Black Gate

In 1998, American writer James Stoddard published his debut novel, The High House, and two years later followed it with a sequel, The False House. They’re two of the more remarkable fantasies I know.

The High House is Evenmere, a fantastic old rambling edifice that was the boyhood home of Anderson Carter. His father was Master of Evenmere, but the machinations of Anderson’s step-mother, Lady Murmer, led to him being sent away from the High House. Years later, he returns — just as evil forces are emerging to threaten the house, and by extension, all of creation.

For Evenmere, we learn, is not simply a house among houses. In a way, it is the world, and a stranger world than we know. Its doors open onto an endless series of hallways, home to whole nations. The clocks and lamps of Evenmere are the clocks and lamps that keep the universe in motion; for them to run down, or go out, is the ruination of all things, and it is the responsibility of the Master to ensure this does not happen. But the elder Anderson has disappeared, and the sinister Society of Anarchists is stirring …

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I’m on vacation, but for the one or two (and I’m probably overestimating) of you whose Saturday is not complete without something from me in this space, you can read my review of Robert Redick’s The Ruling Sea, the second volume of his The Chathrand Voyage series.

Regular programming should resume next week.

. . . And the boy thought,
This is wonderful! and left his father,
Soared higher, higher, drawn to the vast heaven,
Nearer the sun, and the wax that held the wings
Melted in that fierce heat, and the bare arms
Beat up and down in air, and lacking oarage
Took hold of nothing. Father! he cried, and Father!
Until the blue sea hushed him, the dark water
Men call Icarian now. And Daedalus,
Father no more, called “Icarus, where are you!
Where are you, Icarus? Tell me where to find you!”
And saw the wings on the waves, and cursed his talents,
Buried the body in a tomb, and the land
Was named for Icarus.

—Ovid, Metamorphoses Book VIII

Where does the love of fantasy, and of storytelling, start? For every person it’s different, of course. For me it begins with feathers on the waves.

Those feathers, the remains of Icarus’s joyful but tragic flight toward the sun when he forgot his father’s warnings, are specific for me. But the broad world of the tales of the Greeks and Romans are a gateway for many people into fantasy. Whether it started with the Minotaur, the war at Troy, the labors of Heracles, Bellerophon on Pegasus against the Chimaera, or Perseus and Medusa, the Greek’s ancient religion and the poets whose writing let it survive have introduced countless readers to the fantastic and the greatness it can achieve.

I’ve often thought about the source of the power of the Greco-Roman legends, their heroes and the gods, and why they still have such enormous affect on us today, when no one worships them any more. They were even losing their grip on religious importance in the time of Ovid, one of the greatest tellers of their exploits. In the twenty-first century, the Iliad is no less an engrossing a story, the plays of Sophocles can still ensnare an audience, and even Hesiod can infuse a sense of wonder in a modern reader as he writes about the beginnings of all things.

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