Lord Valentine's Castle
The Majipoor Cycle, Book 1
Robert Silverberg
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: On a hillside beyond the coastal capital of Pidruid, the fair-haired wanderer Valentine finds himself alone, bereft of memory and purpose, yet with a pouch full of money. He falls in with a boy traveling to town for the coming festival, a visit from the grand Coronal who rules the great planet of Majipoor: a lord named Valentine, same as himself (but surely, it is a common name). The wanderer joins a troupe of human and Skandar jugglers, and thinks of no other future than traveling the land with them and honing his new trade, at which he proves uncommonly adept - until the dreams begin. On Majipoor, where the Lady of Sleep and King of Dreams have direct access to the sleeping minds of the citizens, it is known that dreams are rarely to be brushed aside as mere fancy, especially dreams as potent as the ones that plague Valentine. They tell him, impossibly, that he is actually the true Lord Valentine, that a usurper stole his body and his throne and cast him into this stranger's skin, and thousands of years of peace on the planet will end if the imposter is not deposed soon. Already, new and strange laws fly from Castle Mount, causing the first stirrings of unrest, and in his travels he sees more signs of problems, dreaming more intense dreams of the destiny set before him. But what can Valentine hope to do, when his memories and true face have been stolen and his only friends are mere common street performers?
REVIEW: This is something of a classic, melding genres in a story with mythic overtones. The world of Majipoor is literally larger than life, a vast planet much bigger than Earth, where many alien races live side by side in seemingly idyllic harmony (save the natives, shapeshifters known as metamorphs, who live in bitter isolation after losing a long-ago rebellion; some acknowledgment is made that the scars of conquest are not so easily healed, and may be behind the current unrest so long as rifts remain and the metamorphs are considered second-class citizens). Its wildly fantastic flora and fauna and geography are reminiscent of old planetary romances like Burroughs, where plausibility or scientific accuracy take a distant back seat to sense of wonder and mind's eye candy. And, indeed, there is much to wonder at in Majipoor, where sorcery and science (albeit a reduced science, owing to the dearth of native metals and fuels to power industry and an implied overall decline in interstellar trade, for all that other worlds and aliens are known) coexist, where "advancements" have pulled humanity (and aliens) full circle back to royal houses as the only fit and just rulers of the people (royal houses that are all human, despite the numerous other races on the planet, and Coronals who are all male, because the archetypes Silverberg invokes only allow for so much progress). The planet outshines the characters at several points, as Valentine and his juggler companions, who become his first devoted followers when his true identity comes to light, travel hither and thither and encounter all manner of great and wondrous sights and adventures and trials and travails.
The characters themselves tend to devolve into archetypes bordering on stereotypes, unfortunately, particularly Valentine, who becomes such a caricature of the Perfect King - divinely blessed with abilities beyond mere men, feeling the pains and troubles of his subjects to a fault, even reaching out in compassion and love repeatedly to his bloodthirsty and unworthy enemies because he dare not entertain base notions like anger or vengeance even after said enemies prove willing to casually slaughter billions of people - that I was almost rolling my eyes by the end. Several of the characters had potential to be more, but they're swallowed up in the greater quest to restore Lord Valentine to his throne and only occasionally bubble to the surface again. (There's a particularly wasted potential plot with an offworlder whom the party rescues from a sacrifice, only to be mostly forgotten about until meeting their fate later on. Why bother, except to prove the point that the true lords of Majipoor are such divinely gifted rulers that even offworlders, with no blood ties to the planet, fall under their spell and raise arms in their cause?) Their journey follows the standard epic arc of the lost ruler reclaiming their crown and purpose, putting Valentine and his companions through various tests of their mettle and wit (and Valentine's worthiness) on his way to the final confrontation with the usurper and the unmasking of the mastermind behind the treachery.
Still, for all that predictability and stereotype, there's something imaginative and compelling about the story and the setting, something recalling old epics and grand adventures painted on a wild, over-the-top scale one doesn't see so much of anymore. I'm not sure I'll follow the rest of the cycle, but I can't say I regret my time spent on Majipoor.
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A Princess of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs) - My Review
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