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Harlequin's Dance (Orokon)
 
 
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Harlequin's Dance (Orokon) [Illustrated] (Hardcover)

by Tom Arden (Author) "In the time before the earth was brought forth from Unbeing, there was great warmaking in the realm of The Vast, which is home to..." (more)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz; illustrated edition edition (9 Oct 1997)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0575065176
  • ISBN-13: 978-0575065178
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,594,423 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

The first in a five-book sequence of fantasy novels, this book is a quest fantasy set in the mythical kingdoms of the El-Orok. The Orokon is a circle of five mystic crystals which embody the powers of the ancient gods. Only two people can find the cystals: the enchanter Toth-Vexrah and Jem.


About the Author

Tom Arden was born in Australia and now lives in London. A former lecturer in 18th century literature, he is now a fulltime writer.
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In the time before the earth was brought forth from Unbeing, there was great warmaking in the realm of The Vast, which is home to the gods. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Mini-masterpiece?, 26 April 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Harlequin's Dance (Orokon) (Paperback)
Mini-masterpiece, so why three stars? My over-riding feeling is that somewhere within the tangled plot threads was a jem (pardon the pun)of a story. There are too many characters - most of them inconsequential - and incidents -unnecessary - crammed in, obscuring the simple mythic story. Other critics believe the author did it deliberately and I think I agree. The middle part is almost entirely waffle. This is wasted space as at the end the characters come together in a frankly unbelievable way. It is perhaps unfair singling Arden out for this. Almost all current fantasy novels fail in this respect. It's a shame because this book is different. Arden conjures wonderful names for his characters e.g. Umbecca, Waxwell, Veeldrop etc and places e.g. Orandy, Mid-Lexion etc. His depiction of time and place are beautiful. He captures and dwells on the grotesque elements brilliantly.

If he had stuck to the essential characters and plot I genuinely think this would have been a mini-masterpiece.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, 8 Oct 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: The Harlequin's Dance: First Book of the Orokon (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
I've just finished reading through this whole series and this is certainly the most brilliant new fantasy series I've read in years. It's also one of the weirdest. It's really dark and perverse in places, pure comedy in others. Considered on its own the story sounds naff: a boy on a quest for five magic crystals (he finds one at the end of each book). But the characterisation is brilliant (particularly the villains -- Aunt Umbecca, the town bully Polty, and the mad doctor Goodman Waxwell, who wants to amputate the hero's legs), the atmosphere of rising menace is stunningly buiilt up, and after a slow start the whole thing rises to the most stunning climax. And it all just gets better in the next volumes. (The ending of the whole series is totally unexpected, by the way.) Magnificent.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not Quite the Age of Enlightenment, 1 Jun 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Harlequin's Dance (Orokon) (Paperback)
A good book which i really enjoyed, the characters have a lot more depth to them than your average fantasy novel, I also like the way that evil has human causes rather than supernatural "Dark Lords", "evil sorcerers" and "monsters". I particularly like the way the mythological prologue is turned on its head and shown to be nothing more than lies invented to justify racism and fanaticism. The reason however I only give it 3 stars is because i find its 18th century setting shallow and unconvincing, apart from occasional references to muskets and tricorn hats i find nothing really 18th century about it, it could equally be set in a "Celtic", "Medieval" or even "Arabian Nights" milieu. The writer seems to have seriously underestimed the sophistication and complexity of 18th century European culture, which included places as diverse as the mercantile and imperialistic Britain of King George the III, the decadent France of Voltaire and Louis the XVth, the warlike Prussia of Frederic the great, the cultured Austria of Mozart, and the backward and despotic Russia of Catherine the Great. He has tried to compress all this diversity into one single kingdom! It does not work, how could a culture as advanced and sophisticated as this arisen in one country? i hope in the next books he works harder on the setting, in its present state it jars terribly and detracts from what would have been an excellent Novel.
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