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Vergil in Averno: The Sequel to the Phoenix and the Mirror (Doubleday science fiction)

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Even though Avram Davidson wrote "Vergil in Averno" after "The Phoenix and the Mirror," Vergil is a younger, less accomplished mage in this sequel.

Davidson's hero, the author of the Aeneid is also Vergil Magus, the necromancer of medieval legend in this alternate history of the first century Roman Empire.

The 'Averno' of the title was a region in southern Italy known for its intense sulfuric fumes, caused by volcanic activity (now extinguished), that supposedly killed the birds flying over it. The ancient Romans regarded it as the entrance to hell (as did the real Vergil), and Davidson's city could very well perform that function. It is a noxious city of forges and dye vats, built above a huge, meandering reservoir of natural gas that slowly poisons all who try to live in Averno. However it is known as 'the very rich city' and commerce at least, thrives. Much of this novel graphically details the suffering of the workers in the forges, tanneries, dye-vats, and abattoirs of Averno. Poison gases churn in their lungs. Their limbs are crippled in the ceaseless production of cheaply dyed cloth and coarsely forged iron. Everyone dies young, even the wealthy.

Vergil is lured to Averno by a half-dream. He meets up with a blind jeweler and a mad king, among others, and finally contracts with a group of rich merchants to investigate the recent faltering of the city's source of natural gas--the underpinning of its immense wealth.

This novel defies all of the stereotypes of the fantasy genre. There is very little magic as we fantasy-readers know it. Averno is a dark, hellish city constructed of greed and poison. Vergil functions more as a civil engineer than a mage, and is constantly plagued by visions of what-might-have-been or what-might-be. The Sibyl's prophecies are impenetrable until after the fact, and the mannered, erudite narrative is at times as impenetrable as the Sibyl's prophecies.

"Vergil in Averno" is hard slogging, but a determined reader is rewarded with the minutely-detailed depiction of a Roman Empire that could have been but never was. Davidson sometimes swamps his narrative with idiosyncratic, archaic-sounding language---he reportedly performed massive amounts of research over a period of more than 20 years for his alternate histories--and the world he evokes seems totally authentic, for all that it never existed.

If you have the patience to work your way through the phantasmagoric thicket of Vergil's digressions, visions, memories, 'might-be's, and 'could have been's, his story might solidify into a structure of peculiar, intricate beauty found nowhere else, except perhaps in the novels of Gabriel García Marquez and other magical realists.

This is a prequel to The Phoenix and the Mirror. Davidson the author imagines Vergil as a renaissance scholar may have imagined him(based upon renaissance era paintings of him showing him wearing dress more appropriate to the renaissance than to his actual era). Thus, Vergil is shown as an alchemist and sourcerer. This story shows Vergil's early years, describing his first major client, the City of Averno. Vergil's task is to help the city manage its wealth of natural gas deposits. The author's characters are gripping, and his narrative (which lets the reader slowly discover the background to the action) is unique. I love Davidson's writing, and am only sorry he did not write more about Vergil.