Joy Chant

Each volume of Ms. Chant's Kendreth cycle is unique, and each successively stronger in emotional insight and depth. Sadly, this is the last novel of Vandarei from her pen. Where "Red Moon, Black Mountain" was classical wonder literature with echoes of Narnia, Middle-Earth, and Scripture; and "The Gray Mane of Morning" was heroic fantasy to stand among the finest such tales, recounting a pivotal event, both just and terrible, that forever changes her world; "When Voiha Awakes" is a romance show more that pierces and reveals in all its joys and sorrows the human experience of and capacity to love. Set in a matriarchal society, the gender role reversal Ms. Chant artfully depicts highlights the accepted injustices and follies of our own in a manner that is enlightening and never pedantic. The further I read, the more I had to read as Ms. Chant relates with unforgiving honesty and insight "emotional levels" rarely achieved in works of fantasy, to paraphrase the review by Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. It is a work I find I appreciate much more at age 62 than when I was a much younger and less-worldly (and less love-experienced) man. As in all three Kendreth novels, Ms. Chant's prose is near perfect, her skill in this particular work more in the artful, at times playful, conveyance of human feelings rather than the powerful evocative description of the first two novels. This short novel is a delight for any who've loved. show less

On re-reading, the awe instilled by Chant's beautiful prose, her gift for simile and metaphor, for setting and emotion, for apt insights into people as individuals and as a species and our sometimes harmonious and sometimes contentious interactions with nature and with ourselves remains as powerful as I remember--and only deepened by the knowledge that this work was written by Ms. Chant, a librarian, when she was but twenty-five years of age. The tale is a portal fantasy with child heroes, show more Narnia-like, and yet their challenges, the choices they make, and their consequences are harshly adult, particularly its dramatic somewhat disturbing--yet right-- conlcusion. Similar to Lewis' Narnia, upon rereading, I find a patina of Christian allegory and archangel analogs within Chant's panthenon of atavistic pseudo-Druidic "High" gods. "Red Moon, Black Mountain" Fifty years since its publication, I consider the book a classic of modern epic fantasy written in the tradition of those like Lewis, Tolkien, Morris, and Eddison written decades to a half-century before. show less

On re-reading, the awe instilled by Chant's beautiful prose, her gift for simile and metaphor, for setting and emotion, for apt insights into people as individuals and as a species and our sometimes harmonious and sometimes contentious interactions with nature and with ourselves remains as powerful as I remember--and only deepened by the knowledge that this work was written by Ms. Chant, a librarian, when she was but twenty-five years of age. The tale is a portal fantasy with child heroes, show more Narnia-like, and yet their challenges, the choices they make, and their consequences are harshly adult, particularly its dramatic somewhat disturbing--yet right-- conlcusion. Similar to Lewis' Narnia, upon rereading, I find a patina of Christian allegory and archangel analogs within Chant's panthenon of atavistic pseudo-Druidic "High" gods. "Red Moon, Black Mountain" Fifty years since its publication, I consider the book a classic of modern epic fantasy written in the tradition of those like Lewis, Tolkien, Morris, and Eddison written decades to a half-century before. show less

I read this when it first came out in the old Ballantine paperback series (ca. 1971). I remember liking it then. Chant's books are not the easiest to track down now. I still like it, which is not always the case on rereading things long afterward.

The overarching genre is clearly fantasy. It is sometimes described as young adult, although I think the writing is a bit elevated and challenging for that classification. Chant seems to draw on multiple influences. The three children are plucked show more from the the everyday world to another world to take part in a conflict of good and evil (Lewis, Narnia). Fendarl is something like Sauron, Kunil-Bannoth something like Saruman. There is not really a quest, so not that tradition. The Khentors are something like the Golden Horde. In the final conflict with Fendarl there is much reminiscent of the Iliad: the individual combats; the catalog of troops on the march is similar to the catalog of ships in Iliad 2; Li'vanh's vision of the gods and immortals in the battle is like the appearance of the gods in the battles of the Iliad. So let's just call it eclectic.

It is a good story, with interesting characters. We watch the children grow, especially Oliver, although it is not a Bildungsroman. Chant is especially good at bringing out the sense of loss and tragedy that afflicts the victors, the ambiguity of war even in a good cause. A few quotes from many passages:

"He was much more than weary: in very truth he was exhausted; or utterly spent, worn-out, empty. He had conquered, but his victory had the taste of failure. He was filled with a corroding disappointment, and a bitter sense of loss. He felt bereft, although of what he did not know."

"All our lives we strive against evil with all our strength; yet what does our victory come to? That today we are the conquerors, because yesterday we did more harm to our enemies than they could do to us."

"But the thing which he had lost he never did regain, though what it was he could never have said."

What I like most is Chant's style, which ranges from straightforward storytelling to rhetorical flourishes. A few of many passages that struck me, stopped me, demanded rereading:

"A long walk it was, up along winding mountain paths, the air glittering with cold, the ground treacherous with ice, and the wind tugging at them all the way."

"It was darker, certainly; the sky was a thicker grey, and the mountains' shadow chilled them."

"The smoke, the smoke smelling of more than burning wood, the smoke whose smell Li'vanh could never forget, was everywhere." (a great classical ascending tricolon!)

Her images are striking; she often takes an a basic idea or image, expands it through multiple clauses with repetitions as in the tricolon above. It is sometimes like watching a painter add stroke on stroke to the canvas.

As I noted, she draws from many sources and traditions, but ends with her own thing: an adventure story with a keen sense of the tragic that underlies life, mundane or heroic. show less