Valentine finds himself outside the city of Pidruid one afternoon, completely bereft of memory, as the city makes ready for the arrival of Lord Valentine - one of the four great Powers of the mega-world of Majipoor. what's a man to do in such a situation? why, join a traveling band of jugglers, of course. travel a lot, meets lots of new people and see lots of new things, have a bunch of trippy dreams, and eventually reclaim a fabulous destiny. that's what i'd do too.i reread this due to a group read. i first read it when living in Virginia Beach, sometime in junior high. it is an often dense novel and certainly a surreal one at times, but there is a purity to it that made me realize i must have been able to fully grasp it when first reading it age 14 or so. it became one of my favorite things. rereading it, it remains one of my favorite things. maybe not 5 stars worth of gold, but it is still pretty precious.when i first bought the book - and this whole paragraph will just be a rambly recollection that has nothing to do with the book whatsoever, so you may as well just skip this part and move on to the next paragraph - the demented old woman who sold it to me thought i was buying a biography of St. Valentine of Valentine's Day. she proceeded to tell me the "true story" of St. Valentine. apparently he was not simply a saint for lovers. according to the bookseller, St. Valentine was a fiery sort who was captured by malevolent anti-christian forces and tortured for his christian beliefs. nothing would break Valentine. finally, his torturers sent an evil harlot to tempt Valentine. since he was chained down, there was little he could do to stop this nasty temptress from laying her hands all over his precious christian body. so he bit off his own tongue and spat it at her. hello sainthood! i just want you all to remember this the next time you are celebrating Valentine's Day with your loved one. anyway, the odd senior told me to report back to her after reading this novel and let her know if the author got the story right. i think i was too scared to return to that bookstore.so this book has nothing to do with St. Valentine, whew.although it is ostensibly about Finding Your True Self and What Makes A Good Leader, i found the novel was equally concerned with two other things: World Building and Silverberg's Vision of a (Semi) Perfect World.haters of world building need to give this novel a pass. but for those who appreciate the intensely detailed visions of otherworlds created by various scifi and fantasy authors, this is the book for you. "intensely detailed" is a good phrase for this but it should be qualified. not intensely detailed like George RR Martin (you won't always know what color sash a person is wearing and if it matches their brocade jacket) but intensely detailed in that we visit so many different places across the grand world of Majipoor and they are all so beautifully described and so well-differentiated from each other. at times i was reminded of how easily Jack Vance rolls out cities & countries & worlds, one after the other, with such style and skill that he makes world-building look like a lark. however Silverberg does not have Vance's economy of language or spartan stylishness. this is world building in the classic sense in that the reader gets to enjoy sentence after sentence and paragraph after paragraph of gorgeous description. boring for some; entrancing for me. reading this really made me feel like a romantic (also in the classic sense of the word) young nerd again. the language is beautiful and Majipoor really came alive.this is also in many ways a near-perfect world. it does not know war or famine or cruel leaders or reality tv. its species and races live in relative harmony. personalities are either sunny & open or, if not, at least genuinely amusing in their grouchiness or arrogance. cold-eyed justice and professional emotional support are both given by far off dream-senders, so no need for pesky police or helpful therapists to get up in your face - they'll see you in your dreams, whether you've been good or bad or inbetween. Majipoor is a liberal, generous, and usually cheerful society. its people respect the natural wonders of the world and various preserves are specifically set aside for keeping those wonders sacrosanct. reading Lord Valentine's Castle made me realize that this was all the author's version of his own ideal world. good for you, Silverberg. your dreams are wonderful and i would like to live in them, please.Silverberg is known to be a sometimes challenging and often provacative author of the New Wave Science Fiction genre. Lord Valentine's Castle was a step in an entirely different direction: epic science fantasy. but such a curious version of an epic! writing that makes you slow down and enjoy things instead of rushing forward to the next conflict. a narrative that is full of dreams and dream battles and dream epiphanies. characters who are mainly undramatic and often trying to do right. an emphasis on the environment as a precious thing. turning the other cheek and not automatically drawing your sword when someone gets in your way. and writing that is charming and sometimes eerie and brightened by a lacquer of pleasantly vivid psychedelia. splendid writing.look, one sentence: "He saw himself standing rooted at Zimroel's edge with the sea behind him and a continent unrolling before him, and the Inner Sea punctuated by the Isle of Sleep, and Alhanroel beyond, rising on its nether side to the great swollen bulge of Castle Mount, and the sun overhead, yellow with a bronze-green tint, sending blistering rays down on dusty Suvrael and into the tropics, and warming everything else, and the worlds from which the Skandars came and the Hjorts and the Liimen and all the rest, even the world from which his own folk had emigrated, Old Earth, fourteen thousand years ago, a small blue world absurdly tiny when compared to Majipoor, far away, half forgotten in some other corner of the universe, and he journeyed back down across the stars to this world, this continent, this city, this inn, this courtyard, this small plot of moist yielding soil in which his boots were rooted, and told Sleet he was ready."cool!a version of this review is a part of a longer article on Robert Silverberg posted on Shelf Inflicted.
"Conquest over self was the finest of victories."(467)It pains me that this book is languishing in undeserved obscurity. Lord Valentine's Castle follows the journey of Valentine, devoid of any semblance of identity and perhaps irretrievably deprived of indescribably defining memories, living a wanderer’s life, joining a band of jugglers, learning the trade in the only way it was meant to be learned, by heart and soul, and comes to the realization that he has fallen from the highest possible state of grace, comes to the inevitable understanding that he must journey to reclaim what he has lost, not for himself, but for the safety and order of Majipoor.This is a journey of one man, his quest to define himself, as much as it is a voyage through the world of Majipoor. And it is splendid. It is splendid because Silverberg is unlike most fantasy writers. This book is not filled with fantasy tropes and cliché plot devices. No. There are no dwarves, elves and well-defined magical schemes, no epic wars, but there are dragons! Like Ursula Le Guin, in the A Wizard of Earthsea, the struggle is much more personal, and to expect a diluted brilliance in this work is but a folly one must dispense with. As I have written in my review on the first book of the Earthsea Cycle which is suitably in consonance with my views on this book, “what is most fascinating in this unique work of fantasy is how personal and particular the main struggle is and yet it carries a worldly importance to the book. The perpetuation of the grand narratives of good against evil, or of the prosaic if not routinary overblown dilemmas of kings and men have endeavored to situate if not relegate this grand personal struggle everybody must go through in the background as mere subplots at the best and at worst as plot devices, never really brought in the forefront.” And I like this kind of books, not only because of the inherent mastery with which it is delivered but it reflects Silverberg’s vehemence and audacity at writing out of the banalities in fantasy writing. This he achieved by masterfully incorporating a bit of sci-fi background in this world and highlighting the power of dreams to list a few, and of course envisioning our lovely charismatic engaging Valentine to be black. “I revel in the fact that the protagonist in this was envisioned to have had dark skin. For it is not so much as the color of the skin that talks but of the profound meaning and effect it carries concerning minute details of vital necessity not only in the fantasy genre but of printed work generally… for most fantasy plots are patterned if not derived from the middle ages of conquest where the dichotomy of the white and black or of the east-west conflict is fundamentally translated to good and bad respectively and the stratification of the social class is at its height..’’ Authors like this must be read!Silverberg’s world building is exceptionally extensive and my imagination was left in no less a euphoric state given the way he wrote. His was so detailed, so wonderful, so mesmerizing. Not only were the cities strangely unique and uncompromisingly beautiful, they were real, they were real in the manner that Silverberg wanted them to be, as if you were there, standing before the gates of the city, drunkenly dazzling at the beauty of this alien world. Just as a painter masterfully but with adamant care puts life into the canvass with those slow adroit masterful strokes of genius, so does Silverberg conjures Majipoor to life with his phrases, sentences and paragraphs. And this world building in effect makes Valentine’s journey more empathic, and I would easily pledge my loyalty to this unprecedentedly deposed Coronal, even though most of his travels are uneventful compared to most fantasy books, I will choose to be beside this man and enter Majipoor once again. This book is part of my LOCUS AWARDS reading list.This review has been cross-posted at imbookedindefinitely
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This one is a strange but otherwise pleasant beast. It's a great little adventure romp in the hybrid realm known as science fantasy, which is to say it borrows both from the science fiction and fantasy genres. Although mostly formulaic despite the genre breeding, its protagonist is nevertheless engaging enough to keep the storytelling fresh throughout.The mix of science fiction and fantasy is more mongrel than clever crossbreed. Although the world-building lies firmly within the purview of science, the story structure and tropes belong heart and soul to epic fantasy. There's a reluctant hero, and he travels all over the map as he discovers his own past and gathers allies of various races around him. All this happens to take place on a world colonized by aliens and powered by ancient technology, but these details belong more to the background than to the action and tone.Fortunately, Valentine is an engaging hero, especially at first. His amnesia initially feels like a tired cliché, but as things progress it matters less and less. Valentine is compassionate, happy, gentle, and abhors violence. This creates a very different narrative from the usual orc-slaying extravaganza of fantasy, although there are a few bouts of violence and warfare before all is said and done. It's refreshing to see a hero who avoids violence at all costs, though, and who influences the course of events through compassion instead of brute strength.The world of Majipoor is definitely original, though I didn't find it all that compelling nor compellingly told. There are bouts of exposition here and there, during which we're repeatedly told how vast the world is. That the characters born on this world would find it so vast felt jarring, as you'd expect them to take their own world for granted. Gene Wolfe did this magnificently in The Shadow of the Torturer, but here we're mostly being told rather than shown.Although overall the book was enjoyable, ultimately it mostly consists of a bunch of characters touring a magnificent imaginary world. A lot of it feels like extemporization for the ultimate plot resolution. There's even an odd pastiche or homage to Moby-Dick in there, and I swear some lines were lifted verbatim from Melville's work. But once in a while Valentine breaks out a juggling act, and all is right in Majipoor.
—Daniel Roy
Не знам дали е честно Замъкът на лорд Валънтайн да се оценява както бихме оценявали някое съвременно фентъзи/фантастика. Защото... ами този тип писане вече не е модерно ;) Действието ни води заедно с главния герой Валънтайн по пътя му към осъзнаването и приемането, че той е (view spoiler)[истинският коронал на Маджипур (hide spoiler)]
—Adi
Първата ми книга прочетена на гсм-а. При голямото количество актуални книги, които са ми се натрупали за четене, никога нямаше да стигна до нея иначе. А все пак се води една от класиките. Силно си личи, че е писана 80та година. Много наивна, героите са или много добри, или много лоши. Нашия човек е толкова добър, способен и обаятелен, че е просто перфектен във всичко, всеки който прекара 5 мин с него го обиква и всяка трудност се оправя за 20 минути максимум. Върха беше финалната битка, когато нашата армия от 100К човека се изправи срещу милионната армия на узурпатора и успяхме да ги разбием с нещо от сорта на 10 жертви. Не може да се отрече обаче майсторлъка на Силвърбърг да строи светове, да измисля раси и история. Не съжалявам че прочетох книжката, обаче на следващите едва ли ще им дойде реда някога.
—Sandino
