The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
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My Rating:
4 out of 5 stars
First Published: December 2000
Read from: August 04 to 10, 2013
Cursed by a ‘blah’ Cover & Title, Blessed with Great Writing
I had never read any Lois McMaster Bujold before, and would not have selected this book to read from its description or cover if it had not been for the Sword & Laser book club, which selected it as this month’s pick as a “sword” or fantasy selection. The whole reason I decided to try and follow this club was that I was stuck in a rut of the same old “classic” sci-fi & fantasy authors and there were so many genre authors out but so many seemed to be… well, trash. I wanted to find a club that would read a mix of old & new, sci-fi & fantasy, and that would feature mostly the “good stuff”.
Despite initially judging this book poorly by its cover and my lack of knowledge about the author, The Curse of Chalion would definitely classify as good stuff. The fantasy novel is grounded in a well constructed medieval-like fantasy setting with lots of political intrigue, some action, and a little magic as the Gods work through their followers to manipulate events.
I went through waves of really liking this book and being somewhat ambivalent about it. If I could I would probably give the book 3.5 stars. But since the parts I liked I REALLY liked, and the parts I didn’t still were fairly good; I will give this book 4 stars overall.
And I plan to read more Bujold. While this book is a stand alone, there are two other books set in the same world. The next book “Paladin of Souls” apparently features a minor character from this book and received both the Hugo & Nebula awards for best novel the year it was released, so I have added it to a prominent position in my “Want To Read” list.
Back to this book… As I had not read any Bujold before (and being cheap), I didn’t want to chip out money for an unread author. Looking for a loaner digital version I could download, I discovered no ebooks of it were available via my library, but a digital audio book of it was. I usually can’t stay engaged with audio books the way I do with the written word. And while I had the same difficulty with this book, I believe it was my failing, as the reader seemed much more interesting than books I had listened to in the past. Downloading the audio book served its purpose in that by listening to it for some time I was interested enough in the main character and the world he lived in to try digging up a printed copy of the book. I managed to get an “old-fashioned” physical copy of the book put on hold at the library and received it quickly enough that I reread what little I had listened to.
Without going into any spoilers yet (the back cover mentions this stuff), the main character Cazaril, is a 35+ year old career soldier who is returning to the noble house he once served in as a page before leaving for war at the age of (16?) or so. While he served well and in leadership positions through much of his career he is returning now older than his years, broken in body and spirit after a stint as a slave. Wishing to find some safe position in his old home and become invisible as he could, he is taken in. However due to being a minor noble himself, and due to his knowledge and experience, instead of a lowly position he is named as the secretary-tutor of Royesse Iselle, the strong-willed sister of the boy Royse Tiedez who is next in line to rule Chalion. Both were sent to this minor house in their youth, but soon the children and Cazaril as their servant, are called back to the royal court of Cardegos, where old enemies of Cazaril now hold powerful positions…
Now for some specifics. Warning, spoilers follow!…
Spoiler: Curse of Chalion Specifics |
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Initially the Curse of Chalion moved pretty slowly. Several chapters into the book nothing much “action-wise” has still to really occur. In addition the main character of Cazaril started unlike most fantasy protagonists I had read. He was very reserved, almost the opposite of your usual hero due to being quite a broken man physically, mentally and spiritually. But it was the introduction to this very different but believable character that initially “hooked” me on the book and got me reading. As he recovers he eventually comes out his shell and if anything might be called “too perfect” of a character. I heard one reviewer call him the male version of a “Mary Sue”. I don’t know if I would go to that degree, but while the character seemed to be sometimes unbelievably “good” he was also very well written and engaging.
Besides the character of Cazaril, the interesting fantasy idea of “death magic” that is introduced in the first chapter also hooked me. Basically a person can perform an illegal ritual that if it works will call up a demon that will magically murder your target victim, but this demon will also ALWAYS kill the person who performs or even orders the ritual. This intial idea of course comes back in a BIG way part way into the book. It is the build-up to this death-magic event (which does not go as planned), and some of the fall out from it where the book first really picked up and became engaging to me and difficult to put down.
After this big event which I am not completely revealing here even in this spoiler-laden section of the review as it is so key, we learn more about the gods and magic of the world. You discover that the family line that rules Chailion is under a curse. As the head of Chalion, the Roya Orico is the most affected, but all the line including Cazaril’s charge Iselle is “infected”. Primarily through the interesting character of Umegat, Cazaril learns a lot more about the gods, their need to enter the world through simple animals or through a human who has given himself to the gods of his own free will.
While I really liked the well thought out idea behind the pantheon of gods and most of the supernatural aspects of this novel, the whole idea of the curse seemed pretty lame. The curse being held off somewhat by Orico’s menagerie of sacred animals and his downfall when that menagerie is taken away a little later in a dramatic page-turner section also seemed pretty hoaky to me. Near the end we learn a little more how the curse came to be, but mostly it seemed what it was, a much needed plot device.
Eventually our hero is off to get the prince of the neighboring country of Ibra to marry our heroine in hopes that by marying out of the ruling line of Chalion, Iselle can escape both the curse and the political danger she has found herself in. The whole middle section, from shortly after the dramatic scene involving death magic in the courts of Cardegos, until Cazaril’s ambasadorial quest to the neighboring country had a number of flaws I thought. It was still largely well written, but I had issues not only with the curse, but with our hero who seems to be merely reacting to one thing after another, the sudden lack of a real villian, and any real jeopordy. At this point even the “crime” of death magic suddenly becomes not so bad and the religious big wigs are more than willing to look the other way. The largest villian from earlier in the story has been largely illiminated, the other who you thought was behind the first turns out (at least here) to be just another victim of the curse who is easily circumnavigated.
The book really grabbed me again once Cazaril leaves Cardegos to take Iselle’s proposal to Bergon, the heir of Ibra. There was a lot of action in this climatic section too of course. I pretty much had difficulty putting the book down from here on out.
Here’s one great quote from this section:
Bergon shook his head. “Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I’d always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.”
“Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice — if not whether, then how, they may endure.”
As the book draws to a close our wishy-washy villain suddenly becomes very villainous again. Cazaril our “old” hero has grown in reverse and seems young again having defeated his own inner demons, seen somewhat into the realm of the gods (which was a very well written bit of prose), and now “leaks poetry”. Iselle gets her man, Cazaril gets his girl, and we have a thoroughly enjoyable (if somewhat campy) happy ending.
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