The Chantry Guild (Dorsai/Childe Cycle) [Mass Market Paperback]

Gordon R. Dickson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Dorsai/Childe Cycle | Publication Date: April 15, 2000

A lone ship piloted by Dorsai Amanda Morgan runs the blockade of Earth. She has come to rouse Hal Mayne from his researches on The Final Encyclopedia. The news she brings is frightening: Bleys Ahrens plans to lead the forces of the Younger Worlds in a single headlong attack on Earth that must destroy both sides. But Amanda hasn't come to fight. She spirits Hal away to Kultis, where the secretive Chantry Guild holds mastery over the Alternate Forces. The answers he finds there may decide humanity's most critical moment.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dickson's vast Childe Cycle ( Soldier , Ask Not , The Final Encyclopedia ) is taken one further step with this story of a conceptual breakthrough by the Dorsai mercenary and philosopher Hal Mayne. The action is slim here as a frustrated Mayne, stymied in his efforts to conceive a strategy to save Old Earth from its overwhelming foe, the Others, visits the secretive, quasi-religious Chantry Guild on the planet Kultis. While absorbing their teaching, he helps the Guild evade local soldiers and has an unexpected meeting with his nemesis, Bleys Ahrens. Although the protagonist's quest and Dickson's conviction are generally engrossing, the novel suffers from many of the pitfalls of Dickson's other solemn, parable-like tales. In its weaker moments, the prose teeters toward psychobabble as bland superman Mayne pushes a reluctant human race toward a level where they "would have more, be more, and choose more wisely."
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction; 1st edition (April 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812575598
• ISBN-13: 978-0812575590
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 3.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #962,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The development of Hal and Amanda's relationship is intense., February 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Chantry Guild (Paperback)

If you like an epic, this series by Gordon R. Dickson is for you. The scope and intelligence of Dickson's writing can only be compared to Frank Herbert's Dune. The subtle development of Hal's and Bley's relationship is interesting. Dickson writes so that you do not feel the need to hate Hal's enemy, Bleys. Hal's relationship with Amanda also develops, but with more intensity, with the importance of Amanda's wisdom and thinking becoming more apparent. Hals develops a block in his thinking and travels to a Younger World to regain his "optimism", achieving this, he returns to the Final Encyclopedia to continue his epic battle with Bleys. It is now 1998 and I still see no new release continuing this grand story. I wait impatiently for the news of this release. I recommend The Final Encyclopedia as possibly one of the greatest science fiction books ever written. Mr. Dickson is a writer I would love to meet. Greg Smith [e-mail]

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Childe Cycle must read, December 28, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Chantry Guild (Paperback)

Read all of the following: Dorsaii, Necromancer, Final Encyclopedia, Young Bleys, Other, Chantry Guild in that order. You will enjoy Chantry Guild IMMENSLY if you read about Bleys Ahrens' childhood and the development of the Others first. The enemy in the Final Encyclopedia is from the view point of a young teenager. Once you get the more complex view from the other side you understand why Hal was pursued and why the Hal/Bleys relationship is so important. You will want to read this book for solution to the Final Encyclopedia/Other - it is not the conclusion. The next book in the series picks up at the end of the Chantry Guild and will be released some time in 1997

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poorly edited and difficult to follow, July 15, 2002

By 

R D (Springfield, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Chantry Guild (Paperback)

I was given this book a few years ago by a friend, and finally picked it up to read this summer. I have not read any other books in the "Childe Cycle" that this book is apparently part of, which perhaps is a big part of my reason for my poor impression of it.

At a basic level, there is an editorial sloppiness to the book. There were far too many sentences that clearly are missing words, as well as a couple of places where entire phrases were inadvertantly repeated in the same paragraph. Yes, it's a minor annoyance, but distracting just the same.

The author also does a bad job of giving background to readers who haven't read the previous books. I realize that coming into the middle of any series can be challenging, but even some basic introduction to important elements in the main characters' backgrounds is typical. I once made the mistake of picking up a relatively late book in Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series (Crown of Thorns) as my first, but I felt I eventually understood most of what I needed to in order to appreciate that book as a story on it's own. Not so with The Chantry Guild... Dickson is very haphazard about background, and as a result, the primary struggle in the book, the protagonist's (Hal's) effort to reach the "Creative Universe", is baffling and ultimately incomprehensible.

Or perhaps I'm being too generous by giving Dickson that out... even if I had read the rest of the series, I'm not sure it would make sense. Too much of the book is spent in rambling third-person narration describing Hal's internal monologue and thoughts as he grapples with this intangible metaphysical goal. It is hard to read, bogs down the other plots, and proves ultimately unsatisfying in that, despite being told over and over again that this task is the main character's life goal and is somehow tied to the fate of humanity, why or how is completely unclear. Perhaps by this point in the series we are supposed to be so attached to this character that seeing him achieve something very important to him is supposed to be satisfying to us by itself. But as a new reader, I didn't find myself caring about this guy much, and I want to know what the point of all the navel-gazing was and how it might actually help save humanity. In some ways, this plot is very derivative of Paul Atreides' messiah quest in Dune, and Dickson's work in this book suffers badly in comparison.

The more traditional plot in the book is not particularly noteworthy either. Dickson spends *130* pages on what is basically a small-scale action sequence that takes place over a day as the secret village Hal stays in is first threatened by enemy search parties and then caught up in rescuing a few of their own who are caught by the bad guys. The story moves excruciatingly slowly. Worse, all of the struggle and effort we are dragged through ultimately serves no clear narrative purpose, other than to physically exhaust the protagonist to the point that he can get a good night's sleep and have a breakthrough in his metaphysical journey. The "enemy" even finds them anyway as the result of very casually-noted aerial surveillance (setting up a highly contrived visit by the arch-nemesis), and the characters being rescued are discarded so quickly afterwards that we are never given the resolution of their personal stories, which Dickson had spewed many pages setting up.

Of course, it's not all bad. The "world" this story is set in is well-conceived and interesting, and there are some really innovative aspects of the protagonists' backgrounds. Refreshingly, relatively little time is spent on technology, and when he chooses to, Dickson can describe this world with clear and vivid images that one can easily imagine making a transition to a movie screen.

Overall, this is a weak book that, while potentially interesting to those who have become engrossed in the rest of the series, should be avoided by anyone else. It would be much better if it were a 100 pages shorter and provided a better explanation of what came before and the significance of the "Creative Universe".