{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review Legends and Legends II: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy Edited by Robert Silverberg, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review

Legends and Legends II: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy

Edited by Robert Silverberg,

Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in these reviews. 

The two Legends short fantasy novel collections, edited by Robert Silverberg, first came to my attention when I was reading Terry Brooks' Shannara Chronicles to my elementary-school-aged son. I'd read that an epilogue to The Wishsong of Shannara (a particular favorite of ours) called "Indomitable" had been included in Legends II, and if there was a second installment, there also must be first, in this case, logically called Legends. Naturally, I bought the book and became interested in both volumes of these all-star collections. The concept is intriguing. In the introduction, Silverberg says that these masters of the genre became famous through the series their particular stories are set in. In my mind, that made for a great initiation into already popular series from the crème de la crème of fantasy writing. 

Unfortunately, I failed to take into account that most of these series are well established with multiple entries. Stepping into them, even with a prologue or offshoot--in other words, an installment that presumably comes before the beginning of the official series, or merely runs parallel with it but doesn't necessarily share the same storyline--proved to be intimidating, to say the least. 

I'll say upfront that all 11 stories in each collection, even the ones I couldn't really get into, were well written and engaging. I have no trouble believing that those who are fans of the individual series represented here will love these bonus offerings. However, having little or no previous reading experience with the majority of the writers and their series from both collections, I didn't have the same impression as readers familiar with their worlds. I can't say for sure whether the contributing authors were the types who deliberately refused to explain previous events (some writers are like that--I'll discuss that assessment more next week) or if they made every effort to adequately establish their worlds and characters and it simply didn't work in my case--in part because it's easy to become overwhelmed if there are already several works available in a particular sequence that haven't been read previously (or at least read recently). 

These two collections require a bit of explanation because they've been republished and repackaged (by more than one publisher) so many times. The list of stories and series contained within the first collection are as follows: 

Legends (hardcover published in 1998; trade paperback in 1999 with 715 pages)

1.     Stephen King: "The Little Sisters of Eluria" (The Dark Tower)

2.     Terry Pratchett: "The Sea and Little Fishes" (Discworld)

3.     Terry Goodkind: "Debt of Bones" (The Sword of Truth)

4.     Orson Scott Card: "Grinning Man" (The Tales of Alvin Maker)

5.     Robert Silverberg: "The Seventh Shrine" (Majipoor)

6.     Ursula K. Le Guin: "Dragonfly" (Earthsea)

7.     Tad Williams: "The Burning Man" (Memory, Sorrow and Thorn)

8.     George R. R. Martin: "The Hedge Knight" (A Song of Ice and Fire)

9.     Raymond E. Feist: "The Wood Boy" (The Riftwar Cycle)

10.  Anne McCaffrey: "Runner of Pern" (Dragonriders of Pern)

11.  Robert Jordan: "New Spring" (The Wheel of Time)

Note (because I'll bring this up again later): This is the order in which the stories are featured in the full collection. 

In 1999 and 2000, Legends was split between two volumes:

·       Volume One contained the stories by Pratchett, McCaffrey, Martin, Williams, and Jordan.

·       Volume Two contained the stories by King, Goodkind, Card, Silverberg, Le Guin, and Feist.

 

 

Additionally, a three volume set was published, the first two released in 1999 and the final in 2000, separating the stories this way:

·       Volume 1 with King, Silverberg, Card, and Feist.

·       Volume 2 with Goodkind, Martin, and McCaffrey.

·       Volume 3 with Jordan, Le Guin, Williams, and Pratchett.

If you can believe it, there was another four volume set published after that, as reported by isfdb.org, but the page for it on that website is confusing, at best, about which stories were included in which volumes. 

Tracking down any of these, whether sold in one volume or over several, was a bit of a nightmare for me. Eventually, I frustratingly ended up with both Legends and Legends II as single volumes as well as all the individual ones--in some cases, more than one (because listings were confusing when I was purchasing them). Regardless, the stories I enjoyed in them did at least make the effort worthwhile and, hey, the gently used duplicates will make good gifts. 

All right, let's get to the reviews. As I said before in my Rogues Anthology review,  rather than insult some perfectly good writers and stories I just didn't happen to connect with--though I'm certain others will, I'll mainly go in-depth with reviews of the particular stories I actually liked in the first collection. 

From Legends: 

1)    1) The third story featured in this collection, "Debt of Bones" by Terry Goodkind, tells the origin of the Border between the realms in his fantasy world from The Sword of Truth. At the time of this publication, there were four novels available in this series. According to the introduction to the series included before the story, this tale takes place years before the first book, Wizard's First Rule. In "Debt of Bones", a woman comes to see the wizard Zorander (or Zedd) in "Debt of Bones" to beg him to save her young daughter from invaders to the land she hails from who have kidnapped her child. Her only means of persuasion is a debt owed (or so Abby believes) to her mother by the sorcerer. She goes into this endeavor certain it's the only way to save her daughter. But is it? I've never read anything else by this author, nor do I fully understand how this particular story fits in with the series it's associated with (I think Zedd may be the First Wizard, a mentor and friend to the two protagonists in the novels but, without reading them, I can't be sure). I can't say exactly why "Debt of Bones" gripped me the way it did when the previous two stories in the collection failed to impact me. For a good two dozen pages or so, I believed the main character Abby was a little girl. Then I found out she was actually the mother of the little kidnapped girl. I guess I had compassion for her desperate plight regardless of her age. The wizard Zedd and his ability to hold countless conversations simultaneously intrigued me, as did the impossible decisions he was forced to make--invariably either saving the many or the few, never all. I loved the final words in the story: "Enemies," the wizard said, "are the price of honor." In the future, I may see what The Sword of Truth series has to offer, on the basis of this compelling story.

2    2) The seventh story in this collection, "The Burning Man", by Tad Williams includes a haunted castle and events in the age before his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Series. Oddly enough, I found that I own all four books in this series and I'd read them maybe a decade or more ago. The only real memory I have of this is that I wanted to and felt that I should have liked this series more than I ultimately did. But, because this author's name was familiar, I gave "The Burning Man" more of a chance to make an impression on me than I usually would an unknown (to me) writer. It took a while for the story to grow on me, and there was some confusion in the first several pages before the plot began to coalesce and work itself into something intriguing. I believe the hindrance before that point was due to the style the story was written in, namely the one Arthur Conan Doyle and H. P. Lovecraft seemed to prefer. Both were enamored of telling stories by starting at the end of the story, when the main character is past the actual events. The protagonist in "The Burning Man" has come through the ordeal and decided to divulge all, and proceeds to retell that story from the start. In my mind, this removes any chance at all of the story being suspenseful since the reader is told upfront the main character has survived and, one way or another, things have worked out after a fashion. In general, I despise this manner of writing, but I will point out that it rarely stops me from reading a story I think I'll like. I'm particularly glad I gave this one a chance since I enjoyed it very much. In particular, the aspect that the heroine's stepfather is searching for something--the answer to what's beyond death, if anything, in order to give his life meaning. The path to finding what he seeks to the exclusion of all saps his happiness while his stepdaughter physically follows behind him in a blind sort of manner, always keeping to the dark so she isn't caught. What happens as a result teaches her that "love does not do sums, but instead makes choices, and then gives its all". Despite what I considered a limited way of presenting the story, the characters were well drawn, their quests intriguing and convincing. "The Burning Man" has made me consider re-reading the original series again, to evaluate whether I'll have a better reaction to it now. 

3    3) The eighth story in the Legends collection, "The Hedge Knight" is associated with George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, though it isn't actually part of that particular series per se, nor would I call it a prequel. Spinoff series is the best description for this. The three currently available stories in the A Knight of the Seven Kingdom series (which is what it was called in the trilogy compilation of it as well as will be called for the forthcoming HBO series) are set ninety years before A Song of Ice and Fire events, while the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and it does include characters from that series--Aegon Targaryen (known here as Egg, the future King Aegon V) and Ser Duncan the Tall (Dunk, the future Lord Commander of the Kingsguard). Hoping to gain employment as a knight for hire by participating in a tourney, Dunk instead finds himself fighting for his life when he crosses the wrong Targaryen in order to save a young, pretty puppeteer artist. I first read this story after getting the Legends II: Dragon, Sword, and King volume in order to read Terry Brooks' "Indomitable". At that time, I'd just started getting into the "Game of Thrones" world. I had no idea how these characters fit in. The Dunk and Egg (as in, "dunk an egg") aspect seemed silly to me. So I can't say I appreciated the story the first time I read it. However, when I reread it recently in association with Legends, it was with a much clearer comprehension of the primary series. I really liked and rooted for Dunk and Egg. As soon as I finished this story, I ordered the trilogy of novellas, published together in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, complete with illustrations by the fabulous Gary Gianni. I intend to review that series in a separate article soon. 

Incidentally, if anyone's interested, in my article "Of Proper Short Story Collection Assemblage" (you can find it here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2024/06/of-proper-short-story-collection.html), I talked about how stories should be arranged in an anthology, with the strongest as the first, last and middle, with other good ones sprinkled throughout the middle portions of the collection evenly, so as to maximize reader enjoyment and prevent walking away before finishing the entire volume. Based on my reasoning in that article, I ended up liking the third, seventh, and eighth stories most in Legends. I believe it would have been much more effective to have Martin's story first, "Debt of Bones" last, and "The Burning Man" smack-dab in the middle as the sixth story in the collection. 

Next week I'll review Legends II. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

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