The Sword of Shannara, again

I've written before about Terry Brooks' (or is it really Lester and Judy del Rey's?) The Sword of Shannara, largely a carbon copy of The Lord of the Rings. When I last read it a decade ago, I wrote I'd probably never read it again:

I don’t hate The Sword of Shannara, but I doubt I will read it again. It does suffer in comparison to The Lord of the Rings. As I’ve aged my readings of Tolkien have become deeper and his themes more resonant while Brooks’ first book seems shallower and less successful than it did when I was eleven. The golden cloak of nostalgia — for my youth, for the excitement of reading a big book so quickly, for all sorts of things I associate with Sword — is fading. I fear if I read it again it will vanish entirely, and I think that might be a very sad thing.

The thing, now, is, I might actually read it again as part of my series of articles about Prof. Tolkien's writing. Brooks' novel is inextricably tied to LotR, as is my old affection for it. Since the glow fade from Sword for me, I don't think I've ever read it in close conjunction with LotR and I'm curious to examine them side by side. 

Now, I don't think my somewhat still warm feelings for Sword will fade after a reread. Those feelings were real, and I can never be less than grateful for the world of fantasy reading that it was instrumental in opening. The Lord of the Rings was and will always remain its own thing for me. It stands alone. Sword is part and parcel of the stacks of books I read in its wake, but it is and will always remain the first one. 

I don't get the feeling Sword is anywhere near as popular as it once was. With the death of the Tolkien clones in favor of the GRRM clones, readers' tastes seemed to have shifted from the too-noble heroes to the too-amoral anti-heroes. Brooks has sold 25 million books over about fifty years, whild GRRM has sold over 90 million. That all makes me a little depressed. At least the Tolkien clones, even if poorly, stressed things like honor and courage. 

I probably won't read it until the end of the summer, though, I will advise anyone to never rely on me saying when I'll read what. 

PS: Aside from those of Glen Cook and Terry Pratchett, I don't think I've read more installments in a series than those of Shannara. I've definitely read the first trilogy, the four Heritage of Shannara books, and, I think, First King of Shannara. That's eight, big books.

There's a flatness to Brooks' writing - I said previously that Sword settled for talking when it should've been singing - and his characters never stray far from the standard fantasy/adventure stories tropes, but there's a compelling drive to his narratives that dragged me on to the next book. I actually planned to finish the series (I really wanted to get to the later books that bridge the gap between the demon-cause nuclear holocaust and the world of Sword). At this point, I doubt I will, but I might just skip nine (9!) books, and pick up some of those later ones.

Gandalf and the Witch King

 Gandalf and the Witch King from Rankin and Bass' The Return of the King (1980)

Something I brought up writing about The Return of the King - the confronatation between Gandalf and the Witch King. It's one of the most striking moments in the book and Peter Jackson left it out of the movie. He sort of included it in the extended cut, but it's moved about and weak. I've castigated Jackson for always dropping nuance in favor of action. I can at least appreciate that for someone making a visual work of art. But, man, he's handed an utterly staggering scene and he doesn't do it. I remember sitting in the theater, waiting for the scene, and BAM, nothing! Sheesh.

   In rode the Lord of the Nazgul. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazguˆl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face. 

   All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dınen.

   ‘You cannot enter here,’ said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. ‘Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!’ 

   The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter. 

   ‘Old fool!’ he said. ‘Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!’ And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade. 

   Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn. 

   And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.

 

 Gandalf and the Witch King (and Grond in the background)

by Ted Nasmith

 

The Two Towers: The Dead Marshes of the Somme

In my first Lord of the Rings article on Black Gate, a commenter described the book as "tasting of ashes" and attributed it to Prof. Tolkien's experiences during the First World War. I don't taste the ashes, but there are parts of the trilogy that reek heavily of them. He had managed to defer joining the army (as an officer) until he graduated in 1915. This meant he missed the early portion of the war - the Marne, Loos - but it meant he literally had his baptism of fire during the Somme Offensive. 

Initiated to relieve the German pressure on the French at Verdun, the Somme Offensive lasted from July 1, 1916, thru November 18, 1916. Tolkien was there until nearly the end, only being invalided out in October after contracting trench fever. The opening day of the battle is the deadliest day in British history. There were 60,000 casualties with 20,000 killed. The final casualties of the offensive between the British, French, and German armies were over one million.

Tolkien's children said, "he would occasionally talk of being at the front: of the horrors of the first German gas attack, of the utter exhaustion and ominous quiet after a bombardment, of the whining scream of the shells, and the endless marching, always on foot, through a devastated landscape, sometimes carrying the men's equipment as well as his own to encourage them to keep going." Of his close friends, only one survived the war. The United Kingdom, with a population of about 42,000,000 when the war started, lost almost 900,000 dead. That all this might permeate The Lord of the Rings isn't surprising.

 

Crossing the Dead Marshes by Ted Nasmith

Presently it grew altogether dark: the air itself seemed black and heavy to breathe. When lights appeared Sam rubbed his eyes: he thought his head was going queer. He first saw one with the corner of his left eye, a wisp of pale sheen that faded away; but others appeared soon after: some like dimly shining smoke, some like misty flames flickering slowly above unseen candles; here and there they twisted like ghostly sheets unfurled by hidden hands. But neither of his companions spoke a word.

At last Sam could bear it no longer. ‘What’s all this, Gollum?’ he said in a whisper. ‘These lights? They’re all round us now. Are we trapped? Who are they?’

Gollum looked up. A dark water was before him, and he was crawling on the ground, this way and that, doubtful of the way. ‘Yes, they are all round us,’ he whispered. ‘The tricksy lights. Candles of corpses, yes, yes. Don’t you heed them! Don’t look! Don’t follow them! Where’s the master?’

Sam looked back and found that Frodo had lagged again. He could not see him. He went some paces back into the darkness, not daring to move far, or to call in more than a hoarse whisper. Suddenly he stumbled against Frodo, who was standing lost in thought, looking at the pale lights. His hands hung stiff at his sides; water and slime were dripping from them.

‘Come, Mr. Frodo!’ said Sam. ‘Don’t look at them! Gollum says we mustn’t. Let’s keep up with him and get out of this cursed place as quick as we can – if we can!’

‘All right,’ said Frodo, as if returning out of a dream. ‘I’m coming. Go on!’

Hurrying forward again, Sam tripped, catching his foot in some old root or tussock. He fell and came heavily on his hands, which sank deep into sticky ooze, so that his face was brought close to the surface of the dark mere. There was a faint hiss, a noisome smell went up, the lights flickered and danced and swirled. For a moment the water below him looked like some window, glazed with grimy glass, through which he was peering. Wrenching his hands out of the bog, he sprang back with a cry. ‘There are dead things, dead faces in the water,’ he said with horror. ‘Dead faces!’

Gollum laughed. ‘The Dead Marshes, yes, yes: that is their name,’ he cackled. ‘You should not look in when the candles are lit.’

‘Who are they? What are they?’ asked Sam shuddering, turning to Frodo, who was now behind him.

‘I don’t know,’ said Frodo in a dreamlike voice. ‘But I have seen them too. In the pools when the candles were lit. They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them.’ Frodo hid his eyes in his hands. ‘I know not who they are; but I thought I saw there Men and Elves, and Orcs beside them.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Gollum. ‘All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs. The Dead Marshes. There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Sméagol was young, when I was young before the Precious came. It was a great battle. Tall Men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking. They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping.’

The Dead Marshes by Alan Lee

 

‘But that is an age and more ago,’ said Sam. ‘The Dead can’t be really there! Is it some devilry hatched in the Dark Land?’

‘Who knows? Sméagol doesn’t know,’ answered Gollum. ‘You cannot reach them, you cannot touch them. We tried once, yes, precious. I tried once; but you cannot reach them. Only shapes to see, perhaps, not to touch. No precious! All dead.’

Sam looked darkly at him and shuddered again, thinking that he guessed why Sméagol had tried to touch them. ‘Well, I don’t want to see them,’ he said. ‘Never again! Can’t we get on and get away?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Gollum. ‘But slowly, very slowly. Very carefully! Or hobbits go down to join the Dead ones and light little candles. Follow Sméagol! Don’t look at lights!’

from The Passage of the Marshes 

Scenes from the Fellowship

 

He lifted his heavy eyes and saw leaning over him a huge willow-tree, old and hoary. Enormous it looked, its sprawling branches going up  like reaching arms with many long-fingered hands, its knotted and twisted trunk gaping in wide fissures that creaked faintly as the boughs moved. The leaves fluttering against the bright sky dazzled him, and he toppled over, lying where he fell upon the grass.

He turned, and there in the cold glow he saw lying beside him Sam, Pippin, and Merry. They were on their backs, and their faces looked deathly pale; and they were clad in white. About them lay many treasures, of gold maybe, though in that light they looked cold and unlovely. On their heads were circlets, gold chains were about their waists, and on their fingers were many rings. Swords lay by their sides, and shields were at their feet. But across their necks lay one long naked sword.

The dark figure streaming with fire raced towards them. The orcs yelled and poured over the stone gangways. Then Boromir raised his horn and blew. Loud the challenge rang and bellowed, like the shout of many throats under the cavernous roof. For a moment the orcs quailed and the fiery shadow halted. Then the echoes died as suddenly as a flame blown out by a dark wind, and the enemy advanced again.

'Over the bridge!' cried Gandalf, recalling his strength. 'Fly! This is a foe beyond any of you. I must hold the narrow way. Fly!' Aragorn and Boromir did not heed the command, but still held their ground, side by side, behind Gandalf at the far end of the bridge.

'Behold the Argonath, the Pillars of the Kings!' cried Aragorn. 'We shall pass them soon. Keep the boats in line, and as far apart as you can! Hold the middle of the stream!'

   As Frodo was borne towards them the great pillars rose like towers to meet him. Giants they seemed to him, vast grey figures silent but threatening. Then he saw that they were indeed shaped and fashioned: the craft and power of old had wrought upon them, and still they preserved through the suns and rains of forgotten years the mighty likenesses in which they had been hewn. Upon great pedestals founded in the deep waters stood two great kinds of stone: still with blurred eyes and crannied brows they frowned upon the North. The left hand of each was raised palm outwards in gesture of warning; in each right hand there was an axe; upon each head there was a crumbling helm and crown. Great power and majesty they still wore, the silent wardens of a long-vanished kingdom. Awe and fear fell upon Frodo, and he cowered down, shutting his eyes and not daring to look up as the boat drew near. Even Boromir bowed his head as the boats whirled by, frail and fleeting as little leaves, under the enduring shadow of the sentinels of Númenor. So they passed into the dark chasm of the Gates.

   Then Boromir had come leaping through the trees. He had made them fight. He slew many of them and the rest fled. But they had not gone far on the way back when they were attacked again, by a hundred Orcs at least, some of them very large, and they shot a rain of arrows: always at Boromir. Boromir had blown his great horn till the woods rang, and at first the Orcs had been dismayed and had drawn back; but when no answer but the echoes came, they had attacked more fiercely than ever.

More Tolkien Covers

Last time I posted Barbara Remington's Lord of the Rings covers for Ballantine. Those were the first versions of Tolkien's books I read. They were my dad's and they eventually fell apart. When I bought a new set, they had covers featuring paintings by Tolkien. As much as I love Remington's on-the-nose sixties art, I prefer Tokien's. I love his art nouveau-influenced style and the rare chance to see an author's actual vision put to paper. I'm still looking for good shots of more of his art to post, but these four covers will do in the meantime.

depicted: Bilbo and the dwarves escaping the Elf King's hall

depicted: Hobbiton

depicted: Fangorn Forest

depicted: Barad-dûr

Beautiful Ballantine Covers

Many of the books I'm hoping to read for my new Black Gate column were published by Ballantine books, some as precursors to and others as part of the famous Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. That's got me looking at my shelf-full of them and their beautiful covers. Several times over the years I've written about the quality of old book covers compared to modern ones. It should come as no surprise I think the old ones come out on top most of the time.

While Gervasio Gallardo is probably the single artist most recognized from the Ballantine AF books Lin Carter edited, there were other artists of note, especially for the pre-Carter books. Here are some of my favorites, all by the recently deceased Barbara Remington.

These hippy trippy covers were my first vision of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien couldn't understand them, but that's because Remington wasn't able to read them before doing the covers. She said she would have done something very different if she had, but I'm glad she didn't. I love these ludicrous artifacts from stranger days. 

I particularly love that together they form one lunatic vision of Tolkien's world

The first three of these are by Barbara Remington, while the fourth, possibly by a different artist, is uncredited. I hope to tackle Worm sooner rather than later, but I make no guarantees. These covers are remarkable. I love the ouroboros motif and the high middle ages depictions of the knights and castles. The dogs and lions on Mistress have a heraldic quality reflects perfectly echoes Eddison's medieval stylings. 

I look and look at both these sets of covers and I wonder why must we continue to suffer God awful photoshopped covers. 

Art from the Lord of the Rings: Covers From My Youth

If you aren't already aware, let me tell you there's been tons and tons of art created for The Lord of the Rings. Of course there were the Brothers Hildebrandt's calendars I posted about recently, but there's so much more.

I'll start with the covers for the editions I grew up with. The first are wild, psychedelic paintings by Barbara Remington. She hadn't read the books when she created them but had to go on a synopsis from a friend. So the original cover for The Hobbit she did had a lion and fruit that looked like some sort of wild gourds. Later versions removed the cat, but left in the pumpkins.

The second covers I became familiar with were paintings by Prof. Tolkien himself. I love his paintings, all washed out colors and faceted like something hand carved. I'll do a full post of his artwork soon. 

Hobbiton on the Styx

Barrels Out of Bond

Emus? Cassowaries? 

Hobbiton

OK, Shelob and Cirith Ungol. Pretty cool.

Fangorn Forest

The Armies of Sauron... on crack!

Barad-dûr and Mount Doom

The Remington covers were so popular they were made available as a poster. Her work was lampooned on the cover of Bored of the Rings as well.

EPIC

So I'm taking a break from the long 19th century and swords & sorcery and diving into epic high fantasy for a little while. I can't help myself. Rereading The Sword of Shannara sparked a renewed interest in big, sprawling struggles against evil. Right now I'm plunging into Stephen Donaldson's First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. So far, it's pretty wild.

Remember, big fantasy wasn't alway bad. It only got bad when fans and writers got lazy. The fans where happy with more of the same old dark lords and plucky farm boys crap and the writers were happy enough to provide them. And the publishers discovered that the fans were even happier when the series piled book on top of book. 

But there's good, good stuff out in the fields epic high fantasy. Over the next couple of months I'm hoping to work my way through some classic books, a few newer ones, and maybe even a few written as critiques of the genre.

Northwestern Middle-earth

The Lord of the Rings remains my first, and truest love of epic high fantasy. Prof. Tolkien turned me on to thick appendices, detailed maps of fictional realms, and invented languages and histories.

He also elevated fantasy to an operatic scale with a deep moral underpinning, things that weren't especially important to the tales writers like Howard, Smith, and Moore told. Or at least the moral issues were grayer. They wrote darker ambiguous tales that focused on one or two characters with less clear cut relationships to good and evil.

Instead of mighty thewed warriors or cagey wizards, in LotR Tolkien threw small, average men (well, hobbits) into the struggle against utter darkness. Part of the purpose of that was to depict the need for everyone to confront evil. Another was to illustrate the costs such a conflict imposes on even the victors.

Like the great body of myths that underlay German culture, Tolkien wanted to create something similar for the English. To do this he famously developed entire languages and a history that covers thousands upon thousands of years. In The Silmarillion he wrote stories akin to Beowulf and Sigfried and the wars between the Icelandic eddas. These stories would be the deep history that set the stage for the War of the Ring.

from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

I have a great love for history and I'm sure the faux history of LotR is a big part of what made it so appealing. Discovering the appendices when I finished The Return of the King was like finding a diamond at the bottom of a gold mine. It contained just enough about great and terrible events to conjure potent images in my head: the War of Dwarves and Orcs fought in the dark tunnels below the Misty Mountains, Ar-Pharazôn's rebellion against the Valar for example. It was easy to, and I did, lose oneself in LotR.

All those things are good and great, but it's the struggle between good and evil that effects me the most. As many people effect a supposedly worldly cynicism and talk about how there's no such thing as clear cut good and evil, most of them don't really believe it. In the 20th century humanity got a good view of what evil of the blackest: witness Stalinism, Hitlerism, Maoism, etc. (Hell, talk about evil dark lords. They really do exist) 

from the Fionavar Tapestry

Sometimes the forces arrayed against villainy aren't pure and noble, but they still fight. I'm all for bringing nuance into fantasy but to posit, as some authors seem to be doing, that the whole world is really only gray, strikes me as simpleminded. There is indeed evil in the world and I enjoy stories about the fight against it. In these malignant times, when women are enslaved, men routinely beheaded, and millions driven from their homes, I think we're well served to be reminded that such forces can be fought and defeated.

All of that goes into my definition of high fantasy, a term coined by Lloyd Alexander in an essay titled "High Fantasy and Heroic Romance." It is set in an imaginary world and there is at its heart a struggle against the forces of evil that are set to overwhelm it. Right now, investigating some of the genre's works I have read as well as some I haven't yet is what interests me right now.

It's a genre that's taken hits over the past decade. It's been criticized for reducing the world to a simply Manichean struggle, racism when it creates "evil" races liked orcs, endlessly reusing now-tattered props like the simple hero, wise sorcerer, and dark lord. There's some truth to all these claims. Often, though, the failures came from the pens of authors who picked up the trappings of LotR but neglected to look at its deeper themes and construction. 

from the Earthsea Cycle

Even today, when the genre has supposedly passed by such stories of good vs. evil told on a massive scale, its impact is still evident. In a 2009 essay, Richard K. Morgan disparaged Tolkien claiming his heroes were "Irritatingly Radiant Good" and his villains "Towering Archetypal Evil." So when I read his novel, The Steel Remains, I was more than surprised at the essential heroism and willingness to fight evil of his trio of heroes and the blithely evil villains. No doubt he thought by making his characters cynical and brooding he was somehow bettering Tolkien but there's still no doubting they're the good guys. 

George R. R. Martin has made clear he is a fan of Tolkien and wanted to combine big fantasy with what he sees as more realism. R. Scott Bakker's bleak (by which I mean like the blackest night when the stars, moon, and sun have all been snuffed out) Second Apocalypse series is heavily influenced by LotR, including its own versions of orcs, dragons, and trolls (sranc, wracu, and bashrags if you care to know), and has a map that looks like it might have come from the pen of JRRT himself. 

In case those of you who remember how I've long railed about all those thick books and endless series of fantasy novels, let me say I don't hate them all. I hate the ones that can't justify their length by the strength of their prose or storytelling. And that's most of them.  

Epic is a question of scale, not length. Worlds at stake and struggles against the forces of evil are what matter. In five short books, Lloyd Alexander's wonderful Chronicles of Prydain put the whole known world at risk. Joy Chant's Red Moon and Black Mountain does the same thing in a single volume. Glen Cook's original Black Company trilogy is monstrously epic and under a thousand pages. More recently John Fultz did epic in his three Books of the Shaper.

So that's what I'm working on these days. And I am still reading the long 19th century stuff, but this is going to take up lots of my reading and writing time so I figured why not give the site a new look to herald that? Enjoy!

The Brothers Hildebrandt's Tolkien Calendar 1976

Today, if you asked me who was my favorite Tolkien illustrator, I'd probably say Alan Lee or Angus McBride. But if you asked me who had the greatest effect on how I visualize Tolkien's stories there'd be another answer: the Brothers Hildebrandt. I'd love to say my mental images of LotR come completely from my own imagination and Tolkien's words, but that would be a lie. 

The Brothers Hildebrandt (Greg and Tim) painted three very successful Tolkien calendars back in the seventies ('76,'77, and '78'). To say they helped form my own mental images of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings would be an understatement. By their ubiquity alone they would have impacted me, but many of them are simply downright terrific. To this day some of the Hildebrandts' pictures loom over any rereading I do of Tolkien.

Their paintings are a little more cartoonish than either Lee or McBrides, the former's being more impressionistic, the latter's like the classic illustrators like Pyle and Wyeth. I never particularly liked the thick folds of the Hildebrandts' characters' clothing. Too many of their larger illustrations are static, and look staged and lifeless. Or the pig orcs. Man, do I hate the pig orcs (but the pictures featuring them are sensational, nonetheless).

What the Hildebrandts' art does have is vivacity and, whether bright or dark, bold colors. While Lee's illustrations are washed out and seemingly eroded with age, the Hildebrandts' are sharp and nearly every line clearly delineated. They would also look great on the side of a van or giant black light poster.

Without further ado, here're the pictures from the 1976 Ballantine Tolkien Calendar. '77 and '78 will follow in the next couple of days.

This is the weakest of the three calendars. Still, they made some interesting choices of subjects and all their positive hallmarks are present.

Ok, this is little doofy. But then, Tom's a little doofy.

See the folds of Strider's tunic? Too thick, I tell ya'! But I love his scary hand shadows on the ceiling and the massive size difference between him and the hobbits.

The thoughtful gentleman memoirist amongst the clutter.

I don't love this one. It looks like a weak Maxfield Parrish and Galadriel lacks any of the sort of grave majesty Tolkien ascribes to her.

Pic orcs debut (maybe). Trying to discover the source of this depiction of orcs, it looks as if this might be their first appearance. Gary Gygax attributed some sort of miscommunication with David Sutherland to them looking like this in the original Monster Manual. Still, it illustrates Merry's and Pippin's predicament well.

One of my favorite illustrations of LotR bar none . The description of Minas Tirith floored me when I first read it. Here, presented with little detail, all you can really tell about the city is that's it's built to epic proportions like some wonder of the ancient world.

Don't love this. Treebeard looks way too much like Gilbert Shelton's Phineas Freak.

Nothing to say, really. I like the glassy, oddly carved surface of Orthanc and the official looking pillars and chains surrounding it.

Gollum's a little too cartoony, but Minas Morgul (ne' Ithil) is perfect. Its architecture looks distinctly non-European which is a nice change of pace for fantasy illustrations.

Almost perfect. Eowyn's armor is a little too High Middle Ages instead of Volkswanderung Gothic-cowboy. I love the Witch-King's iron crown and the fell beast. Plus, the cloud filled skies and the shadow covering Eowyn's lower body. Good stuff.

Again, the blue of the sky and the cloud's various colors reminds me of Maxfield Parrish. I don't particularly like this picture. When I wrote some of the Hildebrandts' art was too static, this is a perfect example. While there's movement implied by the leftward sweep of the banner, the characters look like they're holding exaggerated poses they've been asked to hold too long. I'm not sure what Frodo's looking at but I think it's somewhere past Gandalf's waist.

That's Angus McBride's even better Eowyn and the Witch-King on the right. There's a greater sense of motion, Merry's there in the foreground, and the corpses are grimmer looking than in the Hibdebrandt's painting. McBride also does a better job with the armor and putting the white horse on Eowyn's shield. That's something the Hildbrandts got better at doing in their later pictures.