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5.0 out of 5 stars
So good I missed dinner, 17 Nov 2005
Any reader expecting to dive into the usual quest-fantasy extravaganza is in for a surprise in Bruce Durie’s The High History of the Holy Quail. Oh, it has your essentials: wizards, magic (sorry, Magick), the ever-present threat of other beings, pretty girls, brutish beasts large and tiny. But Durie is a master of language, lateral thinking and science. There you are bowling along nodding to a predictable cliché around the corner, and you fall down an open manhole of a trap. Excellent.Initially disturbed by being talked to as “you” the reader, three or more similes in every paragraph, and the parody references such as the Rowan Atkinson “bibble-black”, Durie’s writing style subtly changes making you wonder what’s coming next; besides in the fast action plot. I embarrassed myself, on a train laughing out loud, nearly missing my stop in order to turn another page. I applauded his alternative Edinburgh as in his Fantasy world his SamBernados Castle sat on a crag-and-tail hill; the yearly get-rich-slow Festival with abstruse performances that became known as The Cringe. Hah! The key to appreciate the uniqueness of this fantasy is in Durie’s fabulous explanation of Magick. As a student leader, I was in deep trouble in the late 60s for occupying the college principal’s office and graffitiying “Entropy will win” as my esoteric message on his wall. I had to explain what I meant to a policeman, whose confusion let me off! In The Holy Quail, Durie goes way beyond the expected by explaining the “scientific” fundamentals of Magick. In brief, lost entropy reappears as extropy, manifested as matter and energy created apparently our of nowhere! Brilliant. And you won’t truly “understand extropy until you can unboil an egg.” I love it. And it was this admiration that kept me thirsting for more, and it came. OK, some of the humour is a bit not of my liking, but most of it definitely is: such as the Psycoclips K’Nib. As a journo for a cycling mag, my whirring thighs rocked with such play on words. Indeed in many ways the reader is on his own quest inside this book. A recursive (aside references to ASCII and other ‘puter jargon will tease your discoveries) self-referential journey to discover themselves as well as the Quail. And once found will you want the sequel? I will. And the next? YES.
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