The Great Wheel

By -
The Great Wheel, by Joyce Ballou Gregorian

In January, I read the first two books in the Tredana trilogy, in which Sybil travels (at 11 and 19) to another world and takes part in world-changing politics.  I was really interested to read this last one, because while the first book, The Broken Citadel, was your basic fantasy novel, the next, Castledown, had some unusual elements and departed from the template in interesting ways.  The third features Sibyl in her 30s and I figured it might continue being unusual -- having an adult woman as the heroine of a fantasy novel is fairly unusual all on its own.  And yep, it delivered.

Sybil has no memory of Tredana and is just trying to build a life for herself while divorcing her husband when she is suddenly transported elsewhere.  She finds herself a prophesied sword-bearer in the entourage of Tibir the Lame, nomadic conquering king -- think the Golden Horde -- and he's in the midst of taking over all the lands and cities she once knew.  Still without any memories, Sybil meets her husband, her lover, and her daughter as they are all swept into the train of this great king.

Actually, half the story is told from the daughter Tamara's point of view, so it's not that ground-breaking.  But it's a pretty good story and also really....odd.  Structurally speaking, it's kind of weird that Sybil's husband, the villain of the last book, isn't there at all.  Instead they all wind up living with, essentially, Tamburlaine as he conquers the world, and they don't seem to mind all that much.  Sybil, who goes through a mystical experience and has no memory, has every reason to fall in with the plan, but her husband is set to become a vassal king and is surprisingly okay with that.  The boyfriend doesn't seem to mind giving up his position as a desert sheik in order to become an honored bodyguard.  A couple of other characters do point this out, especially to the husband, so it is ambiguous, but on the whole, everybody really likes Tibir and he's cast as a hero.  It's certainly different than your average sword-and-sorcery novel.

It's too bad these have been out of print for so long; I'd love to know what other book bloggers think!

Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more