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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A Perfection of the Heroic Quest
25 Jun 1999
Format:Hardcover
The world is a strange and perverse thing. An author whose work is worthy to stand with that of Tolkien and Lewis is relegated to the out-of-print section, a series unsurpassed in modern fantasy-world literature is known only to a small, scattered segment of the population.
It deserves far better. The 'heroic quest' structure reaches a high point with this series. Like Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" it is one story in many books- each books having its own beauties and terrors while building toward a clear, cohesive, unified story. It is a circular quest (as opposed to the linear sort) that is the hero returns to his place of origin. But in the compass of that circle is a magnificently conceived world, with its people, places, languages, and sights all completely realized. It is a world with its own history and its own mysterious past, the story of the origin of the world, of the relationship between man and the gods interwoven with and blending into Kerish-lo-Taan's quest for the seven keys.
With such a world and such a quest to keep track of, any lesser author could have let character be completely ignored and still produced a cracking good story. But it takes genius to allow each character a self which grows and changes and adds to rather than distracts from the action.
Those characters are the essential ones of the Heroic Quest- Hero, Heroine, subordinate or co-Hero, and the Servant. In heroic quests from "Star Wars" to "The Lord of the Rings", this group or a slight variation on it, appears. And as in "Star Wars", the co-Hero falls in love with the Heroine, as in "The Lord of the Rings" the Hero and the Servant near the end of the quest alone.
As if to be exemplary both in character and action were not enough, Seven Citadels is deep enough thematically to quench the thirst of even a devout C.S. Lewis fan. Seamlessly integrated- nay, an essential and inseperable part- of the narrative, these deeper themes run through the book, most mysterious where they are clearest to be seen, never degenerating into crude philosophising or moral-pointing, but retaining that mysteriously evocative sense not so well expressed since Lewis's "Till We Have Faces". The combination of character, theme, action essential in any good book but so critical in good fantasy literature combine to render the series a masterpiece- a forgotten one, but a masterpiece nonetheless.
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