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A review by christopherc
Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg
2.0
When science-fiction author Robert Silverberg returned from a brief retirement in the 1970s, he did it with this novel that introduced the fictional planet of Majipoor. Silverberg was now working in a science-fantasy mode as was in vogue in this decade: Majipoor is a far-future setting, inhabited by human beings and seven alien species that settled there at some point, but the planet is a backwater, technology is rather primitive and most inhabitants live peasant, agrarian lives.
Silverberg has come up with a rather creative government for this world. A Coronal serves as the public-facing, quasi-monarchial ruler of Majipoor, while the last Coronal retires to become the Pontifex, head of the planet’s bureaucracy. (There are also two other Powers, the Lady of the Isle of Sleep and the King of Dreams, who send Majipoor’s inhabitants good dreams and nightmares, respectively.) Thus as the book opens the new Coronal, Lord Valentine, is visiting a town as part of his big inauguration tour of his realm. But the protagonist we are introduced to, a humble vagabond, is himself named Valentine, and he has no memory of his past. It really spoils nothing to say that this vagabond Valentine is the real ruler of the planet, and the supposed Coronal parading by is an impostor who has usurped the thone from the amnesiac protagonist; this is just already so obvious by page 10.
I read Lord Valentine’s Castle as a teenager and cannot remember any grumbling about it, so it might be all right as Young Adult fare. Trying to reread it decades later, I found it impossible to finish. First of all, with no suspense on the plot front, it is clear that Silverberg’s real interest is just in giving readers a tour of the world he has created, with all its exotic flora and fauna and alien races. However, in this Silverberg just ends up being an epigone of earlier science-fiction authors, for talking about how characters wear colourful jerkins, eat exotic spiced meat or drink unusual wine must have already been a trope by this point.
Worse yet, Valentine is such a Mary Sue character. He’s a taciturn homeless guy who would probably creep us out in real life, but immediately he shows such excellent skills in juggling that he is acclaimed by a wandering troupe of jugglers, and naturally the woman in that troupe (never actually fleshed out as a real human being) immediately wants to have sex with him. Valentine too is a two-dimensional piece of cardboard with no inspiring qualities at all, but the other characters (themselves flimsy) act in total awe of his grace and power.
As far as the science-fantasy trend that I mentioned above goes, this book is far below something like Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun; that work had better characterization and a quality of prose equal to any great 20th century literature. Instead, Lord Valentine’s Castle is more similar to Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure, an early example of this genre, in its pulpish writing and the way its protagonist, though unfamiliar with the world he travels, manages to overcome any obstacle effortlessly and bed beauties along the way.
Silverberg has come up with a rather creative government for this world. A Coronal serves as the public-facing, quasi-monarchial ruler of Majipoor, while the last Coronal retires to become the Pontifex, head of the planet’s bureaucracy. (There are also two other Powers, the Lady of the Isle of Sleep and the King of Dreams, who send Majipoor’s inhabitants good dreams and nightmares, respectively.) Thus as the book opens the new Coronal, Lord Valentine, is visiting a town as part of his big inauguration tour of his realm. But the protagonist we are introduced to, a humble vagabond, is himself named Valentine, and he has no memory of his past. It really spoils nothing to say that this vagabond Valentine is the real ruler of the planet, and the supposed Coronal parading by is an impostor who has usurped the thone from the amnesiac protagonist; this is just already so obvious by page 10.
I read Lord Valentine’s Castle as a teenager and cannot remember any grumbling about it, so it might be all right as Young Adult fare. Trying to reread it decades later, I found it impossible to finish. First of all, with no suspense on the plot front, it is clear that Silverberg’s real interest is just in giving readers a tour of the world he has created, with all its exotic flora and fauna and alien races. However, in this Silverberg just ends up being an epigone of earlier science-fiction authors, for talking about how characters wear colourful jerkins, eat exotic spiced meat or drink unusual wine must have already been a trope by this point.
Worse yet, Valentine is such a Mary Sue character. He’s a taciturn homeless guy who would probably creep us out in real life, but immediately he shows such excellent skills in juggling that he is acclaimed by a wandering troupe of jugglers, and naturally the woman in that troupe (never actually fleshed out as a real human being) immediately wants to have sex with him. Valentine too is a two-dimensional piece of cardboard with no inspiring qualities at all, but the other characters (themselves flimsy) act in total awe of his grace and power.
As far as the science-fantasy trend that I mentioned above goes, this book is far below something like Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun; that work had better characterization and a quality of prose equal to any great 20th century literature. Instead, Lord Valentine’s Castle is more similar to Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure, an early example of this genre, in its pulpish writing and the way its protagonist, though unfamiliar with the world he travels, manages to overcome any obstacle effortlessly and bed beauties along the way.