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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oi! Fantasy readers! OVER HERE!, March 25, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Lyonesse (Book 1) (Paperback)
Is this really out of print? In that case I will purchase "Suldrun's Garden" second hand, and the publishers shall get not a groat. This is the first of a fantasy series from the 1980s, by an author whose first work in the genre ("The Dying Earth", 1950) predates publication of "The Lord of the Rings" ... consequently one does NOT get the immitable bits of Tolkein filtered through the D&D Dungeon-Master's Guide, but a book that re-creates mythology in its own right. Well, it sort of re-creates fairytale as well. "Suldrun's Garden" especially. This was (and will be) many people's first Vance book; and so I should mention the most salient point: the style. Unlike most of his competitors Vance can put a sentence together - nay, even a paragraph: imagine that! - and his dialogue is always crisp and delicious. (Supposedly wise wizards mouthing empty inanities are nowhere to be found in Vance.) Inventive, unpredicatble, beautiful ... the publishers can stick that on the back cover of the next edition, if they want. Just so long as they print one.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Book 1 of an Enchanting Trilogy, November 30, 2000
The Lyonesse Trilogy may be Jack Vance's best work. The richly imagined land of Lyonesse and the Elder Isles, the lost islands of fantasy between France and Britain, is alive with magic, vivid characters, devious schemes and Old Folk. In a wonderful synthesis of Tolkein and Old English myth, kings and children, magicians and knights, faeries and ogres wander in and out of each other stories. Suldrun's Garden opens the trilogy. The other volumes are The Green Pearl and Maduoc. Suldrun, the daughter of the relentlessly scheming King Casimir of Lyonesse, wants nothing to do with the future her father has planned for her. For her stubbornness, she is exiled to a garden at the edge of Casimir's castle. One day, a shipwrecked sailor washes up on shore. He is Ailias, prince of the kingdom of Troicent, pushed overboard by his cousin. Lyonesse is at war with Troicenet, and the doomed relationship is one of the threads that make up this wonderful tale. From changelings to evil tyrants, from hedge witches to Mulgren, who has dedicated his life to keeping the Elder Isles above the waves, Vance does a fine job of interweaving new stories and old. There are children's adventures that trace to the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson; there are sly references to the King Arthur (his grandfather appears briefly); and there is much that is the marvelous creation of Vance himself. This is my test for excellent fantasy: when you read it, the world created is brighter and more vivid than the world you return to at the end of the book. This book passes that test. I'd love to wander the forest of Tantrelles, or talk with Shimrod, or wander the Teac a Teac. Highly recommended.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning. Spellbinging. Excellent., December 10, 2004
A friend gave me this book 20 years ago, in 1984. And I never read it. It moved with me from house to house along with a big pile of other unread books. Every once in a while I would give it a glance; but the back-cover copy was not all that interesting, and the map in the front looks crudely hand-drawn, and the first couple paragraphs seeed kind of dry -- whatever, I made no progress, tossed it back on a shelf. I had other stuff to read. This year I started to play attention to fantasy again, what with the release of Donaldson's new Covenant series and my cousin recommending the Phillip Pulman trilogy to me. Over the Summer I pulled this book from the basement and added it to the to-read stack. Last week I read an old essay from Samuel R Delany saying how wonderful Vance is: ok, I'll give this book another try. After a couple days to get into it, the book just consumed me, and I burned thru the last 375+ pages in one sitting, staying up all night (til 7am! and I work in the mornings!) to finish it. Wow. What a book! Vance takes his time setting everything up just so; but when the match touches the the tinder this book just starts roaring. An amazingly detailed and dramatic plot with dizzying twists and turns. Some of the most richly detailed characters I've ever encountered; believeable yet surprising. Written with a very sure, controlled (even dry) prose. This is definitely a work for grown-ups: very mature, hard-edged at times. Yet light and funny at other times; and warm. This author really knows what he's doing. Rewarding. Why wouldn't I even give this book a decent chance before? Well -- maybe I was too young before. The presentation of the 1984 paperback didn't give any indication to a teenage boy that he might like the book. The cover illustration is of the Princess Suldrun; the back cover copy says something about the princess being locked up in her garden, until one day a prince washes up on shore -- I guess I thought it sounded like a romance novel. Instead it runed out to be one of the most compulsive page-turning high adventure novels I've ever read. Note again that this is not a book for kids. Vance's Lyonesse is a tough, dangerous world: ogres raping women, killing & eating children, fathers imprisoning daughters for disobedience, prisoners of war enslaved, and so forth. Very tough-minded. Parents looking for Johnny's next fantasy series after Harry Potter should look elsewhere. Johnny needs a different book; the parents should read this themselves.
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