n the first book of McMullen's Moonworlds sequence, Voyage of the Shadowmoon (2002), we were introduced to the astonishing world of Verral. Here a thoroughly heterogenous population scattered across several continents and islands lives a zesty pretechnological life, relying on all the old-fashioned trades and a bit of "etheric magic" to get along. But when war breaks out and an ancient magical weapon called Silverdeath is employed, Verral enters a chaotic period where both lowborn and highborn are at risk of swift and gruesome death. In the end, a loose assortment of adventurers—the priestess Terikel, the self-indulgent sorceress Wensomer, the secret agent Roval, the 700-year-old vampyre Laron, the zombielike woman Velander, and the princess Senterri—are the only ones who can possibly stymie Silverdeath and its master.
The sequel opens several months after the destruction of Silverdeath, and many of the same characters are back, not all of them precisely as we last saw them. The world of Verral is now wracked by superstorms engendered by Silverdeath's burning of an entire continent. But more crucially, a cabal of magicians is intent on rebooting the ancient etheric engine known as Dragonwall, which has not been in operation for five millennia. As the magicians struggle with resurrecting Dragonwall, other more mundane chicanery is underway, as the rival nations of Verral battle for the upper hand. Only Terikel seems aware of the larger danger and the need to do something about it.
New protagonists emerge who will carry the weight of the action. The two chief ones are Andry and Wassal. Wassal begins the tale as the plump and cossetted music master to the Emperor of Sargol. But when the Emperor is assassinated and Wassal is wrongly implicated, the music master must shed his courtly ways and go on the run. He shortly meets up with Andry, a bumpkinish young man, something of a knight in utero who yet aspires to a more noble station in life. The two become a team, despite not liking each other much, and soon fall in with Laron, Velander, Senterri and Terikel. Laron has shed his vampyre nature and become a mortal multi-centenarian who happens to look only his physiological 15. Meanwhile, Velander has taken on the nasty feeding habits of a vampyre as the only way to extend her quasi-life. The two make for dodgy comrades. But the women Senterri and Terikel are almost worse, what with their various plottings.
Enlisted as guardsmen to Senterri, Andry and Wassal soon find themselves in the thick of action. Fighting rebels, dodging lustful countesses, meeting the elderly but fearsome glass dragons of the title, dealing with Velander's ever-increasing hungers, they eventually work their way south to Andry's home city of Alberin, where Wensomer is also to be found. There, all the plots culminate, and the final assault on Dragonwall is launched.
Dumas by way of Laurel and Hardy
Had I not read and vastly enjoyed Voyage of the Shadowmoon previously, I might've had no quibbles with Glass Dragons, since it is indeed a captivating and unique blend of fantasy, comedy, cloak and dagger, sword and sorcery, blood and thunder and almost any other pair of linked icons you care to name. But in comparison with its predecessor, the new book comes off a shade less than perfect.
Shadowmoon was almost as fine a book as its obvious inspiration, E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros (1922), one of the three great fantasy templates of the 20th century (along with the work of Tolkien and Peake). With its larger-than-life characters, its vast, sweeping action, its arch and witty dialogue, and its cosmopolitan, world-weary yet fevered take on life, the book was consistently surprising, enthralling and throat-catching. Silverdeath was utterly integral to the plot, a fascinating device that impacted both individual lives and whole nations. Switching back and forth frequently among dozens of leads, the book never bogged down in any single subplot. And its climax was truly resonant, emotionally and intellectually. This book was the opposite of commodified fantasy.
Glass Dragons presents one certain kind of pleasure instead of many, and it looks paler by comparison. Despite supposed matters of gravity, the book is essentially a comedy. Andry and Wallas—one thin, young, handsome and noble, the other fat, pompous and self-centered—are a fine match in the fashion of Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello. But they're onstage almost 100 percent of the time, and even McMullen's expert wit—he's a whiz at inventing comic scenes and dialogue—cannot conceal a certain repetitiveness that begins to creep in halfway through a very long book.
The threat of Dragonwall is pure MacGuffin. We never get to really know or care about the plotters as we did in the previous book, and the whole menace is disposed of rather cavalierly and single-handedly by Terikel. And while much is made of what a true romantic Andry is (he dares to love the vampyric Velander when no one else does), McMullen's overall thrust is anti-romantic. The happy-ending love affairs established at the close of Shadowmoon, between Terikel and Roval and Laron and Senterri, have fallen apart and Wensomer's eventual marriage is a pragmatic sham. The end result is a kind of sourness at odds with the earlier optimism. The absurd yet rather silly fate(s) that befall Wassal are also hardly sympathy-inducing.
Yet such is McMullen's expertise at action-packed scenes, so admirable is his spare yet evocative prose, and so fecund is his sense of invention, that you will finish this book in a gallop, eager for a third foray into the Moonworlds realm.
