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If I Pay Thee Not in Gold | Rating | |
| D | |||
| Piers Anthony and Mercedes Lackey | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
The front of this book touts, "Two of fantasy's brightest lights join forces!" Unfortunately, I have never been very impressed with Anthony, and Lackey has always struck me as living up to her namesake. All she does is collaborations, it seems to me. And judging by the content, most of it was Anthony. Although Lackey did most of the actual writing, she followed his outline, and he looked over her work. And it shows.
The basic plot is that in Mazonia, women rule. (Clever, no? Mazonia, so close but not quite Amazon? That's about the level of wit in this book.) They rule by magic, since women and only women can conjure stuff out of thin air. The better the conjurer, the more mass, and/or the more intricate detail, that can be created. The queen is typically the most powerful of the bunch, and she feels threatened by the main character, a very powerful summoner indeed.
At first she tries to get rid of her rival by intrigue, which was neat. I thought this might develop into a kind of political novel, or maybe a detective novel, as the character tries to track down who is sabotaging her life (even though it's fairly obvious). And then a revolutionary novel as she fights back in the name of justice, for herself and for the male slaves of the nation.
Instead she strikes a deal with the queen, and everything will be happy again if she completes a quest. So for the second half or more of the book, it becomes a travel novel as the character must cross the leagues, retreive the item, and return. Travel quests are really, really bad storytelling, because you know when they're over: when you reach the destination. Everything in between is just filler. And there's a lot of filler here, pointless adventures in the nations they pass through.
Eventually the item is found and taken, a few dozen pages from the end of the book! The return journey pretty much consists of them saying it was done. And then there's the climax, which last a whole five or ten pages. The reward is nowhere near worth the effort to get there. Pass.
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