Book Review – Suldrun’s Garden
Author: Jack Vance
Publisher: Gollancz
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2002
The classic voices of epic fantasy span the last century, from the initial quests of Howard and Tolkien to the late 70s revival of Donaldson and Brooks to the sweeping modern sagas of Jordan and Martin. Yet lost between those last two eras lies an epic fantasy trilogy so long forgotten that even its reprint editions languish out of print–Jack Vance’s Lyonesse. The first volume, Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden, still stands almost twenty-five years after its first publication as an epic fantasy both dated and surprisingly modern.
Vance was a thirty-year veteran of science fiction, a Nebula and multiple Hugo Award winner, when the first volume of Lyonesse was published in 1983. He had already demonstrated thorough command of prose and storytelling. This assured authorial hand sets Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden apart from the huge majority of other fantasy sagas, which are written by debut writers. Combined with vivid detail, including a seemingly endless variety of medieval foods, Vance’s artful prose paints entrancing images.
His fantasy world is based on the lost continent of Lyonesse named in the old Arthurian legends. This land of a dozen nations lies off the western coast of France, south of England. Vance develops the flavor of each of his nations through political strife caused by royal ambitions. His array of factions includes some classical fantasy races like fairies and trolls as well as a few powerful sorcerers, but the conflict is mostly built on the raw ambition of men and the cruelties they justify to achieve their ends.
The shifting omniscient point-of-view may feel jarring to modern readers. Although this technique of “head-hopping” through multiple characters’ thoughts in the same scene has largely been superceded in modern fiction, it was the default in Vance’s era. It can leave the reader feeling distant from the characters, especially when the narrative gives large overviews of family or national history. Yet Vance’s prose still captivates, perhaps because his overviews are so well-crafted and interesting. His omniscient narrative still places the reader as deeply inside the characters’ emotions as any modern limited point-of-view, through the power of his vivid and lyrical prose.
The organization of the book also shows the narrative fashion of a bygone era. Modern novels seize the reader by shoving many characters on-stage and immediately placing them in peril. In contrast, _Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden_ starts with the birth of the title character and spends chapters summarizing her youth. The main character doesn’t show up for almost a hundred pages, and several chapters in the middle of the book follow tangential plots. Yet all the plot threads coalesce in the end, along with the seeds of conflict for the rest of the trilogy.
Despite these antiquated narrative quirks, _Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden_ still feels strikingly modern in several respects. The first is Vance’s array of character conflicts based on the viciousness of realistic humans. There is no evil overlord, as became cliché soon afterwards from overuse by less talented writers. Yet Vance’s human characters will do far more chilling things to each other than any overlord could. The second is the uncompromising strife that his characters face. The protagonists in Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden are constantly beset by torments from both enemies and friends. No good deed goes unpunished, and quests wander hopelessly. This is the same no-holds-barred style that many modern epic fantasists have adopted, for the astute reason that a brave character in peril compels readers to keep reading. This gritty or brutal modern style of epic fantasy originates with Jack Vance.
Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden stands like no other work of early 80s epic fantasy–brilliantly rendered, harshly realistic, and dated yet still anachronistically modern.
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