2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slow To Unfold, But Worth It, March 19, 2007
First, I have to unburden myself: this book has one of the WORST covers I've ever seen. If you saw this in a bookstore, you wouldn't even pick it up because it's totally amateur hour. A completely horrifying marketing decision.
Anyway. This is a bit of an unusually structured novel, which takes place in a world modeled on Pharaonic Egypt. The protagonist, Sekenre, is the son of the centuries-old sorcerer Vashtem, and is an unwilling recipient of the gift and curse of sorcery. (To some degree, sorcerers here follow a system introduced in the completely unrelated movie "Highlander", in that they are quite keen to hunt down and slaughter each other, because to kill a sorcerer is to absorb all of his or her powers and memories.) After certain events, Sekenre is forced to leave the city of his birth, but has no friends, no prospects, and nowhere to go, and the sorcery that he fears and despises is borderline unreliable and scarcely under his conscious control.
He soon meets a pair of exiles, and in aiding them gets caught up in their schemes. Meanwhile, he has to learn to master his powers and to fight off other sorcerers, not to mention suppress the still-powerful personalities and memories of the dead sorcerers within his mind.
The unusual part of the structure is that for the vast majority of the book, Sekenre is always in the process of "becoming", as it were. He seems to drift wherever the wind takes him, and events happen to him, and he continues to react to what goes on around him, but very often he is a mere pawn and seldom is he active on his own behalf. Practically everyone around him seems to know more about his life and his talents and his destiny than he does. I have to think that the author deliberately went for a very nuanced effect where the reader keeps waiting for something to "happen", but eventually you come to realize that it's been happening all along.
Sekenre makes for a different type of hero, one who wants to escape the curse of sorcery to be just an ordinary person. Far from being a master of magics and a clever trickster, he is in grave peril in every single combat, constantly getting battered and seriously injured and languishing in a state of exhaustion and illness. Yet he has a powerful will and a strong moral code, and earns himself important allies.
Not your typical tale of might and magic by any stretch, but if you want a change of pace from almighty eldritch wizards in a stereotypical medieval England setting, you could do worse.
Schweitzer also has collectd some Sekenre short stories in a separate volume, "The Book Of The Sorcerer". I'll have to check that out.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fantasy masterwork, December 22, 2004
Darrell Schweitzer is an author whose work you should read. Not because he's been nominated for three World Fantasy Awards. Not because he's done an unparalleled job as editor for the best fantasy magazine in print(Weird Tales)for the last twenty years. Finally,you should not buy Mask of the Sorcerer because GENE WOLFE gives the book a glowing, no, an incandescent,review. You should read this book because Schweitzer is an absolute master of fantasy prose. This book follows the life of a sorcerer,Sekenre,from childhood to mastery of his craft. That life encompasses innnocence,sorrow,transcendence,and love. Every single one of my friends has LOVED this book. I think you will too.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Weird, Dark Fantasy, January 16, 2012
This review is from: Mask of the Sorcerer (Hardcover)
This will appeal to weird fiction readers who are looking for Lovecraftian atmosphere in an adventure novel form. This is not Sword & Sorcery, but will appeal to that same crowd (it is very dark... all sorcery).
This will NOT appeal to readers looking for soap-opera fantasy, young-adult fantasy, or a light read.
The first three Chapters were amongst the most bizarre, inspiring fantasy bits I have ever read. The pace slows after, but by then I was emotional connected to Sekenre's character. Note, it is difficult to string together a series of weird stories into a novel, since the pulp- style of writing is known to be highly dense with description. The genre works well with short stories. H.P. Lovecraft tried with a lengthy novella with "The Dream-Quest to Unknown Kadath," which I have yet to complete after three valiant tries (despite my urge to see how the reappearance of the artist Robert Pickman fares). Schweitzer does better here, taking the readers to the ambiguous lands of dreams and death, making us feel as disoriented as his cursed protagonist; at the moment we are about to become totally lost in trippy language, he brings us back to firm footing.
The battle scenes are intermittent but very vivid; given the lack of traditional weaponry, readers will be surprised by the brutality.
From the book's description I thought I would be immersed in traditional Egyptian mythology; not so. Egyptian setting/lore is clearly an inspiration for this, but as Christianity (the Crusades) served as a foundation for Schweitzer's "We Are All Legends", the author rapidly takes the reader beyond these influences. His work is anything but traditional or derivative.
The book is ~380pages; I would have given this 5 stars if it could have somehow been reduced to ~300.
Sequel: There is a standalone sequel called SEKENRE The Book of the Sorcerer, which I look forward to reading.
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