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Duel of Dragons | Rating | |
| D | |||
| Gael Baudino | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Dragonsword | Dragonsword, Duel of Dragons, Dragon Death | ||
It's been over a year since the events in Dragonsword, and Suzanne Helling has received her degree and is shooting for a doctorate. She has tried to leave Gryylth behind her, but the magical land just won't let her. Towns are being attacked by napalm and bullets, and a giant Worm attacks the part-time Dragonmaster in LA. Against her will she must go to the land she helped create in order to find out why the new continent of Vaylle is acting so beligerent, and to stop it. She brings with her Solomon's ex-wife, Helen, who assumes the mantle of the sorceress Kyria - and whose hatred of anything associated with her ex may make her more danger than help.
I realized something while reading this book. The people who travel on dragonback to Gryylth seem to be personifications of abstracts. Solomon, full of superiority over everyone and an arrogant certainty that he alone knows what best to do, was prejudice. Suzanne, constantly reminded of the death of friends at Kent State in 1970 and constitutionally incapable of getting over it, is guilt. And Helen, bitter over her abusive marriage, is hatred. Hatred of Soloman, of men, of anyone who tries to tell her what she needs to do.
It's an interesting literary device. It even ties in with the idea that Gryylth, through the Grail, is a means of extreme psychological therapy, and only those who really need it have a chance of gettting there. But while in the first book it was used to give Soloman room to grow and Suzanne a chance to heal, here it is used to hold things back. Helen hates Gryylth and its residents and its extremely patriarchial society, hates Suzanne for bringing her there, and so her help is extremely miserly even as she demands respect. If Sol was hard to take, his wife is positively poisonous. And surprisingly, Suzanne doesn't help matters. Her guilt and shame over her subconsiousness creating Vaylle and thus the antagonists keeps her from telling Helen what is needed to get her off her feminist high horse and possibly get her a little more helpful. To a point it is within their character, but I have never been pleased at books (or movies, or television programs) that include as a major dilemma a problem that could be banished if one person just told someone else one fact. I tend to think of them not as good characterization but as signs of an author artificially stringing out a conflict.
Speaking of the subconscious creation of the antagonists, though, I was boggled by where they supposedly came from. I can understand the ultra-warlike half as remnants of her feelings towards the military in the 1960s. I can understand the ultra-pacifist half as echoes of her days as a hippie, the ideal nonfighters. But from where in her subconsciousness came the Specter, who wants nothing but destruction? Nothing in Suzanne is like that or explains it. It doesn't fit. And what the heck is the Worm? Sol loved stability, and so the Circle was made to represent it. He hated change, and the Tree of Change was relegated to the Heath and ultimately used by his enemies. But the Specter and the Worm just do not seem to fit.
Neither do the two cultures Suzanne created, for that matter. It just doesn't seem right that this foe uses modern technology and tactics. The hippy-analogues absolutely refuse to do violence even to save their own lives, or those of their children. Killing is killing, as far as they are concerned, and killing is wrong. Similarly, the soldiers preying on them and destroying their villages do nothing but kill and destroy. They are faceless, nameless, remorseless, and intent on destruction far more than conquest or plunder. In Dragonsword the "evil" Dremords were quite human, with human reasons and logic behind what they did. That is lacking here, and the lack is very noticable.
If the author had given them weapons on par with those of Gryylth, making the bad guys a part of the setting instead of imposed upon it, the metaphors would still have worked. They'd simply have been less blatant. A pacific culture can be set upon by rapacious sword-wielders rather than chewed to bits by jets and commando squads, and it would have just as much meaning. It would have made a decent analogy for the internal struggles going on in the characters, as well as representative of Suzanne's past experiences. But this is no analogue, it's practically a direct one-to-one display of it.
This book is far harder to take than the first, because nothing feels right. The societies Soloman created were badly flawed, but they were believable. It felt like they could exist. The two that Suzanne created simply do not. Combined with irritating characters and an antagonist that I find incomprehensible, it becomes a novel I really had to struggle through.
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