Book Review: Lord Valentine's Castle

© 1979 by Robert Silverberg

This is gonna sound a bit loopy, but … I think I just spent a year on another planet.

That planet is Majipoor, larger than earth, whose vast seas encircle a trio of just-as-vast continents.  Settled by man fourteen thousand years ago and now shared with a half-dozen alien species (not to mention the mysterious natives, the metamorphs), it has a rich history and a unique power structure.  Billions live, love, struggle and die beneath the just rule of the Coronal, the Pontifex, the Lady of the Isle and the King of Dreams.  Sea dragons frolic in the oceans, semi-intelligent hominids swing from branches in jungles with man-eating flora, wizards cast spells of varying power and a man with no memory finds himself a juggler at a festival on the other side of the world.

This is the best fiction I’ve read all year – and I didn’t want to read it.  Twenty-five or so years ago I bought and brought Lord Valentine’s Castle to my folks’ weekend house in upstate New York for a solo week of relaxing.  I remember being taken by it, reading Part I (of five), about a hundred pages, in two or three days.  I so enjoyed it I fished around in the garage and found some tennis balls and tried to teach myself juggling.  But when I got back home … I never finished it.  Not sure why.  I have no strong memories one way or the other.  Possibly life got in the way; back then I was working full-time, going to school at nights, playing in my band, and going on Round 3 with my first girlfriend.

Then I spotted Silverberg’s sequel, The Majipoor Chronicles, an anthology of tales taking place on that strange and vivid world, in a used book store sometime in the fall of 2011.  And it sat on my book shelf with fifty other paperbacks for three long years.  I was hesitant until I lifted it up on a whim and devoured it, instantaneously drawn into the mind of this great writer.  (Review of that work, here.)  As a result of my enjoyment of Chronicles, I drove to B&N, little ones in tow, and bought the first copy of Lord Valentine’s Castle I could find, this time determined to make it all the way to the very end.

I burned through it, often reading fifty, sixty pages at a clip.  And now, Silverberg’s other Majipoorean writings are on my Acquisitions List.  You know, just in case you wanted to pick something up for my birthday next month.

Why is Lord Valentine’s Castle so good?

Let me count the ways.

The first thing that seized me was, for lack of a better term, the “botanical” writing of the story.  Meaning the rich, vivid, sensuous descriptions of Majipoor – the woods, the seas, the deserts, the grass beneath ones feet, the encyclopedia of strange plants with strange names with strange and not-so-strange uses.  I recall reading literary criticism of Tolkien, how this was a major goal of his to bring Middle-earth to life: nature-writing, describing the landscape and the vegetation and the environment in such a pleasing and fascinating way that the reader cannot help but to see, feel, hear himself inside this world.  I believe more so than any other contemporary writer I’ve read (with the exception of, perhaps, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels), Silverberg comes closest to Tolkien with this facet of his writing.

Then, the plot.  Is Valentine the juggler the Lord Valentine of the book’s title?  Coronal of Majipoor, a “prime minister” of twenty billion souls?  I think the reader knows the answer to that.  The question is, how does he remember his past, convince his new-found friends and old allies (he appears to be in a new, completely different body), and regain what was rightfully his, to rebalance the scales of cosmic justice?  How did it happen?  How can he set things to right?  How can he – penniless and powerless – grasp and accomplish all this in the span of 580 pages?

That’s for the reader to enjoy.

And in so doing, he is exposed to the majestic sweep of history and culture as Valentine makes his way to Majipoor’s center of power, Castle Mount.  We meet different alien species – Skandars, Ghayrogs, Vroons, Hjorts, Metamorphs.  We travel over two vast continents, and ocean, an archipelago and the circular tiered island of the Lady of Dreams.  We learn the power structure and struggle between the Coronal / Pontifex, the Lady of the Isle, and the King of Dreams.  Dreams are an important part of the tale, with the Lady sending nebulous blessings and the King sending specific nightmares to punish the wicked, however he defines “wicked.”  But most importantly we meet people, characters that come to life in the space of a page, who turn the story in unanticipated directions, who provide Valentine with the tools to accomplish his mission – even when he’s not sure how or why or even if he should.

Finally – or firstly, for a fantasy geek like me – there are maps.  Several pages, detailed with cities and towns and mountains and rivers.  I love maps and refer to them often when reading these fantasy stories (as well as all the war stuff I’ve been reading over the past two or three years).  They clarify and focus the action, help bring the setting to life, and are, uh, just damn cool.  All fantasy begins with a map.  I remember studying the maps of Middle-earth as a twelve-year-old boy for hours and hours, and this is not an exaggeration.  Maps enhance, maps enliven.  Long live maps!

All in all, a great two weeks of reading.  Robert Silverberg is truly a master of the pen and the imagination and that magical ellipsis where the two meet.  I have Nightwings, The New Springtime, and The Face of the Waters on the shelf behind me to read (the last two books will be re-reads).  Can’t wait … perhaps I’ll start one in September.

Lord Valentine’s Castle: Grade – A+