According to the blurbery on the back cover City is the "long-awaited sequel" to The War Hound and the World's Pain, but if anyone came to this "sequel" looking for more of the same they were quickly disillusioned. War Hound and City are both narrated by a von Bek (Ulrich, Manfred) and begin in something very like hell on earth (Germany during the Thirty Years War, Paris during the Terror) but the similarities seem to end there. Ulrich von Bek is a wary, weary, cynical mercenary. Manfred is a gregarious dandy with a reputation as a Casanova; an idealist who fought in the American Revolution and whose disillusionment with the new French Republic has just become complete as the novel begins. War Hound is a somber fable, a hopeless quest through an apocalyptic landscape blighted by war and disease. So far City is a romp: fast-paced, romantic and often very funny. In chapter one our hero flees Paris, where he has become persona non grata, pursued by a vindictive agent of the Republic. In chapter two he falls in love with the mysterious Libussa, Duchess of Crete, who promptly disappears. In chapter three he befriends a roguish Scot ballonnier looking for suckers to invest in Aerial Expeditions into those Unknown Lands where Rubies the size of Canteloupes litter the ground. And so on.The cover. For a while Robert Gould was the Moorcock artist in the U.S., and his stuff is very beautiful, although I don't think this particular image is a good choice for a mass market paperback. A detail from it might have worked better at this size. The Arts and Crafts typeface goes with Gould's stuff like chocolate with peanut butter, and evokes the alchemical mysticism with which Reason's apostle von Bek will be confronted. The image is a rendering of an ikon encountered about halfway through the book, so it might be examined for clues: note that the youth on the left bears a cup, a feminine symbol, while the woman on the right holds a sword. A figure of somewhat obscure gender stands between them, holding both.
Symmetries, role reversal, gender confusion, the union of opposites. Yup, all here.
More tomorrow.
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