He had traveled the far south and seen devastation wrought by dragons. For so young a man, he had visited an incredible list of places. He had been to Faerie itself, bathing on its golden beaches, paying a silver penny for a ride on a hippogryff. He had met gnomes and dwarves and elves. He had haggled for tapestries in crowded bazaars and edged along walls in sinister alleyways; he had watched beautiful slave girls dance before their masters in opulent courts. He had sailed the Summer Sea in barques with silken sails curved by the scented winds. He had wept at the baleful song of merfolk lamenting a dying moon. Rap, the proverbial stable boy of every fantay epic, listens open mouthed to the siren song of the mysterious stranger named Andor, an experienced journeyer despite his apparent youth. Like Rap, I am once again falling under the spell of yet another magical realm to explore, of yet more treasures and magical artefacts to discover, of fantastic beasts to meet and unlikely friendships to me made along the way. Dave Duncan doesn't set out to revolutionize the genre, witness the stock characters he has chosen as his protagonists : two youngsters from a miniature sized kingdom, the poor stable boy with the hidden magical talents and the willful, resourceful princess who may be his destined love interest. Witness also the stock races that populate the world of Pandemia : goblins, dwarves, elfs, djinnis, imps, merfolk, jotunns (vikings / northern barbarians), even some dragons somewhere in the south. But in the hands of a master storyteller, and Duncan is without doubt one of the best in the field, these building blocks combine into a fresh and exciting adventure. Here's the opening passage, simply setting up the background where we will soon meet Rap and princess Inosolan: Since long before the coming of Gods and mortals, the great rock of Krasnegar had stood amid the storms and ice of the Winter Ocean, resolute and eternal. Throughout long arctic nights it glimmered under the haunted dance of aurora and the rays of the cold, sad moon, while the icepack ground its useless anger around its base. In summer sun its yellow angularity stood on the shining white and blue of the sea like a slice of giant's cheese on fine china. Weather and season came and went and the rock endured unchanging, heeding them no more than it heeded the flitting generations of mankind. I would position Duncan as a midfielder in the fantay genre : more grown up, more articulate and more original than the imitators of Tolkien in the late seventies (Brooks, Goodkind), paying his respects to the master, but striking out to explore new possibilities. And less grim, less dark, less morally relativistic and cynical than the majority of the current crop of fantasy authors. So, we have here a fairytale where the simple young man will probably slay the dragon and win the hand of the maiden in the bargain, but he will have to face many perils and he will have to make a lot of difficult choices between duty, friendship, love, etc.A bonus for me, beside the richness of the worldbuilding (of which we only get a glimpse in the first volume through Andor's boasting), is the magic system that allows both for superpowers in the hands of the four warlocks of Pandemia and for apprentices / beginners like Rap who stumble their way almost blindly towards talent. All magic, all power, comes from certain words. There are a great many of them; no one knows how many. But they are what gives sorcerers their abilities. Here again Dave Duncan is a step ahead of his fellow writers, as he integrates the magic smoothly into he plot and avoids the easy traps of enchanted swords or evil overlords. The best example of his original approach I need to put into spoiler brackets, as the secret of the powers is only revealed in the last chapter. (view spoiler)[ Andor as the first stumbling block in the path of Rap and Inosolan is revealed to be just one section of a 'sequential' spell that binds together five different people, only one of them being allowed to manifest at one time, the rest waiting in limbo until they are summoned to replace the current incarnation. Scholar, lover, soldier, artist, and you must be the financier of the group? exclaims the visiting sorceress who unmasks them. This group is very similar to the fellowships I used to build up in my role playing games days of Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, each talent complementing the abilities of the others in my group - tank, druid, priest, rogue, and so on. I feel the need to underline again how the author works within the established lore in the genre, but finds new ways to combine the elements. (hide spoiler)]
This was one of my favorite fantasy series in years. One of the fun parts about reading the books was how he tied the title of the chapter in with the quote at the end. It's never clear why the title has its name until the end, and then it is a fun trick to see the quote at the end and find the chapter title in it. The books themselves are a good example, as they all draw their titles from the poem "Ode to a Nightingale" by Keats. The voice I hear this passing night was heardt In ancient days by emperor and clown:tPerhaps the self-same song that found a patht Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,t She stood in tears amid the alien corn;t The same that oft-times hatht Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foamt Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.Anyway, the premise doesn't sound like much, and it takes a little time to build, but the book is filled with dozens of fun characters, as well as some moments that are wonderfully awesome and epic. Somebody please read this series so I have someone to share it with.
Do You like book Magic Casement (2002)?
This series was well-written, had a nice magic system, and a nice if sometimes slow plot. I would rate it four or five stars, except that it (like many fantasy series) has an Orientalist interlude with a Middle Eastern type setting where men are handsome, brutal, and have harems of women. Although explicitly stating that there are good and bad people everywhere and that there are some benefits to the harem system, the general perspective of the characters was that those 'type' of people (djinns) have an evil system that they wanted to leave behind asap. I also didn't understand why the book series was named after only one character, when there were two wonderful main characters that both made important choices.
—Adi Greif
If you're planning on reading this book then be very prepared to be bored for at least half of it before the plot actually begins to progress and unfold. Virtually nothing of consequence happens in the first half of the book. The two main characters, Rap and Princess Inos are basically doing everyday mundane things that does very little to impact their character development. The first half of the book is actually more about the princess settling into her boring life of dances and embroidery at a distant kingdom so she could learn more about courtly manners and such as well as be suited by ugly old nobles and being bored alot. I knew how she felt because the plot was moving so slowly. Once the story picks up at the half way point it gets better, but it's still not great. Don't be fooled like I was by the high rating this book has gotten on here.
—Flint
I've made the mistake of underestimating Duncan before, so I won't abandon this series just yet. There seems to be a big world out there of which this is just a part.Traditionally I've never seen the twists in the plot coming. This holds for TV shows too, it's not limited to books - and so any writing transparent enough that even I can see where it's going is cause for pause. But though I latched immediately onto some of the big factors, the story remained unpredictable enough to hold me and the last few pages certainly ramp up the tension. The output from the Casement, which was so underplayed and avoided all the way through, becomes the burning question, and I can only hope that as with the Kings Blades, this series picks up for me.
—Sean Randall
