From archive (archive) From: haste+@andrew.cmu.edu (Dani Zweig) Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Subject: The Firebrand Date: 4 Feb 88 17:08:43 GMT Imagine a little league baseball game where the parents do more than just interfere from the sidelines: The third strike is almost at the plate when one of the parents, bat in hand, pushes the little batter aside and personally hits the ball out of the park. The game winning hit has just gone over the head of the outfielder when another parent runs onto the field and catches it. Sometimes the adults intervene to help a favored player or team. Sometimes they are just carrying their own quarrels onto the children's field. Imagine too that the players don't have the option of quitting in disgust the third time this happens. Apathy would be an expectable response. A more *noble* response (though not necessarily one more likely to affect the outcome) might be to make playing one's best an end in itself. And sometimes, just sometimes, a player can even be good enough to to score points against the intruders. This is the world of the heroes of Greek myth, and the siege of Troy is such a game. One of the most notable things about the Illiad, from the standpoint of modern storytelling, is that it is not about the fall of Troy. The poet tells us so at the outset. The poem begins after nine ineffective years of war. It ends shortly after, with major heroes dead and the end of the war seemingly as far away as it was at the start. The dead heroes are generally killed with the help of assorted Gods. Battles sway one way or another depending on which Gods choose, or are allowed, to intervene. In fact, the Gods narrowly avert a negotiated end to the war. Remember that little league game -- it's what makes sense of much that is apparently senseless about the behavior of the players. In "The Firebrand", Marion Zimmer Bradley attempts to do for the siege of Troy what she did in "The Mists of Avalon" for the Arthurian legend, but with far less success. The legend is retold from the viewpoint of the women, in particular that of Cassandra, who is cursed to foresee the fall of Troy and not to be believed. But the Illiad is far more resistant to remythologizing than is the Arthurian legend. Arthur's story comes to us from people whose world view is much closer to our own. It is a story of a great and noble dream gone wrong, and that is not lost in the retelling. The same retelling, however, makes the Illiad just look silly. The image of the women going to the walls of Troy and looking down upon the fighting with clear eyes is powerful, but it is not very productive. The Cassandra telling this story is very much a twentieth-century perspective in bonze-age guise, and she does not see heroic striving in a game dominated by capricious Gods. The alternative is that what she sees is vicious and silly -- and that can only be said so many times in six hundred pages. Worse, it is difficult (though it's been done) to write a great book about a vicious and silly war. One's choice of protagonists is largely limited to fools, rogues and victims. With the heroic myths of the Illiad trivialized we are left with a story that just isn't very interesting. Against this story is placed the other story that Bradley likes to tell. "The Firebrand" is also the story of the battle of the sexes, three thousand years ago. With the telescoping of history which works better for myths than for historical fiction (and this book attempts both roles) we are shown, within a few short years, the passing of the matriarchies, of the domination of the Earth-Goddess's faith, and of the Amazons (never mind how firmly any of these are rooted in the reality of that time) as well as such sidelights as the introduction of iron and the alphabet. This is also a familiar story. Why should it work as a backdrop to a story placed in 500 AD and not against a story placed in 1000 BC? Probably because in the latter case the story didn't work., so the myth-making just gets in the way. This is certainly what happens in the book's totally unmotivated last paragraph. "The Firebrand" was a disappointment. ----- Dani Zweig haste+@andrew.cmu.edu Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.online.no!uninett.no!news-feed1.eu.concert.net!btnet-peer!btnet!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: hklaus6073@aol.com (HKlaus6073) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Heartlight, Marion Zimmer Bradley Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 10 Aug 1998 14:55:13 -0400 Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 37 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2085 Heartlight, by Marion Zimmer Bradley Review Copyright 1998 Harriet Klausner During World War II, Colin MacLaren fought for the Americans against the Nazis. Specifically, his battles raged on a more esoteric plane as the soldier of the light fights his Black magick counterparts. When the war successfully ended on all the fronts, Colin continues to battle against evil-doers. His chief adversary is Toller Hasloch, trying to form a fourth Reich using the powers of the arcane. Over the next four decades, Colin teaches the safe use of magic to adepts in order to keep them from going to the wrong side even as he heads towards a final confrontation with his malevolent counterpart. At the same time, Colin continues to seek his own replacement because the war between good and evil is eternal. HEARTLIGHT should have been called deja vu as Marion Zimmer Bradley has taken the background and a secondary player from the three previous "Light" tales and propelled the scenery and the individual into the forefront. Fans of the four books will love this brilliant maneuver, which the author effortlessly turns into a well-written story line. However, the outcome (at least for those who have read GHOSTLIGHT, WITCHLIGHT, and GRAVELIGHT) is pre-ordained, leaving some readers knowing whether the light can triumph over the dark. Additionally, Colin is so heavenly angelic, he loses reader support. Still, this novel and Ms. Bradley's previous three books are divinely scribed occult tales that will please fans of the sub-genre. Harriet Klausner %T HEARTLIGHT %A Marion Zimmer Bradley %I Tor %D Sep 1998 %O $25.95 %P 416 pp. %G ISBN 0-312-86508-2