"This region is a hellhole beyond the Swamp of Kushh, and no man knows what dangers, aye what horrors lie in wait there. The King will risk no loyal subject on an errand of such peril; he sends only an army of the condemned--aye, the damned. And I--damned as well--to lead it."
 |
| Warning: There is no archer girl in this book, and no giant snake |
Exile's Quest is the story of Baron Gallt. "Who is Baron Gallt?" you ask? He is the twenty-three-year-old feudal ruler of the Barony of the Iron Mountains, which lies on the edge of the Empire, far from Boorn. Gallt owes fealty to King Sigrieth, and is at court in the Kingdom of Boorn to participate in the tourney; Gallt is one of those giant musclemen with "upper arms...as large as most men's thighs" whom we so often find in sword and sorcery stories and so naturally he was the victor of the tourney. But Gallt has problems. Problem number one is his drinking problem: he's been hitting the sauce ever since his father died not long ago. Problem number two is a problem with the ladies: while he has been at court a sexy raven-haired woman, Kierena, whom we knew in The Sword of Morning Star as the evil sorceress who could turn herself into a wolf and was called by her detractors "The Black Bitch," has been coming on to him, even when her husband is right there with them! As the novel begins Kierena proves herself one dangerous character when she instigates a sword fight between a drunk Gallt and her husband by throwing herself into Gallt's arms to inflame hubby's jealousy. Gallt tries to just disarm and overpower Kierena's wronged husband, but Kierena pushes this poor sap from behind during the fight so that he gets impaled on Gallt's sword. As her husband falls dead Kierena tells Gallt they should get married, but Gallt spurns her and hurries to the King to confess.
For their crimes, Kierena and Gallt are exiled and Gallt loses his barony. To my disappointment Kierena disappears from the narrative--after taking the radical step of murdering her husband to get her hands on Gallt you'd think she wouldn't just abandon her pursuit of the Gray Land's hunkiest slab of beefcake, and all through the rest of the book's 190 pages I kept hoping that she would reappear to add some sexual tension and some evil sorcery, but Kierena never resurfaced--she was never even mentioned again! A lost opportunity for some primo femme fatale action!
The King thinks Gallt is a good guy, just a little immature when it comes to the booze and the babes (and we've all been there, right?), so he offers him a chance to get his lands back. All Gallt has to do is lead an expedition to the "Unknown Lands" on the other side of an almost impassable swamp. This place is reputed to be full of monsters, and the last expedition the King sent there has never been heard from again, but His Majesty still holds out hope that the Unknown Lands would be a worthy addition to his Empire. Because he doesn't want to risk any more good men on this scheme, King Sigrieth empties his dungeon of thieves, rapists and murderers and puts Gallt at the head of a company of "the scum of the kingdom--all expendable!"
(This will remind moviegoers of 1957's The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, a personal favorite of mine, and 1967's The Dirty Dozen.)
(You'll remember that one of my beefs with The Sword of Morning Star was that it limited Helmut's agency--a lot of Helmut's accomplishments are the product of his being manipulated into doing them or being fated to do them. In general, an adventure story is better if the protagonist (and the villain!) is driven by his own passions and achieves or fails to achieve his goals because of his own decisions and abilities, says I. So I find the idea that Alexander, Caesar, Boney and Hitler's monstrous atrocities were a result not of their psychologies and choices, but because of a rock, and that their initial successes were a result not of their talents and skills as politicians and fighting men, but because of a rock, to be pretty damn lame.)
One of the best things in the novel is the development of Gallt's relationship with his army of criminals, represented by their leader, the biggest and strongest of the convicts, Gomon. Gomon stayed in shape in the dungeon by bullying all the other prisoners and stealing their food; they are all wasted but he is still muscles all over. Gomon hates the aristocracy, and before this brute chooses to follow Gallt to the Unknown Lands instead of making a one-way trip to the chopping block, the former-Baron of the Iron Mountains has to prove to Gomon that he is no mamby pamby pencil neck pantywaist dandified fop, but as rough and tough a fighting man as Gomon himself! Our man Gallt takes this in stride--he wants Gomon in his company because Gomon has a lot of military experience and he thinks Gomon is just the man to maintain discipline among his army of killers and thieves.
The company rides into barbarian territory and through the swamp, and Gallt and his force have to deal with cattle-riding barbarians, quicksand, a village of degenerate inbred fishermen, a friendly race of people who are half-human and half-frog, giant leeches, mutiny, and so forth. All this is entertaining; Haas does a good job with the landscape and obstacles and Gallt's methods of dealing with everything. Halfway through the book our heroes reach the Unknown Lands, but instead of the hellhole of horrors promised us, Gallt finds an idyllic forest inhabited by beautiful blue-eyed blondes who wear no clothes and live in harmony with nature. These hippies don't even eat--they are part plant, and absorb sustenance directly from trees by hugging them. Oh, brother!
As we so often find in SF stories, this lost race of weirdos is ruled by a beautiful purestrain human woman, Queen Thayna, the daughter of a wizard whom King Sigrieth sent into exile (exiling people is one of the Emperor's go-to methods of maintaining order in his Empire.) Thayna is even more beautiful than the plant people, but she wears clothes and eats food just like you and me. (You wear clothes, right?)
Paradise is in trouble, Gallt learns. The guy who lead the last expedition from Boorn, a dude named Barrt, the cousin of Albrecht, the villain of The Sword of Morning Star, overthrew Thayna and her pacifistic plant peeps and is now in charge of the Unknown Lands. Barrt has recruited the local bat-people, the "Weer," and snake-people, the "Slyth," to be his army (whoa, somebody should talk to Barrt about that coronavirus that is all over the news), and is exploiting the local gold mine with the idea of marching back to Boorn and taking over the world. The hippies and Thayna are on the run, and Barrt is going so far as to burn down whole tracts of the forest in his hunt for them.
You may recall that in The Sword of Morning Star the daughter of a noble who fell in love with Helmut gave a whole speech about how women are nurturers who love life, unlike men who are violent killers. Haas presents the same theme here in Exile's Quest. Thayna knows where the Power Stone is hidden, and when Barrt started taking over, she tells Gallt, she tried to use it to fight him, but it only works for men! (Who do you report Title IX violations to in the post-apocalyptic future full of wolfmen and snakemen?) You might also notice how Haas here reuses The Sword of Morning Star's theme of a bunch of defenseless goody goodies who know a better way of life who need the protection of our he-man protagonist from a bunch of half-human creepos lead by the fully human creepo. Recycling!
Gallt and Thayna fall in love almost at once and pledge to cooperate in the overthrow of Barrt, but before they can make whoopee or make war they are captured by snakemen and batmen and dragged before Barrt, who has Thayna thrown in the dungeon under the castle Thayna used to liver in and Gallt and his men thrown in the mines! Barrt tries to get Thayna to tell him where the Power Stone is by threatening to exterminate the defenseless hippie plant people if she won't fess up. When she keeps mum he and his army of mutants marches off to do some hippie bashing. Luckily, before Barrt can kill the tree huggers, Gallt, with the help of members of Barrt's original force who have stayed loyal to Borrn, and of Thayna's wizard father, who returns briefly to pitch in with some magical weather control which grounds the Weer air force, leads a slave rebellion and takes over the castle in Barrt's absence. Barrt hurries back to the castle at the head of his army, but by this time Thayna has given Gallt the Power Stone, which renders Gallt a military genius and his men invulnerable. Gallt's tiny force easily wipes out Barrt's massive army of scaly infantry and furry flyers, and Gallt becomes addicted to the Stone. Thayna spares the world the Galltonionic Wars by withholding sex and then threatening to commit suicide, by these womanly strategies convincing Gallt to give back the Power Stone so she can hide it from us bloodthirsty men.
In the last chapter of the novel the King notes that Gallt's adventures have matured him and we see Gallt and Thayna head off to the Iron Mountains to live happily ever after.
I have somewhat mixed feelings about Exile's Quest. The journey through the swamp is quite good, and I liked the snake-men and the bat-men, and the role the Power Stone plays in the story is interesting (I just wish Haas had skipped the sensationalistic references to Hitler, Bonaparte, et al.) The love story element--Thayna's relationship with Gallt-- is lame, and the utopian plant people are just silly. Thayna and the tree huggers are mostly superfluous; Gallt already has a reason to fight Barrt and his snake- and batpeople--Barrt is going to try to overthrow the King of Borrn, to whom Gallt owes allegiance and who seems like a good guy, a man worthy of Gallt's dedication. Instead of including childishly perfect hippies and a bland perfect girlfriend, Haas could have used those pages to develop a love triangle in which the evil Barrt pursued Kierena while evil Kierena pursued Gallt and to depict Gallt's efforts to resist being corrupted by those two charismatic traitors. Well, I guess Haas was looking to give Exile's Quest a happier ending than my own ideas would have permitted.
Despite my reservations, I enjoyed Exile's Quest; it is probably a little superior to The Sword of Morning Star. Worth my time.
No comments:
Post a Comment