Customer Reviews

The Chantry Guild

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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 gsls1@compuserve.com

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

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".

The Canadian Gordon Dickson is, in my opinion, the greatest SF writer of all time. His Childe Cyle novels are the finest Sf series that has ever been written, in my humble opinion. These novels are gripping, and with a depth and scope that is unmatched in the history of SF. There have been many great SF series with scope and depth, but none with the over all vision of Dickson. He knows where he is going in these novels and each seamlessly integrates with the previous, and with each other. The Chantry Guild continues the story of Hal and elaborates on the universe Dickson has created, all the while elegantly commenting on the human condition. The depth and power of these books is consciousnes raising, but at the same time they are really fun to read. That is a combination that is nearly impossible to attain, but Mr. Dickson has done it.

Following up the Final Encyclopedia was no doubt a daunting task, especially with that book's massive impact on the Childe Cycle as a whole, finally giving the series a sense of direction and the ability to head toward a definite conclusion, as well as giving purpose to the previous books, which had sort of floated along in a shared Universe sort of fashion. And yet Dickson had to follow it up to give the Final Encyclopedia any meaning, since the ending to that book was so anti-climatic that the words "To Be Continued" might have as well have been stamped there in giant letters. So faithfully Dickson gives us this book, the title teasingly implying that this might be the long awaited conclusion, with its promises of tying in to the very beginning of the Cycle (the Chantry Guild was last seen in the first book in the series, Necromancer, and apparently gave rise to the Exotic Culture). Instead, we get some furthering of the Cycle's themes but a lot of water-treading as well. Hal's victory in the last book was not a complete one and he is finding himself stymied in his efforts to make a total breakthrough and use the Encyclopedia for its true purpose. Amanda Morgan mentions that he should seek out a new incarnation of the Chantry Guild to find what he needs. So Hal does. That's pretty much it, which is pretty much the problem with this book, Dickson spends most of his time trying to do a lot with comparitively little. Hal's quest to unlock the "Creative Universe" is sort of vague and the terms of his victory against Bleys becomes more and more muddled as the book goes on. I'm not even sure how the Creative Universe will help him win, whatever it is. The bulk of the novel is taken up on Kultis where Hal tries to learn from the Chantry Guild and this is where Dickson's pacing fails him . . . it's simply too long a section of the book. Incidents that should take less than a chapter stretch out to multiple chapters, for no real reason. The main problem (soldiers finding the Guild) has nothing to do with the overall quest and the characters spend too much time focusing on who is going to track down the wild child that is roaming around outside than, you know, saving the Universe. Plus the sequence of attacking the soldiers' camp goes on way too long and features very little action. Then Hal leaves and we never hear about the people there again, anyway. Bleys puts in a token appearance simply to annoy Hal it seems and it all wraps up at the Encyclopedia. Maybe. Dickson's ending this time is perhaps more vague than the last book and just sort of leaves the reader hanging. What is good about this book? The supporting characters are well developed and Dickson's writing, when not mired in pseudo-philosophical meanderings, is an interesting as ever. And the future history is as fascinating as ever. But the sad thing is that way too important events happen to justify this book's length. While the previous book had epic scope and status quo shaking events, this plot is too much point A to point B stuff. However, it's readable and a crucial addition to the Cycle, which makes it essential if you've read this far. Unfortunately I'm not sure Dickson ever brought the Cycle to a satisifying conclusion, the next two books are mostly focused on Bleys' early life and I'm not sure if those books further the story of Hal at all. And without Dickson having now passed on for a few years, if the ending hasn't been published (or written) we're not about to see it. So this is a step down from the previous book but still interesting in itself. Just don't start here, by any means.

Gordon R. Dickson's 'The Final Encyclopedia' is easily one of the greatest novels of science-fiction. The novels that precede it in the series are also all first rate works. But sadly, the three novels that follow, 'Young Bleys,' 'Other,' and 'The Chantry Guild,' are considerably weaker. While 'The Chantry Guild' does give some reward to the readers who've followed the series for years, it still lacks the final resolution that we've waited for, (no doubt Dickson is planning more books in the series), and the bulk of the work is just plain uninteresting. If you're a fan of the series then you probably should give this one a look, if you're new to the Childe Cycle you might want to start with 'Tactics of Mistake,' of 'Soldier, Ask Not.'

"The Chantry Guild" ranks among the worse novels I have read. It fails as science fiction, as fantasy, and as a way of presenting philosophy and ethics.

Chief complaints:

1. Redundancy-- Information from previous books in the series is strewn throughout this book as direct quotations and rewordings within the body text. The latter two-thirds of the novel contains information from earlier chapters. Since this novel is impossible to understand without having read earlier novels in the series, the repeated information adds length and annoyance, but no useful information.

2. Excessive verbiage: Throughout this book there are lengthy, detailed descriptions of things that add absolutely nothing to the novel. Examples include describing the images projected on walls and ceilings (without discussing the technology behind them), catalogs of flora and fauna when the information has no relevance to the plot, full descriptions of recurrent dreams each time the dreams recur, descriptions of characters who were described fully in earlier chapters, etc.

3. No science: Faster-than-light travel occurs via phase-shifting whereby the ship enters a timeless phase, is reduced to subatomic particles, gets dispersed throughout a different universe, and gets reassembled in our universe but in a distant location. Where is the information stored for reassembling the particles? Where is the energy for this process? How can this occur within an atmosphere without intermixing air molecules and the ship? It's just magic. Other "no science" includes flying drones with no lift mechanisms, air cars with no power systems described, an encyclopedia that can store all known information and convey it directly into the brains of specially gifted individuals, etc.

4. Fantasies too fantastic to believe: Gifted people can use their minds to create alternate universes that they can perform tricks such as walking on air, hanging upside down, smashing lights without apparently moving, interacting with historical figures and putting themselves into their minds, replacing the mind and soul of a dying man while preventing him from dying, and (over an eighty-year period) forcing ones body to regress from an elderly man to a two-year-old with no conscious memories from the original man, entering a phase-shift machine and still being able to think after having ones subatomic particles scattered across a new universe and then being able to will ones body and mind back to the real universe, etc.

5. Overuse of Celtic and Scottish Mythology: I soon grew tired of feyness and old poems.

6. Idiotic philosophies: The human species as a whole has drives and will and can control the development and advancement of mankind. It even conducts experiments pitting one developmental path against another to see which will best enable prolonged survival of mankind. This is just a bizarre version of Intelligent Design with the intelligence being the intermingled contributions of all humans, present and past. Bah. Another idiocy was that religious fanaticism contains characteristics important to mankind's survival. But, centuries of evidence prove that fanaticism leads only to death-seeking behaviors: murders, genocide, wars, and self-destruction.

7: Idiotic mantras and adages: "The transient and the eternal are the same." This is just too stupid to argue about. Next we have: "Size does not matter, only will counts," says the protagonist, Hal Mayne (a seven-foot-tall, immensely strong, former Dorsai soldier). But, the Dorsai soldiers were bred for size because a strong-willed, seven-foot-tall, tremendously strong man will always overcome an equally strong-willed, five-foot-tall, moderately strong man.

8: Slow pace: The action parts of this novel could be condensed to a few dozen pages. The rest is mostly unneeded descriptions, lengthy debates (often internal), and the above-mentioned philosophical discourses.

9: No ending: The novel ends at the story's climax, and there is no direct sequel. The two Bleys books do not pick up where "The Chantry Guild" left off, and the reader is left hanging.

The Dorsai or Childe Cycle novels received praise from numerous critics, but I cannot understand why. A few of the earliest books were okay, most of the books are mediocre, and this one is poor. I recommend avoiding them all.

The sixth book in the Childe Cycle is fairly philosophical. Hal Mayne visits the Chantry Guild, in its incarnation in this time. He spends a lot of time with them on the planet Kultis still trying to understand and spearhead the final transformation of humankind.

As before, he is sometimes opposed by those that want to stop him, Bleys specifically.

Excellent story. Read "Dorsai!" first--you will get more out of the book if you understand Donal's development and accomplishments. Unfortunately, a good many typos in the book may cloud the enjoyment of some readers; if such don't bother you, read it! and enjoy!