n a far-future Earth, Baro Harkless is a young agent in the Archonite Bureau of Security. On his first assignment, he succeeds in capturing the notorious con man Luff Imbrey, and is surprised to find that his reward is to be assigned to work with Imbrey to capture an even more notorious con man, Horselan Gebbling, who apparently has hatched a scheme to swindle sufferers of the mysterious and incurable disease called the lassitude, which causes degenerative mental and physical paralysis.
Harkless and Imbrey form an uneasy truce and go undercover, with Harkless playing the part of Imbrey's lassitude-afflicted protégé. They join a group invited by Gebbling to voyage on a chartered land ship into the Swept, an immense abandoned flat area that was created by the ancient use of a gravity-based weapon to exterminate an alien race that had threatened the other peoples of Earth, both human and alien. On the cruise, they meet a scholar named Guth Bandar, who introduces Harkless to the Commons, part of a dreamscape called the noosphere populated by Jungian archetypes and landscapes created by the many millennia of sentient life on Earth. Harkless finds that he has a natural talent for entering and moving through the noosphere.
Harkless and Imbrey get to know the other passengers and try to determine the nature of the swindle Gebbling is planning. Gebbling appears only in prerecorded messages promising a cure for the lassitude-afflicted passengers. The con appears to involve black brillion, a legendary rare form of brillion, a mineral formed over geologic time from the detritus of ancient human civilizations. The mystery deepens when one of the passengers is killed falling from the ship and ship security officer Raina Haj believes the man was murdered. Meanwhile, Harkless continues his exploration of the potentially dangerous Commons, several times requiring rescue by Bandar.
Their journey ends in the middle of the deserted grassland wilderness of the Swept, where they uncover a threat far greater than a scheme to con hapless disease victims, and Harkless, Imbrey, Bandar and Haj must use all of their skills in a desperate attempt to save themselves and all of mankind.
A picaresque adventure
Black Brillion is the third book in Matthew Hughes' Archonate series, following Fool's Errant and Fool Me Twice, all clearly written in the science fantasy tradition most commonly associated with Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories and raised to new levels of depth and verisimilitude more recently by Gene Wolfe in his New Urth novels.
Some of the traditions Hughes is following actually go even further back, to the fantasy stories of Clark Ashton Smith, as well as earlier pulp adventure fiction. (Most of Hughes' characters would feel right at home in British adventure stories set in the early 20th century.) Despite the risks of working in the shadows of accomplished authors like Smith, Vance and Wolfe, Hughes has managed to produce compelling and very readable novels.
Black Brillion starts a bit slowly as the droll sparring between the young, naive Harkless and the jaded, hedonistic Imbrey for control of the investigation becomes somewhat tedious, but the story soon picks up pace as Hughes gives reign to his imagination in describing this unusual far-future Earth. The Commons in the noosphere is an especially interesting creation, although Hughes occasionally seems to over-utilize fantasy role-playing game tropes and logic, but the noosphere eventually plays a vital and appropriate role in the conclusion. Hughes mixes his science and fantasy well and manages well in the difficult balancing act required to create believable stories mixing the two genres. The novel's unexpected denouement satisfyingly melds the science fiction and fantasy elements of the story.
It seems likely that Hughes will create more stories in Archonate series, and I look forward to reading more tales set in Old Earth.
