Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy (sometimes within the space of a paragraph) and from that
contrast it manages to extract a significance that makes it more than just a funny story of World War II.
Once I set out to drive from my parents' house to my uncle's; a journey I had made untold times before.
Normally it took half an hour or so. After driving for more than three hours (and having failed to
recognise any of the local terrain for at least two of them) I finally admitted defeat, rang my uncle and
asked him where I was. He didn't know. How could he?
On a good day I can't do geography; on a bad day I don't even try. Once, on a very bad day, I set out to
drive from Miramar to the centre of Wellington and ended up in Lower Hutt. If you don't live in
Wellington, perhaps I can convey the monumental nature of my geographically challenged state by
saying that the journey is somewhat akin to travelling from Australia to New Zealand via Finland, which is
a journey that I actually made once but that's another story.
Harry Harrison has now completed the trilogy that he began with The Hammer and the Cross. His
alternate world is now well established. Shef, the One King, and the semi-religion that is known as The
Way holds hegemony over much of the north. But other armies are stirring in the Mediterranean and
Shef finds himself caught between the forces of Islam on the one hand and the Christian army of the
Holy Roman Empire on the other. The novel moves very slowly in comparison with the earlier volumes.
There is much less derring-do and much more introspection. Often I found the political intrigues less
than intriguing and the scientific rabbits pulled out of hats at vital moments were less convincing than
before. However the pursuit of the Christian relics (a theme introduced in the second volume when Shef
finds and then loses the lance that pierced Christ's side on the cross) continues with all parties searching
for the Holy Grail itself. What they find and the use they make of it seems to me to introduce a genuinely
original and fascinating theme that I would have liked to seen developed further. Ultimately though, the
novel was too slow moving to be satisfying and too political to maintain the interest.
Jack Vance's new novel Night Lamp bids fair to be one of the best things he has ever done, as long as
you don't read it for the story. The book is not quite devoid of incident, but there are long, long
stretches where very little happens to propel the plot (such as it is). However that doesn't matter in the
slightest -- this book is vintage Vance, Vance par excellence. There is a wild, wonderful wit and quirky,
pointed social commentary and the most brilliant use of language. And as with all the very best Vance
novels there is a footnote on the first page.
Hilyer and Althea Fath come across a boy being beaten to death on the world of Camberwell, by Robert
Palmer's star in the Gaean Reach. They rescue him and adopt him and call him Jaro (for such a
mysterious voice proclaims his name to be -- the boy himself retains no memory of this or indeed of
anything else that pre-dates his adoption by the Faths). Growing up on Gallingale under the tutelage of
the Faths (who are both musicologists, though Hilyer specialises in the Theory of Concurrent Symbols)
Jaro meets the mysterious Tawn Maihac, a man of whom the Faths disapprove but who will have a
profound effect on Jaro's later life. At school he meets Skirlet Hutsenreiter, a young lady who belongs to
a social club known as the Clam Muffins. Social status on Gallingale is defined by the club to which one
belongs. Skirlet is of abnormally high status, the Clam Muffins being preferred even over the Val Verdes
or the Sick Chickens. The Faths (and therefore Jaro) are nimps -- they do not belong to a club and take
no part in the social status round. This causes some problems.
Jaro's mysterious origins and his attempts to unravel them with the help of Tawn and Skirlet are the main
thrust of the plot (and the resolution is satisfyingly complex and twisted) but the main joy of the book is
in the unravelling of the strange societies and outré customs of the Gaean Reach, all told in a language
and with a wit the like of which there never was on land or sea -- except in other Vance novels of
course. Vance is not to everyone's tastes but he is high on my list of favourite writers and Night Lamp
is high on my list of favourite Vance novels.
Being geographically challenged, I have often claimed that I can get lost walking from the bedroom to the
bathroom and few people ever believe me, except for those who were there the day it happened. I was
staying in a hotel and I awoke in the night with an urgent need to pee. No problem -- the bathroom is
over there. I strode confidently (and sleepily) towards it, opened the door and entered, valves all over