A STORM OF WINGS

by M. John Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 16, 1980

Harrison, one of the more innovative British writers of speculative fiction, has previously explored the far-future world of this book in The Pastel City. And despite vestigial sf underpinnings, his narratives are in fact best read as fantasy--but fantasy of a brand not very common in this heyday of witless escapism. In the long ""Evening"" decline of a world like Eliot's heap of broken images, Galen Hornwrack, failed hero and intermittently successful assassin, lives by his knife in the seamier quarters of Viriconium the Pastel City. He is summoned by two of the ""Reborn"" (resurrected representatives of the world's ""Afternoon"" glory) to join a quest for the source of a mysterious evil attacking distant regions in the form of giant insects and infiltrating Viriconium through the agency of a disturbing new religion. The outlines of trek and return are standard heroic-fantasy stuff, down to the dwarf and the ancient seer who make up the rest of the quest-party and the invincible sword carried by the Reborn warrior; but Harrison finds variously piquant, sinister, and outrageous resonances in every dreary clichÉ. The resolution of the plot does not really stand up to all the portentous clankings that surround it, and the leisured opacity of the style sometimes verges on camp. But the sheer pleasure of finding someone seriously and wittily reimagining these moldy conventions carries one through a great many annoying effects. Difficult but (mostly) rewarding.

Pub Date: May 16, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION