The Lyonesse Trilogy by Jack Vance

Hello, Stranger.

Let's talk about Jack Vance's Lyonesse Trilogy.

The Short of It

Plot: Kingdoms vie for supremacy, wizards do the same, and the fairy folk mock them from the sidelines.

Page Count: 

    Suldrun's Garden: 436

    The Green Pearl: 406

    Madouc: 544

Award: Madouc - 1990 World Fantasy Award

Worth a read: No
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: Pass.
Technobabble: Some magic gibberish.
Review: A fantasy epic with a remarkable number of storylines, sometimes told out of chronological order. As a demonstration of how to effectively interweave a huge number of characters and plots this is a masterclass. This does not, however, make it an enjoyable read. Character work is underwhelming - a few standouts highlight how flat most of the others are. Pacing is choppy - sudden frenetic bursts followed by 100 page slumps. World feels pretty standard for medieval fantasy - tricky fae, conspiratorial wizards, arrogant monarchs. Ultimately there is nothing terribly wrong with this trilogy, it just does not feel worth 1300 pages.

The Medium of It

Spoiler Free!

This is a true trilogy - one story told over many books, each lacking meaning without its companions. That also means that the bar for it to be worth reading is significantly higher - 1300 pages is a commitment, and asking someone to make it should have good reason. Such a reason is lacking here. First, a note about some of the good things here. 

As a technical achievement this trilogy is superb. It has some truly excellent non-chronological storytelling. Flashbacks successfully flesh out the present without it feeling excessive, and there are often good reasons for things to have remained unknown - meaning it is not just non-chronological for the sake of the reader, but characters in world learn things after the fact. Vance also interweaves characters and storylines in a remarkably smooth fashion. At no point did it seem forced that certain people interacted, or that a key piece of information was happened upon - he has a full Chekov's Armory, and it works. There are few books that do a better job of keeping so many balls up in the air at once.

It is clear that Vance has extremely clear visions of each location, and the text does a good job of delivering these. An early description of the titular garden provides a good example:

An irregular copse of yew, laurel, hornbeam and myrtle shaded an undergrowth of shrubs and flowers: violets, ferns, harebells, forget-me-nots, anemones; banks of heliotrope scented the air. On the right hand the cliff, almost equally tall, trapped sunlight. Below grew rosemary, asphodel, foxglove, wild geranium, lemon verbena; slim black-green cypress and a dozen enormous olive trees, gnarled, twisted, the fresh gray-green foliage in contrast with the age-worn trunks.

Where the ravine widened Suldrun came upon the ruins of a Roman villa. Nothing remained but a cracked marble floor, a half-toppled colonnade, a tumble of marble blocks among weeds and thistles. At the edge of the terrace grew a single old lime tree with a heavy trunk and sprawling boughs. Below, the path led down to a narrow beach of shingle, curving between a pair of capes where the cliffs on either hand thrust into the sea.

The wind had eased to a near-calm, but swells from the storm continued to bend around the headlands and break upon the shingle.

For a time Suldrun watched the sunlight sparkling on the sea, then turned and looked back up the ravine. The old garden doubtless was enchanted, she thought, with a magic evidently benign; she felt only peace. The trees basked in the sunlight and paid her no heed.

It's a clear description but it feels almost akin to an encyclopedia entry. Here, then, is a list of every plant. The detail speaks well of Vance's attention to his own world, but there are too many establishing shots like the one above. Extended pauses to catalogue the full scene. This is one of the many things that give the whole trilogy slow pacing.

The world building is somehow both extensive and uninteresting. It feels like nothing new. Wow, competing kingdoms. Lots of islands? That's nice. The fairy folk keep doing Monkey's Paw types of wish fulfillment? Classic. It's nothing you haven't seen before, and better, in other fantasy works.

Every name in this trilogy is awful. King Casmir and Princess Suldrun both fall into the category of "adequate" but then it's off to the races with Murgen, Shimrod, and Tamurello, Prince Trewan of Troicinet, Duke Faude Carfilhiot of Vale Evander (and his castle, Tintzin Fyral), Brother Umphred, Prince Dhrun, Twisk of Thripsey Shee, Duke Luhalcx (of the Ska)... and these are only pulled from the first book. And these are not just bit characters. "Carfilhiot" comes up 504 times in the text of Suldrun's Garden, which is too much for something that looks like a spilled bag of scrabble letters, or the aftermath of a book burning.

"Are they not clear? If Prince Quilcy dies without issue, Granice is next in the lawful succession, through the line that starts with Danglish, Duke of South Ulfland, who was grandfather to Granice's father and also grandfather to Oriante. But surely you were well aware of all this?"

The whole series suffers from having too many characters without sufficient distinguishing characteristics. This is most problematic for the warring kingdoms storyline, as issues of territorial claims and succession do not have the same impact when one must flip back to figure out who is on what side. It just feels like politics, and we've been told that we should root for one person over another - but it's all just a mishmash of unclear positions. These confusions are less impactful for the competing wizards story and the side bits of fairy drama - there are significantly fewer players involved. 

Magic here has no clear bounds or rules. It can do whatever is needed in a given situation, or it can't, and the distinction between when it can and cannot do something is dependent upon plot exigencies. This does not a compelling magic system make.

At some point it seems that this confusion was pointed out to Vance, as everyone who is not good suddenly becomes cartoonish in their evil. Full on Snidely Whiplash levels of malevolence. Yes, it's clearer who is who, but it sure lacks nuance. 

This is a trilogy that is simply not worth the time investment. 

The Long of It

Spoilers Ahead!

For the sake of comparison, let us briefly consider A Song of Ice and Fire. These books do a remarkable job of showing us why we should support each different house - and they do so by showcasing how individual characters reflect the driving traits of the house itself and how that impacts normal people. With the exception of a few characters - who are, in the scheme of things, lesser villains - no one is just pure evil. Plenty of people are manipulative, cold, and calculating. They still seem to have reasons for what they do. This isn't a GoT spoiler session, so yes, there are some notable exceptions, but in general this is the case.

Carfilhiot is just a bad guy for the sake of being bad. Because being good would not be bad, and he is bad, so what he does, is be bad. He is not bad in a clever way - he's just bad. Looks like we're going with a Number Five Combo: Torture, Sexual Assault, and Sending out Your Own People to Die. It's just bad in the most generic way possible. 

Following the musings earlier about who and what we should care about: One of the big climactic moments in Suldrun's Garden is the return of Prince Aillas, who needs to race back before his brother Trewan is crowned king. I could not for the life of me remember why this mattered, other than that Aillas is a perspective character. The answer is that Trewan had tried to kill Aillas - but we go from Aillas being uncertain if it were Trewan to firmly believing it, without gaining more information about it. I had assumed that there would be a twist, but no! 

The ship was gone. Aillas floated alone, at the center of his private cosmos. Who had cast him into the sea? Trewan? Why should Trewan do such a deed? No reason whatever. Then: who?

The reason is, of course, that there father is dying, so he wants to get back and become king. No twist at all. Just the one person we thought it was. Also, we skipped 100 pages between mentions of Trewan, so I had quietly forgotten about him.

The second book, The Green Pearl, has similarly vexatious ricochets. Which is a great phrase, if I do say so myself. The issue is once again that it's hard to actually care about characters. So when, for example, Aillas realizes that he is only infatuated with Tatzel, and not in love, but instead loves Glyneth, my only response was, "Oh yeah! Could've sworn her name was Gwyneth." It's worth a side note - a lot of this seems to be vaguely Arthurian, with Aillas as King Arthus and Glyneth instead of Guinevere, etc. But still seems silly. 

There are no rules to magic, which undercuts stakes completely. Glyneth gets captured and pulled into a parallel realm? I guess parallel realms are a thing. Murgen makes a creature to save her out of the spirit of a dead pirate, Aillas's blood, and the body of a monster - all to save her? I mean, sure, cool. There is no real fear that she will be stuck because she got magicked in, so she'll get magicked out. 

Madouc, after whom the third book is named, is one of the few characters with an attempt at a personality. Unfortunately that personality is irritating. This third volume, much like the first and second, has all sorts of twists that had no emotional resonance, before ending with a "they lived happily ever after." That was when it became clear - there are pretty much no impactful deaths, despite the huge cast of characters. It's not amazing that they made it, because everyone we care about makes it in the end.

Stranger, be grateful your name isn't Faude Carfilhiot.
And don't forget to read a book!