knife that will rot anything, a blind cat, soldiers who think she's insane, and a semi-sane, semi-feral, semi-trustworthy follower. This while trying to make her way through a reality storm that may have been triggered by a keepful of scholars who got too bored. "Seeker's Mask" ends with an equilibrium of sorts. The loose ends from previous books have been rescued or retrieved, and the most dangerous of them have temporarily neutralized each other. The native powers have revealed themselves as possible allies. Jame herself is placed in a position of greater strength, and possibly greater safety. She is also in a position of immediate risk, and Hodgell *could* pick the story up where she leaves this one -- but it would work very well if instead she picked up ten years later, with the situation implied by "Stranger Blood". I enjoyed the book. It started poorly, I thought: The situation in which we first find Jame is by turns unconvincing, Byzantine, and over-complex. After she leaves Gothregor, though (which is to say after the first hundred pages or so), trouble is encountered in smaller doses, and Jame is in better command of what she encounters, a combination which makes for more enjoyable reading. By the book's half-way mark, I was turning pages with great satisfaction (and noting in distress that I had less than two hundred and fifty pages left to go). The book has its flaws. The first I've already noted: It requires a great deal of background knowledge. Some of that knowledge is simply assumed, some of it is force-fed in places, rendering parts of the book too dense. A related problem is that the doesn't have a major focus, unlike "Dark of the Moon", for instance, which revolves around an enormous battle. "Seeker's Mask" is important within the context of the larger series, serving to tidy up the first part of that series and bring it to a closure, but it doesn't have a strong 'identity', of its own. A third failing is its lack of well-developed characters. Hodgell simply doesn't pay much attention to the feelings, thoughts, or motivations of the secondary characters. That puts too much weight on Jame's character, which Hodgell isn't particularly interested in developing in this book. As you've probably gathered, I'm looking at "Seeker's Mask" from two perspectives. As a middle-of-series book for readers who are already immersed in this story, it is more than satisfactory. (I'll be rereading the book soon after I finish writing this.) It could use some tightening, some editing, (just a bit of proofreading), but it gives its readers what they've been missing for too long. But if a publisher picks this book up and prints it without reprinting "God Stalk", a casual reader is going to have a hard time picking it up, figuring out what's going on, and enjoying it. It could be repaired: A good introduction would help. So would a shortening of the book, in some ways: Some scenes are extraneous, some details don't need to be explained. And the book could use a stronger unity: Everything that happens is subtly connected, but too often it feels as though Jame is wandering from one coincidental encounter to another. The climactic encounter with the gods seems like just another episode. "Seeker's Mask" is *not* coming to a bookstore near you. :-( It currently exists as a limited (pronounced 'pricey') edition. Word from the publisher is that if Hodgell can't sell the book to another publisher, he'll put out a general hardcover edition. (This would be *bad* news, in the sense that we'd be less likely to ever see book four.) The best outcome would be for "God Stalk" and "Dark of the Moon" to be rereleased, and for a more tightly edited version of "Seeker's Mask" to then appear, but we're unlikely to know for a long time. In summary, then, I'm thrilled that this book has finally appeared, and even at limited-edition prices I thought I got my money's worth -- but I hope for some rewriting before it sees a more general distribution. %A Hodgell, Patricia C. %T Seeker's Mask %D 1994 %I Hypatia Press, 360 W. First, Eugene OR 97401 (503-485-0947) %O $60 US ppd, 500-issue leather-bound signed limited edition %G ISBN 0-940841-32-0 %P 474 pp ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com 'T is with our judgements as our watches, none Go alike, yet each believes his own --Alexander Pope From rec.arts.sf.written Fri Apr 7 16:53:50 1995 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!trane.uninett.no!due.unit.no!nac.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!convex!news.duke.edu!godot.cc.duq.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!netaxs.com!hlazar From: hlazar@netaxs.com (Henry Lazarus) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: REVIEW Seekers Mask Date: 3 Apr 1995 19:09:59 GMT Organization: Philadelphia's Complete Internet Provider Lines: 53 Message-ID: <3lph67$45h@netaxs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: unix1.netaxs.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Author:P. C. Hodgell ~Title: Seeker's Mask Publisher: Hypatia Press Price: $35. This review is a lot longer than my usual one, two liners because I realize that not too many people will take the trouble to call Hypatia Press to get a copy of this book. Since it is impossible to touch the volume in any book store, I feel I must take the time to go over it. The real question, I think, in most people's minds is -- Is it worth thirty five hard earned dollars to get the missing part of a story started a decade ago. The short answer is yes. For the longer answer keep reading. A good decade ago Jame showed up in a SF Book Club edition as well as a hard cover of _God Stalk_. It received a lot of notice and it was one of the more interesting fantasies of 83. Jame appeared out of the waste, an amnesiac young lady who has to find her way in the god filled city of Tai Tastigon. Gradually we learn that Jame is a member of a triple people, who god had, many generations ago, melded them together to fight the primal darkness. they had lost and had drifted from world to world. In the previous world a traitor had sold out the kencyr leading them to the present world lost and hopeless. Jame and her twin brother are the last pure-bred members of the ruling clans. In _God Stalk_ Jame, apprentices to a master thief, memorizes the complicated city, learns that the various gods of the city are created by beliefs (she destroys and then recreates a frog god) and generally makes a nuisance of herself. We also learn that Jame had escaped from the traitor's house in the Primal Darkness with the three sacred items of her people. In_Dark of the Moon_, written a few years later, she ventures out of the city and finds the rest of her people, and her brother Tori (now ten years older than her because of her time in Primal Darkness) _Seekers Mask_ begins with Jame learning the very constricted life style ways of the high born of her people. When members of the shadow guild (people in invisible cloaks) come hunting her, she is forced out, on the run, to discover a place for herself.Probably one of the more interesting aspects to this book is the weirding storms that frequent the area that the Kencyr have settled in. In a storm one can end up anywhere on that world if alone. But Jame finds herself in a Keep stretched all over her world by such a storm, allowing her to leave the keep at the places she needs to and then return. P. C. Hodgell is one of those rare authors who create an usual world whole. There is nothing borrowed here, nothing blue. The world of the Kencyr with their silent god and their hopeless quest is not our world. It is, however, a rich and complex world that is very interesting to visit and very enjoyable to read about._Seekers Mask_ is not the completion of Jame's story, but it provides a temporary stopping place and resolves many of the issues created in the precious books of the series. I cannot imagine any reader of the previous books (and I've read them several times over the years) not being satisfied with this addition to her story. Henry L Lazarus hlazar@netaxs.com