Six Flags Viper in Print

A day at Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park in Southern California is a day full of wild roller coaster rides. In particular, a towering structure of daunting metal called the Viper twists and contorts in ways that makes a pretzel look like a crow's flightpath.

Seconds after being strapped in, you begin to ask yourself why you ever got on the thing, as it climbs and climbs in that clickety-clack rhythm common to all roller coasters. After it climbs and climbs for what seems an eternity, it climbs and climbs some more, and you wonder when you'll ever reach the top. As that fateful momennt arrives, when the clickety-clack ends, and you're suspended in an instant of silence as you crest -- so high you can pick out the serial numbers of geostationary communication satellites -- the ride truly begins.

You stare down at a drop that has to be a thousand percent grade. You speak a word you would never speak in the presence of your bishop. You don't know if you'll survive the dizzying drop.

Then you plummet. And scream. Hurricane forces rush past your cheeks. The track whirls you about in impossible directions. You dip and twist and loop upside down and sideways and inside out in ways that make absolutely no sense, and probably pass through several time warps in the process. You lose five IQ points as your brain thrashes about in your skull.

Finally the cars ease to a lumbering undulation as momentum dissipates. You sigh as the thrill dies away. You jerk to a stop without warning, your spine is in the shape of a Moebius strip, and you feel like Indiana Jones used your neck to swing over a bottomless pit. You catch your breath and climb out. And look around for the next roller coaster to ride.

That's what reading Dave Wolverton's Runelords is like. [Editor: Dave Wolverton writes the Runelords series under the pen name David Farland.]

It took me two tries to get into it. Wolverton is a master of description, painting a lush, detailed portrait of life in his fantasy world around Castle Sylvarresta. The only problem is, on page one, I don't care. I don't care about the Earth King effigies, or how the first day of Hofenfest is celebrated, or whether the eels were currently migrating up the River Wye. I just wanted to know, when is something going to happen?

Two pages. That's how much I had to read before the rich description gave way to a discernable character actually doing something. I was amazed when I looked back to find out it had only been two pages. It seemed like half a chapter when I first read it.

Finally a character appears, a Sergeant Dreys of the King's Guard, gets in a scuffle with an assassin in a back alley in the wee hours of the morning -- and dies.

Chapter two. Again with the rich description laid on thick, and a second character presented as if he were the protagonist. Again only about two pages, but it seemed interminable. Happily, this character, Prince Gaborn, doesn't die and actually does becomes the protagonist.

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, we climb and climb and climb and wonder when this ride is going to start.

But before the second chapter ends, we've reached the pinnacle and are staring down at the abyss. We plummet. We scream. The ride has begun, and it's a doozy.

Every so often, a science fiction or fantasy author creates an original, archetypical concept that excites the imagination. Larry Niven fashioned the Ringworld, Isaac Asimov dreamed up the positronic brain and the laws of robotics, Frank Herbert spawned enormous sandworms, Orson Scott Card invented the zero-g battle training room, Robert Heinlein conceived grokking, and J.R.R. Tolkien forged the One Ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

Wolverton gave us Runelords.

Scattered throughout the land are deposits of a strange thing called blood metal which, when fashioned into something called a "forcible," can extract a characteristic from one human being and endow another with it. Facilitators must study and research for a long time to figure out what rune to place on the end of a forcible shaft to extract the characteristic that he wants. Brawn, wit, glamour, metabolism, stamina are some of the possible traits that can be transferred. The transfer is completed with flashing, vivid imagery, causing the giver pain and the recipient great pleasure. When completed, the giver, called a Dedicate, has lost all of that trait. If it was glamour, the Dedicate is ugly beyond belief. If brawn, the Dedicate is hopelessly weak. If sight, the Dedicate is blind; if hearing, deaf.

The recipient, on the other hand, who becomes a Runelord, receives greater brawn, or sight, or intelligence, depending on the rune.

The transfer is permanent -- it can't be reversed until one or the other dies. If the Dedicate dies, the "endowment," as it's called, is lost to the Runelord. If the Runelord dies, the Dedicate receives the trait back and becomes normal again.

Wolverton does a wonderful job extrapolating what type of society would result from such an ability, including why anyone would allow themselves to be a Dedicate in the first place. He populates his world with Runelord nobility who have many endowments from their subjects so they can protect them from dangers in the world. Warriors are loaded with brawn and metabolism and grace, watchmen with farsight from many endowments of vision, strategists with wit.

The villain of the story, Raj Ahten the Wolf Lord, is a ruthless man who has gathered up thousands upon thousands of endowments through extortion and bribery. He has so much glamour, that to look upon him is to love him. So many endowments of voice that he merely needs to speak and people will obey him gladly. So much stamina that a knife wound in his heart will heal as the blade is pulled from his chest. He is a truly formidable enemy who is on a conquering rampage, with the assistance of a terrifying army of powerful Runelords and dreadful creatures from misty legend.

Early on, he attacks the kingdom of Sylvarresta, and in a breathtaking surprise tactic, overcomes it in the blink of an eye. The Princess of Sylvarresta, whom our hero Gaborn was supposed to marry, is forced to give all her glamour to Raj Ahten and becomes hideous to look upon. King Sylvarresta must give up his wit and becomes a mindless child who can't even control his bodily functions. The Queen, who attempts to assasinate him, is killed. Gaborn, the visiting crown prince of a neighboring kingdom, barely escapes, and with the assistance of an Earth wizard, makes a pact with the Earth to serve it, and receives special powers from it.

Wolverton doesn't pull any punches in the plot. The villain uses his vast powers to the fullest, and if that means good guys die, they die. The carnage in this book puts a Schwarzenegger bloodbath to shame. The hopes of the characters and the reader that a nick-of-time rescue will come along are often dashed. No Data-puts-the-Borg-to-sleep last minute vanquishing of an overwhelming adversary in this book. The overwhelming adversary in Runelords overwhelms.

Yet throughout the book is woven Dave's particular brand of morality. Without ever letting the characters get preachy or slip out of character, Wolverton causes the reader to think sharply about the morality of stealing abilities from other human beings, even if those abilities are given voluntarily and (usually) for the greater good of society. Because the motives of the Dedicates are believable, the moral question becomes a complex one, difficult to answer. The opportunity for metaphorical speculation on the meaning of the moral question for our society is ripe.

But in spite of the cool Runelord concept, in spite of the capable extrapolation of a society based on rune magic, in spite of a powerful villain who is given his due, in spite of a thrilling, pyrotechnic plot spiced with moral subtext, I felt the directions the story went sometimes made no sense. It was like a roller coaster, zigging and zagging and loop-the-looping in a particular direction just for the heck of it. The advance of the plot didn't always feel inevitable to me.

But wait, you may say. Isn't that a good thing? Isn't it good to have surprises in the plot?

Sure, surprises are great, and you get plenty of them in Runelords. But a surprise nonetheless ought to feel inevitable once its sprung, even if it wasn't anticipated. Some of the twists of plot seemed to go in a certain direction for no compelling reason.

But that won't distract you from the thrill of the ride. Runelords takes a while to get going, and when it does, it twists and loops all over the place. The ending seems to wind down in a meandering way, like the last few anticlimactic humps in a roller coaster ride. But it is the first book in a series, after all, not a standalone novel that should end with a bang. When you catch your breath and climb off, you're already looking around for the next ride: Runelords 2.

-- 
D. Michael Martindale
dmichael@wwno.com