© 2006 by Gene
Wolfe
Latro – or is it
Lewqys? or Lucius? – lives his life in limbo.
Upon waking every morning he finds he has absolutely no memory of what
came before. The only object that gives
him a link to a past existence, for the faces he sees he must relearn day after
day, is a scroll labeled READ THIS he finds always at his side, which holds an
unfailing imperative to record the day’s events before sleep. And how even does one view “a life” when one
never has that essential part of one’s mind, memory?
Our flawed hero
does have an natural affinity with the sword.
And a group of companions who know him, his name, his past as a
mercenary. Some even care for him: the
captain of the vessel he sails upon, a burly fellow name of Muslak, and a
woman, his “wife” as she claims, Myt-ser’eu, a native of the exotic land Latro
finds himself in every morning, Kemet.
Kemet is the
name Egypt knew itself in antiquity. The
land of countless gods and goddesses, of temples and pyramids and obelisks, of
crocodiles, panthers and dreaded “water horses.” Desert, but not quite the desert we think of
when we think of Egypt today; no, it is often a lush garden paradise of
unspeakable beauty, at least the miles-wide strip of land girdling the majestic
color-changing waters of the great Nile, running up and down Kemet like a
spine.
Muslak’s boat is
pressed into service by the local autarch to seek what lies south of the
southernmost boundaries of the kingdom, where the Nile snakes down into the
more desolate regions of sub-Saharan Africa: the mythical lands of Punt and
Kush. On board is a whole host of
characters of shifting allegiances and motivations: a wizard, a woman made of
wax, a young monk with shaven head, an older aristocrat, a Greek merchant (a
“Hellene”), Latro’s own sneaking snakelike slave, and a handful of Persian and
Egyptian soldiers, ostensibly under our hero’s command, uneasily sharing close
quarters together. Due to Latro’s
unfortunate disability, we never know who is friend or who is foe from day to
day to day. Nor do we know, for certain,
the true purpose of the voyage – to find legendary gold mines, or a fables lost
temple of the last god, or – ?
Even more
interesting, Latro has another talent: an ability that counters his disability
(or perhaps, entirely the result of it), one he slowly comes to understand: He
can see things that others can’t. Things
such as the gods themselves. Their
familiars, their shape-shifting animal forms.
And he can speak, converse, barter and argue with them. And if not due to his broken memory, perhaps
this “sight” was brought on by a near-death experience, his life was weighed in
the scales of the courtroom of the hereafter, the forty-two gods of judgment?
For though the gods guide him (but to whose aims?), his human mind often
betrays him.
A very entertaining
read, quick and absorbing, and I intend to make my way through Wolfe’s two
earlier books featuring Latro. I must
confess to wearying of the repetitive amnesia plot contrivance about two-thirds
of the way through, especially since I felt it weakened considerably the
heavy-duty action that occurs at that point.
But this was easily overshadowed by experiencing the spiritual side of
Egypt come-to-life – fascinating, fantastical, unnerving and exciting all at once. Many of the mysteries are not revealed at
novel’s end, though Wolfe does leave the possibility of a fourth Latro novel a
better than good bet.
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