perelgut (04/18/83)
The Nonborn King
Julian May
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1983
The third book in a series. I bought this as a hardcover at $22Cdn. This
series has been previously discussed in a review of the second book,
"The Golden Torc", article id utcsrgv.1288.
This review will be shorter since I assume you have read the previous review.
Feel free to ask for electronic reprints if the network didn't get it to you.
This is the third book in a series and I am afraid that Ms. May has lost some
of the tightness of her previous two books. The plot here seems to be
stretched very thin in order to split one very long book into two shorter
books. This means that situations which have little bearing on the plot and
characters tend to be stretched beyond reasonable proportions in a couple of
places. The tight visual imagery has been expanded without offering anything
more than the previous style did.
Ms. May has also shown that she doesn't like killing off her main characters.
It seems that the major ones are becoming very well defined but, like
Sherlock Holmes at the waterfall, they aren't ever really dead. That is a
little disappointing. At least she lets you know they aren't dead right away
(with one exception you expect anyway from the way other characters reappear).
The Galactic Milieu is not much clearer in this case although two of the
other five races are mentionned clearly by racial name, one of which is
bipedal humanoid (it seems), and the other races are alluded to. I am
vaguely disappointed to not know more of the 2110 world by this time.
We meet the metaphysics who rebelled in 20833 and fled back to 6,000,000BCE
are introduced and form a whole new body for conflicts. There is a lot of
promise to that development.
The politics of 6,000,000BCE are beautifully interwoven and complex, but
can be seen as a sort of intertwining of destinies. The power groups are:
the Firvulag under King Sharn and Queen Ayfa plot to get rid of their
Foe, the Tanu and then to get rid of the human pests.
the conservative faction of the Tanu want to get rid of the humans
and then get on with the final battle (sort of Armageddon) with
the Firvulag. This faction is led by members of the Host.
the other Tanu and hybrids and the torc-wearing humans are all happy to
be led by Aiken Drum who is now fully operant. Aiken wants to
stop the battle part of the religion and to control the world.
the metaphysics who fled their failed rebellion in the Galactic Milieu.
They are split into the old-timers (including their self-rejuvenating,
superman leader), and the youths (all children of the old-timers).
The youth faction has figured out how to open the time-door back to
the Milieu and they want to return to a society they feel was wrongly
withdrawn from them by their parents.
Elizabeth, who has become the mother-confessor figure for the whole
Tanu-Firvulag-torcedHuman contingent. She is always there and
doesn't take overt actions.
The Lowlives, untorced humans who want to live free off the land. They
fear that if the Tanu or Firvulag win back control they will be
wiped out. They are ready to actions as necessary.
The Howlers, mutant Firvulag who want to become normal again. They are
a peacful faction situated right on the battlegrounds for
the upcoming fight.
Most of this book is devoted to highlighting the various groups and how they
interact. However, sometimes the details restate the obvious too many times.
Another disappointment are the increasing number of "significant incidents"
which are not explained but which obviously will become important in the
coming book(s). I have never been a fan of "mysterious prophecies" to lead
into new plot developments. Ms May is especially clumsy at this during the
birth of Agraynel.
Overall this book was a disappointment after the first two excellent books.
On a scale of 1-10 I would give the first two ratings of 7 and this one
a rating of 5. Comparatively, Dune is a rating of 9, the Hobbit - 8,
Friday - 4, Number Of the Beast - 3.
The next book is announced at the end of this and will be titled
"The Adversary". It claims to clear up ambiguities (I hope that means the
fact that humans who travelled back had Tanu genes) and an ultimate recurvature
back to the Galactic Milieu where it all began. I figure that means that
the children of the rebels open the time-warp back. I expect that I will buy
it when it comes out and hope it is better than III.