Resume
Young adult heroic fantasy may be overshadowed these days in a market
polysaturated with gigantic multi-volume world-building word orgies bulging
with all the jejune appeal of silicone teats (think Tad Williams, Robert
Jordan, et alia), but there’s something to be commended about a work that
barges boldly ahead in slim and trim form, delivering both heroes and fantasy
in efficient swaths of thematic primary color.
Book One of The
Guin
Saga, by Kaoru Kurimoto serves up its Frank Frazetta-like
muscle-bound
he-mensch hero on page one with descriptive terms like
freakish, peculiar, and
bizarre. That’s because, in addition to his
loincloth, he wears a
permanently-affixed leopard mask, evoking
fantastical shades of Alexander Dumas
because this man, not in an iron but
a leopard mask, is at once more and less
than he seems. Turns out he has
no memory of who he is or how he came in such
physical disrepair to the
haunted forest where Kurimoto’s prologue places him,
but thenceforward he
acquits himself in heroic enough fashion many times to
demonstrate all the
vital qualities of heroes and kings.
And how do
these heroic deeds
come to pass? Also inexplicably in this forest are the twins
Rinda and
Remus, fugitive orphans of the recently-sacked kingdom Parros, “the
richest and most beautiful realm in the Middle Country.” Finding the ailing
Guin, the twins, sporting fantasy-issue platinum hair and violet eyes,
nurse
him back to health. Having plucked that figurative thorn from the
leopard’s
paw, the kids find themselves in his good graces in the nick of
time as first
they are bedeviled by black knights searching for the
fugitive twins, then the
wicked spirits of the forest, then even more
black knights.
In a similar
fashion the plot continues to develop,
this trio escaping one frying pan only
to fall into more and more literal
fires, a process that crosses their paths
with the villainous Black Count
Vanon, who serves the Archduke Vlad, who rules
the Mongauls, who happen to
be the ones who attacked Parros; they also cross
paths with a gabby
mercenary, Istavan, and the tiny monkey girl Suni, each
crossed path
clearly setting up a thread for exploration somewhere else in the
series
and, here, supplying plot points sufficient to foreshadow Book One’s
denouement.
The Guin Saga plows no new ground in heroic
fantasy
territory, at least not in Book One, but what it does manage to do
is create
interesting characters embroiled in compelling circumstances,
cranking out plot
with saga-like rapidity in which characters are not
developed by internal
explorations of psychology but by deeds (recall, for
instance, Saga of the
Volsungs, and ask yourself how much more about
Sigurd you know other than, hey,
he killed that dragon Fafnir). Thus Guin,
largely a blank slate anyway, shows
us who he is by his heroic action.
Likewise Rinda, here sharing more-or-less
equal footing on this literary
stage with Guin, demonstrates all the monarchial
qualities of wisdom,
benevolence, and strength of will one might expect of
budding royalty
(rather like Rome's Romulus, by the way, which hardly seems
coincidental),
while Remus, playing a very minor part in Book One, takes a
touch longer
to show his princely potential.
But action and deeds alone
don’t
drive the plot. The gas in this tank is mystery and expectation. We’re
presented numerous question, for instance those compelling ones driving Guin
and the kids -- Who is Guin? Why is he stuck with that mask? Why was
Parros
destroyed? How and why did the twins find themselves in the haunted
forest? --
and we expect answers. Sometimes those answers are supplied,
and just as many
times it seems those answers await us deeper in the
series. The result is a
work that is compelling not only because it places
vulnerable and appealing
characters in danger, but because the mixture of
action and mystery keeps us
looking for the root causes of the injustices
perpetrated against the main
characters. The work manages to convince that
if we just keep reading our
questions will be answered.
This means
that though the immediate
problems confronting the main characters in Book
One are solved by its end, the
larger ones remain. If you want all the
answers, you’ll have to keep reading
the series. Fortunately, Book One of
The Guin Saga is solid heroic
fantasy. Kurimoto sets a hook here
and pulls it hard. On one hand readers will
be disappointed that the book
ends, but on the other hand they can look forward
to following what, by
all appearances, seems to be a well-done series. After
all, originally
published in 1979, and with some 25 million books sold from 87
finished
volumes of a planned one hundred, lots of readers have already decided
that Kaoru Kurimoto is doing something right. Judging by this work, they aren't
wrong.
Such considerations aside, there are a few other matters
about
The Guin Saga that are worth noting. The first is that, as
English
translations of Japanese literature go, this has to be one of the
best
translations I've yet read. The language is fluid and establishes a
strong
narrative voice.
The second is that the work is not without
an obvious
flaw or two, the minor ones looking like missed line edits
(which seem to exist
in increasing abundance in most books these days),
the other involving the
ambiguous age of the twins. At one point they seem
clearly to be fourteen and,
a handful of pages later, they seem to be
fifteen, the offending lines being,
"...for all of his fourteen years..."
(page 22 in my edition), and, "For
fifteen years they had lived as an
inseparable pair..." (page 35). This looks
easily enough fixed, but it's
there nonetheless. More important, however, is
that the twins initially
seem much younger than fourteen, perhaps as young as
eight, a perception
deriving mainly from their clingy and, well,
childish-seeming nature.
Perhaps this is merely intended to reflect the nature
of their peaceful
upbringing, but it doesn't quite convince.
More
interestingly,
however, is that this Japanese-authored work sports so many
western-seeming touches, not the least of which is much of its mythology. As
mentioned, the twins themselves seem to have analogues in Romulus and
Remus,
which may tell us where the plot will go and why, but there are
also touches of
Greek and Roman gods who appear, at the very least,
influenced by Janus from
the Romans and the Fates from the Greeks. Perhaps
this means that just as
western audiences find non-western elements in
their fiction exotic and
enticing, so too, perhaps, do eastern audiences
enjoy touches of what is
foreign. Or, on another level, sometimes the most
interesting observations
about a culture and its dearest myths are best
stated by those who, standing
outside that culture, express themselves
through its most popular forms. As
such, The Guin Saga may well
prove as big a hit here as it was in Japan.
polysaturated with gigantic multi-volume world-building word orgies bulging
with all the jejune appeal of silicone teats (think Tad Williams, Robert
Jordan, et alia), but there’s something to be commended about a work that
barges boldly ahead in slim and trim form, delivering both heroes and fantasy
in efficient swaths of thematic primary color.
Book One of The
Guin
Saga, by Kaoru Kurimoto serves up its Frank Frazetta-like
muscle-bound
he-mensch hero on page one with descriptive terms like
freakish, peculiar, and
bizarre. That’s because, in addition to his
loincloth, he wears a
permanently-affixed leopard mask, evoking
fantastical shades of Alexander Dumas
because this man, not in an iron but
a leopard mask, is at once more and less
than he seems. Turns out he has
no memory of who he is or how he came in such
physical disrepair to the
haunted forest where Kurimoto’s prologue places him,
but thenceforward he
acquits himself in heroic enough fashion many times to
demonstrate all the
vital qualities of heroes and kings.
And how do
these heroic deeds
come to pass? Also inexplicably in this forest are the twins
Rinda and
Remus, fugitive orphans of the recently-sacked kingdom Parros, “the
richest and most beautiful realm in the Middle Country.” Finding the ailing
Guin, the twins, sporting fantasy-issue platinum hair and violet eyes,
nurse
him back to health. Having plucked that figurative thorn from the
leopard’s
paw, the kids find themselves in his good graces in the nick of
time as first
they are bedeviled by black knights searching for the
fugitive twins, then the
wicked spirits of the forest, then even more
black knights.
In a similar
fashion the plot continues to develop,
this trio escaping one frying pan only
to fall into more and more literal
fires, a process that crosses their paths
with the villainous Black Count
Vanon, who serves the Archduke Vlad, who rules
the Mongauls, who happen to
be the ones who attacked Parros; they also cross
paths with a gabby
mercenary, Istavan, and the tiny monkey girl Suni, each
crossed path
clearly setting up a thread for exploration somewhere else in the
series
and, here, supplying plot points sufficient to foreshadow Book One’s
denouement.
The Guin Saga plows no new ground in heroic
fantasy
territory, at least not in Book One, but what it does manage to do
is create
interesting characters embroiled in compelling circumstances,
cranking out plot
with saga-like rapidity in which characters are not
developed by internal
explorations of psychology but by deeds (recall, for
instance, Saga of the
Volsungs, and ask yourself how much more about
Sigurd you know other than, hey,
he killed that dragon Fafnir). Thus Guin,
largely a blank slate anyway, shows
us who he is by his heroic action.
Likewise Rinda, here sharing more-or-less
equal footing on this literary
stage with Guin, demonstrates all the monarchial
qualities of wisdom,
benevolence, and strength of will one might expect of
budding royalty
(rather like Rome's Romulus, by the way, which hardly seems
coincidental),
while Remus, playing a very minor part in Book One, takes a
touch longer
to show his princely potential.
But action and deeds alone
don’t
drive the plot. The gas in this tank is mystery and expectation. We’re
presented numerous question, for instance those compelling ones driving Guin
and the kids -- Who is Guin? Why is he stuck with that mask? Why was
Parros
destroyed? How and why did the twins find themselves in the haunted
forest? --
and we expect answers. Sometimes those answers are supplied,
and just as many
times it seems those answers await us deeper in the
series. The result is a
work that is compelling not only because it places
vulnerable and appealing
characters in danger, but because the mixture of
action and mystery keeps us
looking for the root causes of the injustices
perpetrated against the main
characters. The work manages to convince that
if we just keep reading our
questions will be answered.
This means
that though the immediate
problems confronting the main characters in Book
One are solved by its end, the
larger ones remain. If you want all the
answers, you’ll have to keep reading
the series. Fortunately, Book One of
The Guin Saga is solid heroic
fantasy. Kurimoto sets a hook here
and pulls it hard. On one hand readers will
be disappointed that the book
ends, but on the other hand they can look forward
to following what, by
all appearances, seems to be a well-done series. After
all, originally
published in 1979, and with some 25 million books sold from 87
finished
volumes of a planned one hundred, lots of readers have already decided
that Kaoru Kurimoto is doing something right. Judging by this work, they aren't
wrong.
Such considerations aside, there are a few other matters
about
The Guin Saga that are worth noting. The first is that, as
English
translations of Japanese literature go, this has to be one of the
best
translations I've yet read. The language is fluid and establishes a
strong
narrative voice.
The second is that the work is not without
an obvious
flaw or two, the minor ones looking like missed line edits
(which seem to exist
in increasing abundance in most books these days),
the other involving the
ambiguous age of the twins. At one point they seem
clearly to be fourteen and,
a handful of pages later, they seem to be
fifteen, the offending lines being,
"...for all of his fourteen years..."
(page 22 in my edition), and, "For
fifteen years they had lived as an
inseparable pair..." (page 35). This looks
easily enough fixed, but it's
there nonetheless. More important, however, is
that the twins initially
seem much younger than fourteen, perhaps as young as
eight, a perception
deriving mainly from their clingy and, well,
childish-seeming nature.
Perhaps this is merely intended to reflect the nature
of their peaceful
upbringing, but it doesn't quite convince.
More
interestingly,
however, is that this Japanese-authored work sports so many
western-seeming touches, not the least of which is much of its mythology. As
mentioned, the twins themselves seem to have analogues in Romulus and
Remus,
which may tell us where the plot will go and why, but there are
also touches of
Greek and Roman gods who appear, at the very least,
influenced by Janus from
the Romans and the Fates from the Greeks. Perhaps
this means that just as
western audiences find non-western elements in
their fiction exotic and
enticing, so too, perhaps, do eastern audiences
enjoy touches of what is
foreign. Or, on another level, sometimes the most
interesting observations
about a culture and its dearest myths are best
stated by those who, standing
outside that culture, express themselves
through its most popular forms. As
such, The Guin Saga may well
prove as big a hit here as it was in Japan.