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Scabbard's Song
Book three of The Red Pavilions
by Kim Hunter
(Orbit, £10.99, 330 pages, trade paperback; 2003. Mass market
paperback: Orbit, £6.99, 409 pages, May 2004.)
The third and final installment of Hunter's Red Pavilions series sees
its amnesiac  protagonist,
Soldier, jumping through yet more hoops and dodging the blows of Fate
and Foes as he attempts to make sense of his missing past, his current
life and his threatening future. As husband to Princess Layana, now
the rightful Queen of Zamerkand thanks to the treacherous, usurping
Chancellor, Humbold (who has done away with Layana's sister, the former
Queen), Soldier is primarily responsible for protecting his wife, her
city, and the realm of Guthrum from the unfriendly attentions of ambitious
conspirators and barbarian hoardes.
He also feels obliged to go a-questing for his missing memory, and
that of his wife, who is also amnesiac... This leads him through a series
of travels and encounters; slimy marshes, bottomless chasms, shadowy
forests, infested with welcome and unwelcome companions (beauteous maidens
jostle with moronic yet sly ogres, and polite but rigidly rule-mongering
dragons).
Regardless of which Soldier, well, 'soldiers on' as it were. Riddles
are unriddled, chasms are bridged (in proper fairy-tale fashion), enemies
are slain, or tricked, or pricked in their honour, all just in time
for Soldier and his cohorts to square up to the real challenge.
For, at last, the conflict long awaited has arrived. The two great
wizards, IxonnoxI (good) and OmmullummO (evil) are squaring up to fight
for the throne of the King-Magus. However, rather than go at it head-to-head
(and reduce the world to a glowing cinder in the process) they elect
to fight it out by proxies. Soldier, his mercenary army of Carthagans
(the dwellers in the Red Pavilions) and the hapless Guthrumites, find
themselves up against the minions of OmmullummO, including the obligatory
Barbarian Hordes and a dark figure of Nemesis from Soldier's haunted
past...
The reason why these books work so well is their humour. There are
grim deeds done here, and painful revelations (Soldier is not the man
he thought he was, nor one he particularly wanted to be), but no-one,
ultimately, takes themselves too seriously. The characters tease each
other, occasionally with real wit, and this lightens the tone and helps
the story zip along. With its blend of classic, fairy-tale themes and
motifs, its inventiveness and its engaging language and attitude, Hunter's
trilogy delivers high-value entertainment, and is a fresh and welcome
departure from the stale, high fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons-based fake
medievalism that chokes so much of the genre.
Review by Simeon Shoul.
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
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