The Phoenix and the Mirror

This was a very pleasant surprise, and comes close to 5 stars for me.

The beginning felt like Dungeons and Dragons before D&D had been invented, and then turned into surprising territory. It's a quest, I guess, but the quest is to find ingredients and then create something, which feels fresh, and the tone is not so serious but also not overly comic--it's striking that delicate balance and staying in the middle ground which is more to my taste.

It's an intelligently-written, refreshing book.

This one took me a few tries to get all the way through. Ever since I picked it up I wanted to like it and it just resisted letting me in. There's an interesting story in there but it's buried under so much technical and dry information that it's hard to hold onto.

The Phoenix and the Mirror takes place in an alternate Roman Empire. Vergil, who in our world is the poet who writes the Aeneid and guides Dante through Hell, is here a magician tasked with creating a speculum from virgin copper to find a kidnapped princess. Mostly, the novel is Davidson having fun with the language of alchemy. He also has fun changing history—there is, for example, a sect in Rome worshipping Christ Daniel.

Davidson was a writer’s writer. All his contemporaries thought he was original, weird, way smart, and an excellent writer. But this book is not for everybody. If you don’t enjoy long, fanciful descriptions of magical processes in the most arcane terms, this is not the book for you.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

The Phoenix and the Mirror, written by Avram Davidson and published in 1966, is based on the medieval legend that the poet Vergil (The Aeneid) was a mage and sorcerer. Queen Cornelia of Carsus has taken hostage part of Vergil’s soul. This leaves him feeling like less than a full man — he’s unmotivated and impotent. Though some of his parts don’t work too well, Vergil’s brain still works fine, so he sets out to meet Cornelia’s demand: manufacture a virgin speculum so Cornelia can scry the whereabouts of her kidnapped daughter, Laura.

It’s not too easy to make a magic mirror, even for an ancient and powerful sorcerer like Vergil. His first task is to acquire tin and copper ore that has show more never been used before, but this is difficult in a time when the Sea Huns are prowling the waters and controlling trade. Even if he can get all the materials he needs, the actual construction is an extremely precise and delicate alchemical operation.

Luckily, Vergil has several allies: his colleague Clemens, who’s like a walking encyclopedia; a crew of students and apprentices who do most of Vergil’s laboratory work; a mysterious Phoenician who is willing to guide him in his travels; a strange woman who dispenses advice and prophecies as she feeds her cats; and a down-and-out Sea-Hun king who can be bribed with the promise of worshipping Aphrodite in her temple of beautiful priestesses.

Avram Davidson uses the backdrop of Vergil’s quest to fill The Phoenix and the Mirror with some real geography, history, and science, and plenty of richly-detailed bits of medieval legends, fantastical creatures, alchemical instructions, and astrological divinations. Thus, you’ll meet a cyclops, a gargoyle and a homunculus along with Roman soldiers and Sea-Huns and you’ll learn the exact techniques for the construction of magical mirrors.

The Phoenix and the Mirror is beautifully written and gently and delightfully humorous, too, as Vergil and Clemens playfully stab each other with their witty banter and as Vergil manipulates his intellectual inferiors with his subtle persuasive techniques. The book begins with Vergil being chased by manticores through the sewers of Naples, and it ends with a surprise and a twist, but the middle of the book bogs down with too many details about Vergil’s travels and the construction of the mirror.

Intriguing questions about Vergil remain — Where did he come from? How old is he? What are his powers? What was he searching for in the sewers? I hope these will be answered in the sequel: Vergil in Averno. show less

What a strange little book. I don't think I've ever read something quite like it, although the ease with which every now and then some obscure esoteric medieval manuscript is cited did remind me of Umberto Eco - more Baudolino though than any other of Eco's books. A handful of magical creatures as well, just like in Baudolino. But here I think the similarities stop - The Phoenix and the Mirror is through and through a fantasy novel, with a wizard as a main protagonist but a totally different breed of wizard than what we usually get. A hard-working nerdy wizard, you see him struggling and you get inside his head and all that knowledge of his is shared with the reader. And the wizard is Virgil, the Roman poet, this inspired by medieval show more legends by which Virgil was a great magician, possibly immortal. show less

Medieval steampunk, before there was such a thing. Way too much time on technical jargon (it's called magic, but really this is an SF story from a medieval viewpoint). And falling in love with an image? Really of it time too. Well enough written but almost all plot and emotion is overwhelmed with details.

Endlessly delighful esoteric fantasy following the adventures of Virgil as he is inveigled to create a special magic mirror to discover the whereabouts of a missing young woman.