Customer Reviews

Lords of Rainbow

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lords of Rainbow has invaded my dreams. It was suspenseful, emotionally gripping, beautiful, original, pervaded with lush, idiosyncratic sensuality, and challenged by a conceptual quirk of world that at first I thought wouldn't really work, but the story proved me wrong. The romance is both more satisfying than any book I can remember for a long long time, and wonderfully strange. As a political intrigue, the story is fresh, believable, and lightly satirical, but it is the emotions that Lord of Rainbow brought forth, and the feeling of being there, and wanting the characters to . . . and not to . . . that made me get quite cranky when my reading was interrupted for tasks like work, eating . . . Sometimes I was so taken up in wanting to advise and to change events I anticipated (and you can't anticipate anything in this book) that I found I was sitting tensed as a spring.

In addition to being a touching and complex love story, the themes in Lords of Rainbow as a whole are powerful. The society and politics are portrayed in depth but with a light and assured touch, as were the characters' individual portrayals. Indeed, I was surprised by the level of subtlety in the telling, and pleased. This writer writes respecting a reader's brains.

I found a very emotional involvement, too, especially with the warrior woman, Ranheas, who often made me want to yell at her. This book could have been another (yawn) improbable female warrior tale, very 90s. But this is nothing like that. I also enjoyed the sense of humour running through the book, often with a bittersweet flavour to it, so that I found myself interspersing quiet smiles with some loud goose-honks. The final denouement was totally perfect. I could hardly breathe. And there is one speech in this book that alone is perhaps the most gloriously quirky, yet romantic that I've ever read.

As for the concepts of colour and Rainbow, I was suspicious at first because I thought I'd find myself disappointed, but I was wrong. Very much so.

So as I reached the great buildup towards the climax, I experienced a conflict of reluctance and greed to consume and be consumed. Reluctance, because I didn't want to reach the end, of course, conflicted with extreme need to know and to once again be in the world of Lords of Rainbow. Even in the crucial parts, I never knew how it would end at all. There was never an inevitability, except that I knew even before the end, that I'd want to keep Lords of Rainbow for my small read-again-and-again collection.

The city lives with me, and the forest and the White Roads Inn. I can smell those onions roasting now, and hear the sizzle of the eggs . . .

Let me start by saying Nazarian is very, very good at worldbuilding. It's something I've seen in her other work, too. One of the great things about her writing is that it shows us these worlds.

In this case, it's a world without color, a world transformed to shades of gray and silver. As a writer, I was curious to see how Nazarian would describe this place with such a limited palate, but she did an excellent job. I was half-expecting this to be the literary version of black-and-white TV, where everything's about the same, just filtered. Instead, this was a rich, lushly described world, one which seemed more real, thanks to its color-challenged palate.

The story itself was strong, following a warrior woman named Ranhe Ylir as she and her companions work to overthrow a siege on the city from the forces of (literal) darkness. Ranhe was a great character. She's got the traditional stoic, loner outlook, but she's much more developed and complex than the average fantasy hero. (I could hear Nazarian's voice speaking through Ranhe when she talked about her vegetarian habits, but that's just because I've seen her write about such things before.)

There were places where the story was a bit slow for my taste. I don't know whether this is a reflection of the story itself, or of my own short attention span. At times, Nazarian breaks out of the story to address the reader directly and take us on a tour of her world, and those sections didn't really work for me. Much as I admire and enjoy the worldbuilding, I prefer it to be in the context of action and the characters.

Overall though, I enjoyed the book, and would certainly recommend it. It breaks away from traditional fantasy tropes and cliches, which is always nice. The characters and relationships drew me in (though it took me a few pages to remember which one was Elasirr and which was Elasand). Personally, I don't know that I'd be up for taking a concept like a colorless world and turning it into such a richly developed novel, but Nazarian pulled it off. I'll have to go back and read more closely to figure out how she did that.

In this book, which is structured more along the lines of a conventional novel than the equally mesmerizing Dreams of the Compass Rose, Vera Nazarian has created something wholly her own, a narrative voice and an invented realm that are a striking rendering of her unique authorial heart. This is about as far as you can get from regurgitated genre. It's got the exciting battles and the intricate plotting and the sense of enchantment--it doesn't stint on any of the things that we love in fantasy--but it also has a cutting depth of insight into character, and an intriguing eroticism (sensual, sexual, and aesthetic), and a delicious style unlike anything else available right now. It's really the perfect novel for just this point in time: a spicy exotic new flavor for the jaded fantasy palate, but in no way offputting for those who love what's out there and crave more.

Nazarian seems to be hitting her stride with this, her second novel. The story is more coherent than her first, the prose more under control, while still giving the reader little pocket surprises: humor, poetic insights, action, and a really splendid idea in this world leached of all color.

Anyone who is tired of the same old medieval fantasies ought to give this novel a try; about all you can predict is that the world will probably regain its color, but how you get there is full of fascinating discursions and distinctive characters. Be prepared to laugh, to nod and contemplate, and to go right back to the beginning for a slow and leisurely reread!

"Lords of Rainbow" firmly afixed Vera Nazarian as one of my favorite writers for her incredible ability to get inside the characters' heads and make us feel *exactly* how it is. The novel is a traditional fantasy (very readable quest story) yet so lyrical and beautifully written, it could well be the best (certainly the most lovely) book I've ever read.

Highlights of the book for me included the most accurate description of how it feels to be depressed; the sex scenes, which for all their lack of sex or anything explicit, simmered with warmth and tension and seemed all too real; the honest portrayal of the pangs of unrequited love; the weaving of several parallel minor character arcs. Weaker spots were the prologue, and a few areas with abstracted descriptions of magic/deities. The ending is also a little limp compared to the strong beginning. I would love to see Nazarian take things farther, more and bigger with drama and emotions - her strength is definitely in speaking from people's heads, while exercising restraint in any abstract musings, and taking care to avoid occasional repetition of words (like "dandelion hair").

The main character is a woman warrior, supremely capable, and yet realistic. Ranhe wears men's clothings and fights well with a sword, but isn't a ravishing beauty - instead, she's rather homely, and her insecurities are achingly believable. She thinks and talks like a real person, with suprising humor, warmth, and self-awareness. She crosses paths with a beautiful, mysterious nobleman and, intrigued, accepts his offer of a job to be his bodyguard. Rahne thus becomes a heroine in an unlikely story of unrequited love, as the glimmering decadent city of Tronaelend-Lis is threatened by invaders with dark magic, and the secret of the world without color is revealed.

The books deserves the highest praise for its exceptional writing, deft world-building and story-telling, and incredible ability to relate the poignancy of relationships and emotions.

Vera Nazarian is an exciting writer to watch. I also highly recommend her Dreams Of The Compass Rose, a more polished and fancyful (but less emotionally charged) series of vignettes reminiscent of Arabian Nights, and Salt of the Air, a collection of short stories.

In Lords of Rainbow Vera Nazarian takes a difficult concept and renders it beautifully. In a world without color, she captures how color affects our perception and character. I was especially struck by the richness of character and description as well as its being a damn good read.

I recommend this for all thinking readers.

This stylish fantasy has an intriguing premise: what if there were a world without color? But it takes more than a great idea to make a great novel; it takes fully-realized characters, rich imagery, a world with depth to explore, and, most of all, insight into what we as humans are and what we can be. LORDS OF RAINBOW fulfills its promises and is, quite simply, a great read.

I started reading this book just yesterday, and I stayed up until 1:30 AM to finish it. That doesn't sound impressive until you consider that my "normal" sleeping hours are 6 PM - 1 AM because I have to leave for work before 2. So it's a zombie with whacked up circadian rhythms typing this right now. Just FYI.

The breakneck speed with which I finished this really took me by surprise since the first half of Lords of Rainbow (LOR) starts off on such a leisurely pace.

When the story opens, we find ourselves in a highly-detailed world in grayscale, punctuated only by splashes of articial colored light. (Which produces an effect like slapping on Technicolor over black-and-white films.) Prose-wise, all colors are in italics. This can be jarring, but it's also an effective way of conveying the fresh shock that people here get when they stumble upon any kind of color.

We do see a main storyline, but it keeps getting interrupted by little vignettes, which I at first assumed was for world-building purposes. I had the impression of a walking tour, where a guide stopped every once in a while to point to a hippopotamus and tell you, "Oh, and did you know that Big Nellie over there once trampled a crocodile to death to save a baby diplodocus?"

It's very diverting, if you're not a fanatical I-want-my-linear-metanarrative-now! sort of person. After all, true to Vera Nazarian's style, it's a fascinating world with all sorts of fascinatingly odd people. In the decadent city of Tronaelend-Lis, we find the poor old quivering Regent Hestiam who's scared to death of twilight, and his sister, the sultry, aggressive Regentrix Deileala. There's the mad poet and the highbrow scholar who hate each other with a passion, and there's this fellow who could be incredibly rich if only he didn't want all his colorless jewels for research purposes. Plus, there's the magnetic, gender-switching Phoenix Carliserall, who deserves his/her own story, for serious.

And there's Someone talking to you, yes, you. And there's postulates. And a king in a glass casket. It's a little hard to explain.

But let me just take a moment to say: it all makes sense in the end. There's a brilliant reason why the story is structured this way. (The last time I remember being so pleasantly surprised by a novel's structure was in Pamela Freeman's The Castings Trilogy where random side stories interrupted the main story... because it was really about, wait for it, democracy. Not the lords, not the metanarrative, but a story about all the little people that made the fantasy world go around. That was the most incredible thing ever. Though admittedly, it made it a little hard to get into.)

Of course, when the main story picks up steam on the second half of LOR it really picks up steam. Aside from being an adventure-and-intrigue romp in a beautifully-created fantasy world, this is an edge-of-the-seat love story, with possibly the most interesting female warrior I've ever read.

Ranhe is just love. She's courageous, whimsical, capable, compassionate, and also painfully insecure about her body and femininity. She falls into unrequited love with the gentle, idealistic nobleman Elasand who has eyes only for a goddess. And while Ranhe deals with loving him in her own practical way, there's an assassin who flits around her like an annoying blond gadfly. Or should that be a moth to a flame?

Anyway, deliciously complex love story aside, we also witness an invasion of utter darkness, displays of magical pyrotechnics, and an idiosyncratic -- dare I say colorful? -- collection of gods. This book has it all! A very, very rewarding read, on more levels than one.

First published back in 2003, this unconventional and intriguing fantasy has languished too long in obscurity, and I'm delighted to see it has been re-issued. The central conceit -- the idea that illuminates the story -- is a world in which color is not only absent, but its very absence has social and religious implications. If you had the abstract concept of color, that is, you knew it existed but you had never seen it, how would you imagine it? And what power would it have over your dreams and your very life?

The story moves along briskly with sympathetic characters and writing that at times verges on poetry. I could have done without the "dear reader" prolog, but it lasted only a couple of pages, and was more than made up for by a strong, flawed woman warrior-hero.

I love reading fantasy works as they stretch one's imagination and I particularly love it when there is a strong complex heroine. Ranhé is just that intriguing warrior heroine, who will enthrall you in this tale of a world without color. Vera Nazarian's writing grabs your attention from the first page and sucks you into this silver grey world that is anything but simple. You will be charmed and entranced and you will not want to put it down until you are finished.