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The Scepter's Return | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Dan Chernenko | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| The Scepter of Mercy | The Bastard King, The Chernagor Pirates, The Scepter's Return | ||
The kingdom of Avornis is finally at peace, no longer under assault from one foe or another. The pirates have been quelled. The neighboring realm is governed by a pious peacenik. The ravaging nomads are preoccupied with a civil war. And Avornian wizards think they have a way to protect people from becoming mindless Thralls under the Banished One's command, and to cure those who have already met such a fate. Now is the best time in centuries for someone to lead an army deep into the fallen god's lands. Possibly the only time for centuries more to come. King Grus intends to do exactly that. And thanks to the explorations of Avornis' other king, Lanius, in the archives, they might just be able to pull it off. But treachery from their own kin may render all their efforts for naught.
Although The Bastard King and The Chernegor Pirates were both written under the name of Dan Chernenko, for this third and concluding novel of the series it is revealed that the author was in fact Harry Turtledove, as you can plainly see in big, bold letters on the cover. Chernenko was just a pseudonym. A word to the publisher, or the author, or maybe both: please, please, don't do that. Writing under a different name is fine, and revealing its true identity is no big deal - so long as it doesn't happen partway through a series. It totally messes up my library, and probably others. I found the book in the bookstore under "Turtledove," for instance, far away from the other two which were shelved at the other end of the shelves. Should I do the same and have one book of the series widely seperated from the others? Or should I store them together? And if so, do I have a Turtledove stuck in with the Chernenkos or a pair of Chernenkos placed amongst all the Turtledove books? None of them really works very well, and it irritates me that I am forced to choose among such poor options.
Now that the man behind the curtain has been unveiled, though - announced with neon and a fanfare of trumpets, really, but watever - I can certainly recognize the writing style. Turtledove's tendency for injecting slightly smarmy remarks into his prose, his tendency to repeat his revelations and jokes several times, and the very deliberate pacing of the story are all here. On the other hand, he writes excellent character-oriented fiction, relying on an interesting cast and not furious action to hold readers' interest. And by and large, he succeeded here. Despite a couple of minor bumps caused by the problems I just listed, it was a good story that I never got bored with.
Still, the book does suffer from some curious choices. The first was, as in the last book, the queens' attitudes towrds their husbands' infidelity. They don't like it at all, and they give Lanius and Grus hell whenever they find out and don't let up for weeks. Sosia's marriage to Lanius was purely a political arrangement. Even if they did grow to care for one another, it still seems wrong that she gets so upset when he fools around with some servant girl. Besides, what midieval king wasn't accorded a dalliance every now and again? He's the king! Estrilda's attitude is a bit more understandable - she was married to Grus well before he became co-monarch. Even so, he is a general more than a ruler, and nearly every general up to the nineteenth century (and quite a few into and beyond that) has had a mistress or two for the field. The two kings often think wryly on how much people overestimate the freedoms their rulers enjoy; perhaps so, but I think Turtledove overcompensates.
The characters, particularly Lanius, also have no mind for intrigue. He does nothing but worry - and not very hard - at signs that his sadistic brother-in-law is gathering a personal cadre. Even Lanius acknowledges it may be the first step towards a coup, yet he takes no action. He doesn't kill him or banish him, fine, but he doesn't do so much as have someone keep an eye on him or express his concerns to Grus, either. Which is just stupid, and Lanius is not stupid.
But the worst problem isn't caused by any of the characters, but Turtledove himself. The campaign to retrieve the Scepter of Mercy goes too smoothly, is too straightforward. A few setbacks threaten, but never really manifest. So it was a bit irksome that it took so long to get done. Character-driven fiction or no, there needs to be some action to keep readers going. Turtledove tries, using some battles with the southern nomads, but when each one is a victory and the battles are mostly an overview - he is no writer of military fiction, by any means - it doesn't entirely work. It's all rather tepid.
I'm not sure why as successful an author as this chose to write under a pseudonym. The only reason I can think of is that he wanted to see what people thought of his stories without his name to predispose them. Well, in my case it worked, though perhaps not the way he liked. The revelation of Chernenko being Turtledove isn't making me upgrade my opinion of the previous two, but it is making me wonder if I really do like Turtledove's style. Or perhaps I should just stick to his alternate-history fiction, where the story is usually enough to overcome the flaws of the author, such as making it happen overly slowly. When the story isn't so fascinating, it... well, saying it's a chore would be too harsh. It's not. Turtledove is always emminently readable. But it's just not as good.
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