Tracy & Laura Hickman, Mystic Empire --
Book Three of the Bronze Canticles (Warner Books, 2006)
It turns out that I made a bit of error in my previous reviews of The Bronze Canticles. In my reviews for Mystic Warrior and Mystic Quest, I believed that the Hickmans were building a fantasy trilogy encompassing the adventures of the humans, faeries, and goblins, and their various interactions within the world of dreams. However, with the third volume, Mystic Empire, the story is left hanging in the air, leaving plenty of space for several future volumes. The unfortunate part of this realization however, is that with this third part of the series, the story runs out of steam.
Hampered by a distractingly clichéd writing style (imagine copious amounts of hand-wringing, sighing, tear-shedding, and fist-clenching) and an uneven plot webbed with numerous holes and loose ends and all-too-convenient developments, Mystic Empire spends whatever goodwill points the first two books built up.
As Mystic Quest was from Mystic Warrior, this third installment is separated from the previous two novels by a substantial gap of time. Mystic Empire takes place eighty years after the events of Mystic Quest. In the world of the humans, the mystics have managed to turn the ruins of Calsandria into a powerful city of the burgeoning mystic world. In only eighty years, they have already managed to develop a complicated caste system, with the idea that the stronger the mystic bloodline, the more political heft a family has.
The Conlan family, comprised of ambitious father Rylmar, vapid beauty Valana, and plain-jane Theona (who is relegated to commoner status due to an apparent lack of Deep Magic ability), takes a stab for increased power by arranging a marriage between Valana and Treijan Rennes-Arvad, who as a direct descendant of the famous Galen Arvad, is the heir to the Mystic Empire. Unfortunately, before the nuptials can be finalized, Treijan is spirited away from Calsandria, apparently by the machinations of his companion Gaius, and Theona and Valana set out to find him and redeem the honour of their family.
In the world of the Faerie, Dwynwyn is still Queen of the Dead and ruler of Sharajentis, the faerie equivalent of Calsandria. Aislynn, however, is no longer in the picture, having mysteriously vanished on an exploration mission. Unfortunately, she leaves behind a son, Arryk, who is a veritable Fae James Dean. He's grumpy, orphaned, and resentful, and hangs around with shady company in the realm of dreams, but no reason for his dubious behaviour is ever offered. He's a rebel without a cause, other than the fact that he is orphaned and bored.
The Fae, respecting the prejudices of the warlike and entirely magicless Kyree, have refused to acknowledge that the "lesser" races, Famadorians, might possess the magic of the Sharaj. However, when one of them, an escaped centaur slave, appears literally on their doorstep and Arryk offers him aid, the repercussions mean war between Sharajentis and the jealous Kyree.
And in the world of the goblins, brilliant but deluded Deep Tinker Lunid becomes infatuated with Arryk after meeting him in the realm of dreams and is determined to have him. Her disturbing (and entirely unrequited) love for Arryk inspires her to create a device that can create a portal between the worlds. Her heedless passion leads to her be easily manipulated by Skramak, Emperor of the goblins, who sees the portal as a way to have all the power and glory of conquering a new world without ever having to leave his backyard. With the use of Lunid's invention, as well as the use of Songstone portals in both the faerie and human worlds, the three worlds begin to mingle and interact in earnest.
Much of the reason for the story's lag is the lack of purpose. Most significant actions, like expeditions, experiments, or conversations, are arranged haphazardly, and the result is that much of the plot seems to occur by accident. The characters stumble around, ignorant and reckless and mired in cliché (cue hand-wringing, sighing, tear-shedding, and fist-clenching), until they run into an obstacle, defeat it, usually, with an act so ridiculous it barely falls short of being a deus ex machina, and then repeat the entire process with increasing speed.
With interesting characters, this process might have been a little entertaining, but their personalities seem just as haphazard as the rest of the novel. There's Theona, the sensible, common girl, whose primary reaction to the fact that she might possess an new type of Deep Magic is first to ignore it, then deny it, then to sit passively by while her friends proceed to ignore it and then deny it. Then there is Treijan, a jovial prince whose main flaw is that he is prone to politically inconvenient convulsive seizures. Precisely why his condition would be politically inconvenient is never fully explored, considering his ancestors in the Deep Magic were prone to actual fits of raving madness but that didn't stop them from building an entire empire. There is the aforementioned Fae rebel Arryk, the pathetically enamoured Lunid, a practical centaur with truncated speech, a mischievous dwarf, a crazy old man out for revenge, and a host of baddies hungry for ultimate power and destruction at any cost.
Each new installment in the Bronze Canticles series takes place some time in the future with a new cast of main characters (with the exception of Dwynwyn, who has remained a prominent figure in all three books), giving the reader three books that are generally able to stand on their own. The good thing about this is, given the style of the Bronze Canticles, there is a chance that the fourth book will have no ties whatsoever to this disappointing third installment, and if the fourth novel returns to form we can all forget that Mystic Empire ever existed. My fingers are crossed.
