The Dog and the Wolf

The King of Ys #4

by Poul Anderson, Karen Anderson

After the fall of Ys, Gratillonius, once the King, must try to save his remaining people from the advance of the barbarians.

Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical

531 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1988

About the author

Pseudonym A. A. Craig, Michael Karageorge, Winston P. Sanders, P. A. Kingsley.

Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.

Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]

Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.


Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry

Reviews

[Kat Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

This review is for all four books in this series:

The King of Ys is a historical fantasy -- it is set in our world just before the fall of the Roman Empire and it mixes in the legend of the mythical city of Ys which was built below sea level on the coast of Brittany. Many of the characters in The King of Ys (Roman emperors, Christian saints, etc) are based on legendary and real historical figures and Poul and Karen Anderson include plenty of footnotes which explain the legend of Ys and the culture and religion of the 5th century.

In Roma Mater, we meet Gaius Valerius Gratillonius, a Roman centurion stationed at Hadrian's Wall. Because of his loyalty to would-be-emperor Magnus Clemens Maximus, the commander of the Roman troops in Britannia, Maximus assigns him to be Rome's prefect in Ys so that Gratillonius can keep it loyal while Maximus goes for the purple. Ys, though part of the Roman empire, has been left to itself for years because it's spooky. According to rumors, Ys is ruled by nine witches who, among other things, control the weather to keep Ys safe from enemies intending to invade by sea. These nine "witches" are the God-chosen wives of the King of Ys who is a nasty tyrant. His nine wives use their powers to ask the Gods to bring them a deliverer -- someone to challenge the king.

And so Gratillonius and his small troop arrive in Ys and soon he finds himself king. Along with inheriting the crown, Gratillonius gets the nine witch queens, too. As he sets out to reform Ys, which has suffered under the former rule, he has a lot of unfamiliar stuff to deal with: the responsibilities of a king, the different culture, a strange land and people, clashes in religious beliefs (he covertly worships Mithras who has been denounced by the newly Christian Roman Empire, and the Ysans worship three pagan gods), and satisfying nine wives who vary greatly in age, beauty, intelligence, and appreciation for men.

At first, Gratillonius balances all of this mostly successfully, and he begins to restore the prosperity of Ys. He is well-intentioned, but he can't help but occasionally go wrong as his own beliefs conflict with his people's and their gods'. One problem is that the Ysan's believe that their gods will destroy Ys by flood if they are not obeyed. So, there is a conflict between the Ysans' expectations of Gratillonius's duties at their religious rites, his desire to keep alive the worship of Mithras, and his admiration for the Christian leaders he knows. The other big problem is that when one of his wives dies, the gods choose the replacement from the priestesses who are all descendants of the previous kings and queens and the gods don't seem to care too much about age, mental ability, or consanguinity. So, not only are there nine wives, but their family tree looks more like an M.C. Escher drawing than a tree, and this kind of behavior isn't congruent with the worship of either Mithras or Christ. (But it does make for some interesting reading.)

The first two books, Roma Mater and Gallicenae, progress rather slowly and there's not much action -- and this is really my only complaint about The King of Ys. But, by the end of Gallicenae, we've seen the ways Gratillonius has had to struggle to obey the Ysan gods, and we can be rather certain about what they're going to throw at him next ... and we know he's going to defy them this time. And, we've seen some plot threads being developed (warriors preparing overseas) that are presumably being carefully set up for use in the next novel.

In the third novel, Dahut, things really come to a head, and the fallout is spectacular. The reader then realizes and appeciates how carefully the Andersons have planned and crafted this work from page one. Well done! The fourth book, Dog and Wolf, deals with the after-effects of the events in book three, develops the characters further as their lives have drastically changed, and comes to a satisfactory conclusion.

Besides being a fascinating and original tale with real historical feel, The King of Ys is beautifully written:

The armies met south of the River Ruirthech. That was a day when clouds blew like smoke, low above the valley, underneath a sky the hue of lead. Rainshowers rushed out of them, drenched men, washed their wounds and their dead, passed away on the keening wind. All colors were dulled except those of blood and gold. Shouts, horn calls, hoofbeats, footfalls, clamorous wheels, clash and rattle of weapons, were somehow muffled. But blows fell as heavy and sharp as always.

My favorite parts were Gratillonious's internal thoughts about his wives:

He gazed back. Over the years she had added flesh to flesh, though her frame was quite large enough that as yet she did not appear quite gross. Her features remained good in their heavy fashion and her hair was still a burnished red-brown. It was untidily piled on her head, like the raiment on her body. He had grown used to that....Well, she had her rights, and she was by no means a bad person, and a man ought to shoulder his burdens without whining about them.

And there is poetry -- even whole chapters of poetry!

Would you know the dog from the wolf? You may look at his paw,
Comparing the claw and the pad; you may measure his stride;
You may handle his coat and his ears; you may study his jaw;
And yet what you seek is not found in his bones or his hide,
For between the Dog and the Wolf there is only the Law.

Near the end of the story, Gratillonious meets a young soldier who is in nearly the same situation he was in when he left Britain 25 years before. Shocked, he looks back and realizes that he's not the same man he was then -- he would make different choices now. Through love and loss, we learn what's important -- that's a good story.

Read this review in context at Fantasy Literature's Poul Anderson page

[Chris Naylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book too far. The first two books of this series are splendid, and the third nearly as good, but the life went out of it when Ys foundered at the end of the third book. This is a competent tying up of loose ends, but 500 pages tying up loose ends is too long.

[ChasTopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways this is the best part of The King of Ys series, and the most interesting. It tells the story of the aftermath of the disaster at the end of Dahut. Though several of my favorite characters met their ends, I enjoyed how the authors wove the legend into history.

I should also point out the beautiful, evocative prose - even with mundane details. (And I recommend any other book by Poul Anderson, particularly The Broken Sword). Here's an example:

Rain came, not cruelly slashing as in last year but a mildness that swelled the crops to full ripening. It made earth a shadowless cool gray haunted by its whisper on the leaves. When the sun broke through, mists curled beneath spiderwebs turned to jewelry strung with stars. Dwellers in a land always wet, the Armoricans paid these showers scant heed while they went about their labors. Earlier they had joked that seven clear days in a row were a dangerous drought; the moss on them was dying.

I'm glad I stuck with this series. The conclusion made reading the first three worthwhile.

[Steve R]

The final book in the four volume series The King of Ys by Anderson and his wife, in which the former Roman centurion tries to save the remnants of the population of his city in the aftermath of a disastrous fulfillment of an age-old prophecy of destruction by water. Riveting stuff, but unfortunately, not at all well remembered now, thirty years after I read it. Oh, for immortality and the time to reread all those books I've loved so much over the years!

[Pollymoore3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last in the series. What happens after the fall of Ys?

[Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I read the whole thing. All 4 books and the notes. What an achievement Poul and Karen Anderson wrought with the writing of these books! The books deserve to be far more popular than they are... especially since "Game of Thrones" was such a success.

What's amazing about these books is that even though they are "Fantasy", in-so-much as they contain magic and supernatural elements, they are so very rooted in our history. I feel that I have a grasp on the era of 400AD, the fall of the Roman Empire, that I never would have if I had not read these books.

It took me years to get through all four of these books, but I feel as though the story and the characters will stick with me for a long time. I will miss my friend Gratilonius, his family, friends, and his Kingdoms.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

The climax of the series really happened at the end of Dahut (and what a climax!). With the intensity taken down a notch, the story dragged on a bit. It’s a shame, too, because the main lesson of the series is in this book.

[Thannasset · Rating 1 out of 5]

one of my favorite authors really went off-track with this series.

[Steve]

YS

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

See The King of Ys - Volume Two: Dahut & The Dog and the Wolf