Forever After
Roger Zelazny, creator
Baen
Fiction, Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: The war is over. Evil Lord Kalaran has fallen to Prince Rango's forces of light, aided by four powerful magical artifacts obtained in
mind-bendingly dangerous quests from the four corners of the world. In the days before Rango's wedding to the beautiful (not to mention brave and deadly)
Princess Rissa, the land heaves a sigh of relief as peace soothes the scars of war... or not. Things have been downright strange around the capital city of
Caltus lately. Sourceless music booms through the night sky. Great sinkholes devour lakes, and mountains sink and rise overnight. Impossible animals roam the
countryside. And three comets of ill omen shine in the night skies.
Clearly, something isn't right.
The problem, sages seem to agree, is the very four artifacts that saved the land. Having that many items with that much potency so close together warps and wears
on the very fabric of reality. Unless they want the world to drown in a sea of chaos, the artifacts need to be scattered... returned from whence they came,
or stashed in some other suitably out-of-the-way place until there is need to quest for them again. So, Prince Rango gathers the four heroic companions who found
the artifacts and sends them forth once more. But there is some dispute about the true cause of the reality disruptions, and the questors each start to wonder the
same thing: will getting rid of the artifacts save the land, or doom it?
REVIEW: There's a certain irony in the fact that the last book the late Roger Zelazny worked on before his untimely demise is the first book of his that
I happen to read. In truth, this is more of an anthology: he came up with the idea, the quests' plotlines, and the between-quest chapters that tied them all together,
but the four tales themselves were each written by a different author. Since it's all the same story in the end, though, I just called this one Fantasy.
Technicalities aside...
As light fantasies go, Forever After proves hit and miss. It pokes fun at the conventions of epic fantasy without being cruel or belittling, but much of the humor
depends on references to our world as bits of it - modern and historical - dribble into their land through the reality distortions. It gets tiresome, being expected
to laugh at the sweet, brown fizzy drink that replaces all the castle wine stocks again and again and again. One of the stories also leans too heavily on crude humor,
even granting one of the magical artifacts the gift of flatulence. The strongest two stories find their own humor in their own world, and build to a good finale.
There's also a problem with coming in on a story after the epic battle rather than before it. Names and places are tossed about with reckless abandon while I was
still getting acquainted with the book. I knew I was reading the "after the battle" story, but I wasn't sure getting smacked between the eyes with such heavy info
dumps about what happened before Kalaran's fall so early on was necessary.
Once I passed the halfway point, I started enjoying the story. Unfortunately, the earlier deadweight and the name tangle drag it down to three stars in the ratings.
You might also enjoy:
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The Vlad Taltos series (Stephen Brust, Fiction - An assassin/detective works with his somewhat sarcastic dragonlike familiar)
The Artemis Fowl series (Eoin Colfer, YA Fiction - A boy genius and criminal mastermind pits his wits against the entire Faerie nation)
Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin (Diana Wynne Jones, Fiction - A magical world is forced to entertain offworld tourists with reconstructed fantasy epic adventures)
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (Diana Wynne Jones, Fiction - A tourist's guide to epic fantasy)
Heroics for Beginners (John Moore, Fiction - Armed with a handbook of practical heroics, a prince sets out to foil an evil warlord)
The Paper Bag Princess (Robert Munsch, YA Fiction - A princess sets out to rescue her boyfriend, abducted by a dragon)
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia Wrede, YA Fiction - Sick of being the proper princess, a headstrong girl runs away to live with dragons)
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