[bala · home]
[okadenamatī · reviews]
[mesaramatiziye · other writings]
[tedbezī · languages]
language: English
country: USA
year: 1931
form: novel
genre(s): historical, fantasy
dates read: 17.7.24-25.7.24
Harold Lamb recently came to my attention as an antecedent of Howard. he wrote historical or pseudohistorical adventure fiction (sometimes with, as in this case, ambiguously speculative elements), but first and foremost set outside Europe and mostly featuring non-Western European characters: Mongols, Cossacks, Arabs, Indians, and more. even the novel I read — Durandal — which is about crusaders nonetheless prominently features a sympathetic Arab character.
I started with Durandal because it was the only standalone publication I had access to; his only books in print are giant anthologies of his short fiction. it follows the crusader Hugh of Taranto, who is chosen by the armorer of Theodore Lascaris to be the emperor’s stand-in at the Battle of Antioch on the Meander in 1211. as the Seljuk army kills the 800 Frankish knights fighting as the advance guard of Lascaris’s army (which does not engage in the battle at all until the crusaders are dead), Hugh is nonetheless able to kill “Kai-Kosru” (i.e., Kaykhusraw) and narrowly evades capture by the retreating Seljuk forces thanks to the intervention of a man who introduces himself as “Donn Dera”. they are both then captured by a Bedouin band led by Khalil, who has been attracted to the area by stories of the Seljuks’ treasure being held in Antioch. they make a deal with Khalil in order to get into the citadel at Antioch themselves and retrieve the lost sword of Roland, Durandal, rumored to be held there.
a bunch of fighting ensues, they find Durandal, Hugh challenges the emperor to a duel (he refuses), they manage to escape and — now wanted men — Hugh and Donn Dera decide to make their way south to the Holy Sepulcher, though Hugh vows to someday get his revenge on Lascaris for the betrayal of the crusaders.
I enjoyed this enough that I’m considering ordering some of the short fiction anthologies, which I suspect will be more interesting than this was. the archaicized dialogue got a bit tedious after a while, but the pace is brisk enough that the novel keeps moving anyway.
the main highlight for me personally was Donn Dera, who identifies himself as “son of a king […], of Etil, son of Tara, overlord of Erin and the grandest monarch on the earth”, which is a wild claim for a 13th-century Gael to make. he also pointedly corrects Hugh when Hugh identifies his homeland as “called Erin by some, Ireland by others and Thule by the astrologers” — Donn Dera interrupts to emphasize “Erin” as the name. he also says that his father was “a man of the elf-mounds, and in him a power of spells and magic”, so. uh.
there’s something here about the ways Celticism and Orientalism bleed into each other, with Donn Dera incorporating elements of O’Grady’s Cuculain (assimilated into a kind of chivalric knighthood; almost supernatural rage, though without the physiological effects of the ríastrad) but also embodying the image of the Asian warrior monk or perhaps the warrior dervish: he fights without armor (and, on his first appearance, with a wooden staff), is proficient with a variety of weapons (but strikingly does not and indeed cannot use Durandal), and, with concentration, is able to perform prodigious feats of strength.
also on this note, his description of the surroundings of Antioch include this:
Thus, from a shoulder of these mighty hills, we beheld the city, and it lies in a valley at the end of a lake, like Lough Neague.
I assume by this he means Lough Neagh? but also: who is this comparison for? obviously not Hugh, who only very vaguely seems to understand where Ireland is. it must, then, be for the reader, which I suspect means he anticipated his audience would be familiar with O’Grady and his successors.
it’s also got some classic Latin anti-Byzantine propaganda (like, you know, the entire plot of the book).
moods: adventurous