Customer Reviews

The Panorama Egg (Daw UE1395)

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`The Panorama Egg' (224 pp., DAW Books, August 1978) is apparently the only novel published by A. E. Silas, who may have been (be ?) Anne Silas, a past attendee of a Clarion writer's workshop.

Hal Archer is not a happy man. His job as an attorney brings in a good income, but no satisfaction; while only in his early 30s, he is out of shape and physically spent; and his wife is leaving for the Bahamas with a gigolo named Paul. The one solace for Archer is his hobby of collecting panorama eggs; these are eggs in which the contents have been removed and a landscape carefully painted on the interior lining of the shell. One can view the landscape via a small aperture made in one end of the egg.

The panorama egg Archer most desires is a magical egg in which the interior vista is not that of a static painting, but an actual image of a living world, perhaps a world located in another dimension.

One evening, at a visit to the home of his friend Henry Patterson, Archer meets an enigmatic little woman named Mera Melaklos. After hearing of Archer's interest in panorama eggs, Melaklos comes forth to offer him the unique egg he seeks. Peering into the aperture of this egg, Archer can espy a landscape with trees blowing in the breeze, the shadows of clouds moving across a meadow, small mammals running across a field. When Melaklos offers to transport him to the world inside the panorama egg, Archer readily complies. Instantly, he arrives in the world known as Dolesar.

Accompanied by Melaklos, Archer embarks on a series of adventures in this strange realm. It seems that the actions of a Dark Lord threatens the security of this land; there are rumors of alien `tiger men' loosed to wreak mayhem on the peaceful peoples of Dolesar. As the political intrigues set in place by Mera Melaklos come to fruition, Archer realizes that, far from being a tourist in this world, he may well be the one man capable of turning aside the plans of the Dark Lord. But there's a real problem at hand: magic will be needed to defeat the enemy, and Hal Archer is no magician.......

`The Panorama Egg' is something of a middling success for a first novel. The concept of the panorama egg as a portal to a fantasy world is certainly imaginative, and Archer, while not the most overly impressive of protagonists, is a good stand-in for the Everyman of our world. Unfortunately, once the action moves to the world of Dolesar the narrative begins to steadily lose momentum, as author Silas takes a deliberate, almost meandering approach to familiarizing the reader with the cast of supporting characters.

The novel starts to regain momentum at its mid-way point; the hints of menace that belabor the first half of the book become more tangible, and Archer becomes more centered in his forthcoming confrontation with the Dark Lord.

In summary, readers looking for a fantasy novel with a broad scope, a large cast of characters, and the usual plot devices associated with an epic approach to storytelling will probably be disappointed in `Egg'. The battles, quests, and revelations that drive traditionally structured fantasy novels are given a rather perfunctory treatment here. Instead, `Egg' is content to play out on a less expansive backdrop, with the emphasis on the emotional and psychological interactions among a small group of individuals.