Raymond's Reviews #34
%T Call of Madness
%A Julie Dean Smith
%I Ballantine/Del Rey
%D April 1990
%O paperback, US$4.95
%P 311
%G 0-345-36327-2
There's a large subgenre of contemporary fantasy written by women I
think of as "Marion Zimmer Bradley Wannabees" that clogs the shelves
of chain bookstore all over the US. An "MZB-wannabee" author and book
can be spotted by presence of most of the following diagnostics:
-
The protagonist and/or a majority of the strong characters are
female, and one of them is an obvious idealized projection of the
author.
-
The prose-construction is passable -- not great, but not
odoriferously awful either.
-
The characterization is better than SF's average, with
protagonist and supporting characters often quite engaging.
-
The world-building is shoddy in the extreme, combining
derivative fantasy elements with a romanticized, anachronism-laden SCA
version of medieval or dark-ages Europe (my girlfriend calls this the
"medieval mystery-meat" effect).
-
Either the book has explicit political feminism as an obvious
subtext or the range of possibilities assumed for women in
pre-industrial, pre-birth-control societies is unrealistically wide.
-
The book seems aimed at adolescent females and young women
and often has the structure of a bildungsroman.
-
The acquisition of magical power is treated as an allegory
of sexual maturation and often confused with it.
-
The author has three names (and uses them all) and hails
from California (spiritually if not geographically :-)).
Most of the implausible parade of sword-wielding leather-strap
women that have infested fantasy lately obviously stepped out of
MZB-wannabee daydreams of one kind -- and then there's the other, the
young-sorceress-learning-to-use-her-powers book. Julie Dean Smith's
Call Of Madness is a very typical example of this type.
Athaya Trelaine is the unhappy princess of Caithe, a small kingdom
where the Church traditionally kills the `Lorngeld' (those born to
magic) when they begin to come into their powers. Her unfeeling father
and shrewish stepmother (yes, there's an evil stepmother) drive her
to seek dangerous excitements in low places. Part of what ails her
is her unconsummated affair with the captain of the palace guard,
a good man she wants desperately to marry but cannot.
She shares the Caitheans' prejudices against the Lorngeld, and so
is doubly shocked when she discovers that she is one of them herself.
She knows that her father, who has some magical skill but is not
Lorngeld, is working to end the killing; she fears that disclosure of
her secret would force her into marriage with the Lorngeld prince of a
neighboring kingdom that values its mageborn. But while she keeps the
secret she can get no training in her powers, and an untrained
Lorngeld is doomed to madness and a self-destructive end...
Well, it's all fairly predictable from there. There's nothing
overtly wrong with this book, if you can ignore the paper-mache
stage settings and cliche-ridden plot. If you can deal with it on
those terms, it's even enjoyable in its own clumsy, earnest way. I
give it the first Raymond's Review Rhinestone Starstone Award for
Conspicuous MZB-wannabeeness. Enjoy it, if you can.
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>