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Kencyrath #1
God Stalk
Jame is a Kencyr. Kencyrs are not native to the planet where they now live. For thirty centuries they have been the weapon that their Three-Faced God has used against the power of the Perimal Darkling. And though they have fought well, the Darkling has come to planet after planet, and the Kencyrs have moved on.
Jame knows this as she stumbles out of the hilly, barren Haunted Lands into the city of Tai-tastigon. But she knows little else. She does not remember where she has been or what she has done for the last ten years of her life. Her memory goes back only a week or two—to finding her home destroyed and all her family dead.
In Tai-tastigon Jame begins a new life that seems to be at odds with all that the Kencyrs stand for. Kencyrs are honest and just, but Jame becomes an apprentice to the most renowned thief in the powerful Thieves' Guild. Kencyrs are confirmed monotheists, yet Jame explores the rituals and activities of the thousands of gods, templed and untempled, in this religious center; she even kills a god and then resurrects him. And at the inn, the Res aB'tyrr, where she lives, she finds herself using the most sacred dances of her people, dances she does not even remember learning, for the entertainment and sometimes the destruction of the inn's patrons.
Within herself Jame finds power she does not want and doubts she defies her heredity to harbor. She moves through the rich and bloody stew of Tai-tastigon like a hot spice. Her probings, to find herself and to discover what her powers mean to her and her people, combined with influences already at work, very nearly destroy the city. And yet, they bring her face to face with a destiny she must accept.
Cover Art by P.C. Hodgell.
Jame knows this as she stumbles out of the hilly, barren Haunted Lands into the city of Tai-tastigon. But she knows little else. She does not remember where she has been or what she has done for the last ten years of her life. Her memory goes back only a week or two—to finding her home destroyed and all her family dead.
In Tai-tastigon Jame begins a new life that seems to be at odds with all that the Kencyrs stand for. Kencyrs are honest and just, but Jame becomes an apprentice to the most renowned thief in the powerful Thieves' Guild. Kencyrs are confirmed monotheists, yet Jame explores the rituals and activities of the thousands of gods, templed and untempled, in this religious center; she even kills a god and then resurrects him. And at the inn, the Res aB'tyrr, where she lives, she finds herself using the most sacred dances of her people, dances she does not even remember learning, for the entertainment and sometimes the destruction of the inn's patrons.
Within herself Jame finds power she does not want and doubts she defies her heredity to harbor. She moves through the rich and bloody stew of Tai-tastigon like a hot spice. Her probings, to find herself and to discover what her powers mean to her and her people, combined with influences already at work, very nearly destroy the city. And yet, they bring her face to face with a destiny she must accept.
Cover Art by P.C. Hodgell.
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First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 201 reviews
March 20, 2016
After a pretty stellar start -- where protagonist Jame, suffering from memory loss, arrives in a strange city after traveling many leagues across mountainous, demon-haunted lands -- God Stalk fizzles for the next couple hundred pages as she meanders about with no real purpose. For some reason she decides to join the Thieves' Guild as an apprentice to a very old, highly respected master thief, even though she's morally against stealing and only pilfers worthless items for the Guild. How she was able to retain this great honor and remain his apprentice, I have no idea. Everything she takes is supposed to go to him, and in turn split among the Thieves' Guild. Yet she gave them virtually nothing.
She also spends countless pages working at an inn (cooking, washing floors, etc.), and while the inn was filled with some semi-interesting characters, these sections were mostly just padding, imo, as is the majority of the book, generally spent with Jame's wanderings about the city, with random side-adventures that felt tacked on willy-nilly. All of which would have been acceptable if the characters weren't all so wooden and one-dimensional. I never felt any connection at all to their various trials and tribulations, and the entire feel of the novel was very light and fluffy, not the dark fantasy I thought I was getting.
The one saving grace for me was the city itself, which had the potential to be as memorable as Leiber's Lankhmar. Tai-tastigon is a literal labyrinth, filled with twisting streets and alleys that lead everywhere and nowhere. Savvy entrepreneurs even charge for their services as expert guides. And not just to newcomers or tourists, but to lifelong residents. It's also a city where gods (actually they're more like elemental spirits) roam and wreak havoc on certain nights, which the reader is made aware of within the first dozen pages, and to excellent effect.
Unfortunately it was all downhill from there, at least for me. I already bought the next book in the series based on the strength of the opening pages here, but I doubt I'll be returning to this world. It's possible PC Hodgell improved as a writer after this, her first novel, though I'll probably never know.
2.0 Stars
She also spends countless pages working at an inn (cooking, washing floors, etc.), and while the inn was filled with some semi-interesting characters, these sections were mostly just padding, imo, as is the majority of the book, generally spent with Jame's wanderings about the city, with random side-adventures that felt tacked on willy-nilly. All of which would have been acceptable if the characters weren't all so wooden and one-dimensional. I never felt any connection at all to their various trials and tribulations, and the entire feel of the novel was very light and fluffy, not the dark fantasy I thought I was getting.
The one saving grace for me was the city itself, which had the potential to be as memorable as Leiber's Lankhmar. Tai-tastigon is a literal labyrinth, filled with twisting streets and alleys that lead everywhere and nowhere. Savvy entrepreneurs even charge for their services as expert guides. And not just to newcomers or tourists, but to lifelong residents. It's also a city where gods (actually they're more like elemental spirits) roam and wreak havoc on certain nights, which the reader is made aware of within the first dozen pages, and to excellent effect.
Unfortunately it was all downhill from there, at least for me. I already bought the next book in the series based on the strength of the opening pages here, but I doubt I'll be returning to this world. It's possible PC Hodgell improved as a writer after this, her first novel, though I'll probably never know.
2.0 Stars
August 14, 2023
An odd and unique book for sure, but one that (after a little bit) really captivated me for reasons I am still trying to articulate. God Stalk, although a fantasy novel, reminded me of hard science fiction in that it is neither character nor plot driven, but idea driven, but rather than 'geewhiz' tech, the world building predominates. Hodgell drops us into a bizarre world with very little hand holding right from the get go, and unlike, say David Weber, no pages long info dumps to set the scene/backstory (although a few appendices at the end due flesh out what Hodgell dishes out in drips and drabs).
Our main protagonist, Jame, starts the novel fleeing from the Haunted Lands after the Keep she resided in was destroyed by the forces of the Perimal Darkling. While she knows who she is, and what is on her tail, she suffers from a number of memory lapses. The only things she carries are the broken sword of her father, his ring (finger still in it!) and an 'old book' (which will feature later in the story). Her destination? The ancient city of Tai-tastigon, which her tutor told her about but she has never seen. Unfortunately, she arrives on the day/night when the gods roam the city and immediately faces various trials and tribulations...
She survives of course, and wakes to find herself at an inn, the Res aB'tyrr, where she has slept for over a week. Jame is not a normal human, however, as she is part of the Kencyrath, who the humans on Rathillien see primarily as invaders from 3000 years back. Jame has amazing healing abilities, retractable claws instead of fingernails, and many strange magical powers (such as sensing god power), links with animals, etc., most of which are pretty hazy at best. She knows she must find her twin brother, who also might have escaped the Keep, but the seasons thwart her desire as the mountain passes are closed. So, she starts working at the inn, but also seeks out and finds a master thief she encountered the day of her arrival at the city (and helped-- he owes her one!) to train as an apprentice.
All of this sounds pretty straight forward, but backdrop is the city/world which is gradually fleshed out. Jame's world becomes immersed in various political struggles and other intrigues. A rival inn is being build (illegally) across the square and starts and undeclared 'trade war' (trade wars are legally sanctioned if the antagonist pay a tax); this happens due to political intrigue. While she takes apprenticeship with the master thief, she is an outsider and a woman to boot, putting her at odds with various thief factions. Her heritage means she cannot tell a lie and will defend her honor to the death; to become a thief, she asks permission of the priest of her religion...
The world is spellbinding for sure, but the characters and plot seem almost an addendum to flesh out the world. We never really get to know Jame and her mysteries and the secondary characters are all pretty cardboard. The plot consists of Jame's meandering around the great city, a city where gods often walk and become 'unthroned', creating at time havoc. Nonetheless, the world held my attention completely. If you are after enthralling worldbuilding, I highly recommend this. If you are after character driving fantasy with twisty plots, probably not so much. I can see why my GR friends are so divided on this one. 4 dark stars!
Our main protagonist, Jame, starts the novel fleeing from the Haunted Lands after the Keep she resided in was destroyed by the forces of the Perimal Darkling. While she knows who she is, and what is on her tail, she suffers from a number of memory lapses. The only things she carries are the broken sword of her father, his ring (finger still in it!) and an 'old book' (which will feature later in the story). Her destination? The ancient city of Tai-tastigon, which her tutor told her about but she has never seen. Unfortunately, she arrives on the day/night when the gods roam the city and immediately faces various trials and tribulations...
She survives of course, and wakes to find herself at an inn, the Res aB'tyrr, where she has slept for over a week. Jame is not a normal human, however, as she is part of the Kencyrath, who the humans on Rathillien see primarily as invaders from 3000 years back. Jame has amazing healing abilities, retractable claws instead of fingernails, and many strange magical powers (such as sensing god power), links with animals, etc., most of which are pretty hazy at best. She knows she must find her twin brother, who also might have escaped the Keep, but the seasons thwart her desire as the mountain passes are closed. So, she starts working at the inn, but also seeks out and finds a master thief she encountered the day of her arrival at the city (and helped-- he owes her one!) to train as an apprentice.
All of this sounds pretty straight forward, but backdrop is the city/world which is gradually fleshed out. Jame's world becomes immersed in various political struggles and other intrigues. A rival inn is being build (illegally) across the square and starts and undeclared 'trade war' (trade wars are legally sanctioned if the antagonist pay a tax); this happens due to political intrigue. While she takes apprenticeship with the master thief, she is an outsider and a woman to boot, putting her at odds with various thief factions. Her heritage means she cannot tell a lie and will defend her honor to the death; to become a thief, she asks permission of the priest of her religion...
The world is spellbinding for sure, but the characters and plot seem almost an addendum to flesh out the world. We never really get to know Jame and her mysteries and the secondary characters are all pretty cardboard. The plot consists of Jame's meandering around the great city, a city where gods often walk and become 'unthroned', creating at time havoc. Nonetheless, the world held my attention completely. If you are after enthralling worldbuilding, I highly recommend this. If you are after character driving fantasy with twisty plots, probably not so much. I can see why my GR friends are so divided on this one. 4 dark stars!
June 24, 2023
I'm not sure why this fantasy series isn't more popular. It's one of my favorites. It's got a great protagonist, a rich, interesting world created slowly through the prose.
I've read this one at least three times. I think probably more. I just can't remember. The first time was just as a lad and I'll confess a lot of it went over my head.
I just got done with the audio production of it and it was pretty good.
The only reason I rate it as 4 instead of 5 is that I have to admit, to me, it can be a little tough trying to follow what is going on. I can't really put my finger on a reason why. It just does. It could be that the prose is almost like a light version of Tolkein in style, which I always struggle with in terms of comprehension.
But Jame, Tai-Tastigon, and the weary, honor-bound Kencyrath has been a pillar of my love of fantasy literature for a long time and I'll always love it.
I've read this one at least three times. I think probably more. I just can't remember. The first time was just as a lad and I'll confess a lot of it went over my head.
I just got done with the audio production of it and it was pretty good.
The only reason I rate it as 4 instead of 5 is that I have to admit, to me, it can be a little tough trying to follow what is going on. I can't really put my finger on a reason why. It just does. It could be that the prose is almost like a light version of Tolkein in style, which I always struggle with in terms of comprehension.
But Jame, Tai-Tastigon, and the weary, honor-bound Kencyrath has been a pillar of my love of fantasy literature for a long time and I'll always love it.
February 27, 2012
You have to love Goodreads. I would never have heard of this novel if I had not seen some glowing reviews by other readers. P.C. Hodgell, who I plan to read more of, has created one of the most unique and interesting fantasy cities I've ever come across. Ancient, corrupt and "infested" with gods that battle for worshippers and power. The main character is named Jame and she arrives at Tai-tastigon with no recollection of who she is and we learn about the world and herself right along with her. A really excellent read.
June 25, 2010
4.5 stars. This is an original, superbly written debut novel with outstanding world-building. It is always nice to come across an older, lesser known (in least in my case) book that contains truly creative and unique ideas and this book does that. The City of Tai-tastigon is truly the main character of the book with its thousands of gods (most with their own temples) and its confusing, maze-like streets. Add to that a strong, well-drawn main character with unique and unsual skills and a deftly written plot that makes the reader think and you have a great piece of sci-fi/fantasy. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Nominee: Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel
Nominee: Locus Award for Best First Novel
Nominee: Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel
Nominee: Locus Award for Best First Novel
February 16, 2025
This has been on my TBR ever since someone recommended it as a Planescape: Torment read-alike, and I decided to bump it up on my list when someone also suggested it for my trauma reading project. While I am not entirely sure about why it was recommended for the trauma reading project yet (I think I need to know more about the protagonist Jame’s backstory), it 100% delivered on the Planescape: Torment front. The city where the book takes place, Tai-tastigon, is truly reminiscent of Sigil from PT, although this book was written before the Planescape setting was created! It is a labyrinthine city full of violence, chaos, bizarre, dark secrets and oddities aplenty. In fact, while I was reading this, I was fantasizing about how it could be adapted into a PT-esque isometric game: exploring the different parts of the city and its strange residents, navigating different factions, completing quests for the Thieves’ Guild, using Jame’s different abilities…well, I can dream, can’t I?
Besides the magnificence of the city and its vibes, I have to say that I was a bit mixed about some other aspects of the book. For one thing, the world-building is quite complex, unique and interesting, which I love!!!!! Throughout, you piece together the story of what happened to the Kencryath thousands of years ago, what has happened to them since coming to this world, Jame’s missing memories, the politics of the Thieves Guild, and how that intersects with the overall politics of Tai-tastigon. However, all of this is conveyed in a somewhat confusing way with things happening/being mentioned offhand before being fully explained/contextualized later. I can’t help but wonder how the world-building could have been conveyed with more clarity while avoiding infodumping. Towards the end of the book the reader has a LOT to keep track of, and while I generally kept up, I similarly feel that it could have been slightly less convoluted in how it unraveled. The guide in the front proved very helpful, and there is mercifully a “Story So Far” segment at the start of the next book, which I know will prove invaluable when I continue on.
Finally, characters and character relationships proved to be generally endearing but fairly one-note. I realized this when several people died without much emotional impact on me at all. There are a LOT of instances of people getting grievously wounded and recovering quickly, as well. It is somewhat extraordinary how much of the book Jame spends running back and forth all over the city, which means that she must be ridiculously fit in addition to being a master thief and the Only One Who Knows How to Do an Amazing Magical Seduction Dance. It’s all a bit silly, but I think the book knows this and takes it in stride.
Do read if you love a weird city and complex, unique lore that gets unraveled bit by bit.
Don’t read if you need a book to be focused on deep characterization and relationships as opposed to setting/plot.
Besides the magnificence of the city and its vibes, I have to say that I was a bit mixed about some other aspects of the book. For one thing, the world-building is quite complex, unique and interesting, which I love!!!!! Throughout, you piece together the story of what happened to the Kencryath thousands of years ago, what has happened to them since coming to this world, Jame’s missing memories, the politics of the Thieves Guild, and how that intersects with the overall politics of Tai-tastigon. However, all of this is conveyed in a somewhat confusing way with things happening/being mentioned offhand before being fully explained/contextualized later. I can’t help but wonder how the world-building could have been conveyed with more clarity while avoiding infodumping. Towards the end of the book the reader has a LOT to keep track of, and while I generally kept up, I similarly feel that it could have been slightly less convoluted in how it unraveled. The guide in the front proved very helpful, and there is mercifully a “Story So Far” segment at the start of the next book, which I know will prove invaluable when I continue on.
Finally, characters and character relationships proved to be generally endearing but fairly one-note. I realized this when several people died without much emotional impact on me at all. There are a LOT of instances of people getting grievously wounded and recovering quickly, as well. It is somewhat extraordinary how much of the book Jame spends running back and forth all over the city, which means that she must be ridiculously fit in addition to being a master thief and the Only One Who Knows How to Do an Amazing Magical Seduction Dance. It’s all a bit silly, but I think the book knows this and takes it in stride.
Do read if you love a weird city and complex, unique lore that gets unraveled bit by bit.
Don’t read if you need a book to be focused on deep characterization and relationships as opposed to setting/plot.
February 10, 2011
This book seems almost incoherent at times. I think I'm missing something. I think I'm missing a LOT of somethings. Often, I felt like I had no clue why things were happening.
For instance, Jame has amnesia. That's mentioned several times. But she remembers her name, her father, her brother, her culture, history, but not other things? What exactly is she forgetting? Despite them SAYING she has amnesia and mentioning a few minor things she has forgotten, it's not really dwelt on. It's not a plot point. I just don't get the sense that Jame really does have amnesia.
Then, you have events happening for no reason. Jame joins the thieves guild. Yet, she worries that stealing things is wrong in the eyes of her god so she doesn't do so. But if that's the case, WHY did she join? She doesn't earn money from it. She doesn't steal, for the most part. At the beginning it gives the impression she wants to join to get back at the rival innkeeper. But she never tries to steal anything of his because stealing is wrong, of course. It just doesn't make sense.
Then you have the city itself. You have a city full of dead gods who run around creating minor havoc nightly and major havoc on a yearly basis. Yet other than hiding indoors, and avoiding small areas of the city that have been destroyed, the populace doesn't seem to take notice. They walk around crumbled buildings or around the temple district, but other than Jame, no one ever seems to dwell on what caused the buildings to crumble overnight.
There's plenty of plot points that just don't seem fully fleshed out. The bare skeleton of them are there, but the whys and the hows and sometimes the result are just missing.
If other reviewers felt the same, I'd blame the book. But it seems to get such unanimous praise that I feel the fault is mine. It's a horrible feeling to just not "get" a book. I'll probably move on to book 2 eventually, but mostly because I have an omnibus edition and I'd feel even more guilty leaving half of it unread.
For instance, Jame has amnesia. That's mentioned several times. But she remembers her name, her father, her brother, her culture, history, but not other things? What exactly is she forgetting? Despite them SAYING she has amnesia and mentioning a few minor things she has forgotten, it's not really dwelt on. It's not a plot point. I just don't get the sense that Jame really does have amnesia.
Then, you have events happening for no reason. Jame joins the thieves guild. Yet, she worries that stealing things is wrong in the eyes of her god so she doesn't do so. But if that's the case, WHY did she join? She doesn't earn money from it. She doesn't steal, for the most part. At the beginning it gives the impression she wants to join to get back at the rival innkeeper. But she never tries to steal anything of his because stealing is wrong, of course. It just doesn't make sense.
Then you have the city itself. You have a city full of dead gods who run around creating minor havoc nightly and major havoc on a yearly basis. Yet other than hiding indoors, and avoiding small areas of the city that have been destroyed, the populace doesn't seem to take notice. They walk around crumbled buildings or around the temple district, but other than Jame, no one ever seems to dwell on what caused the buildings to crumble overnight.
There's plenty of plot points that just don't seem fully fleshed out. The bare skeleton of them are there, but the whys and the hows and sometimes the result are just missing.
If other reviewers felt the same, I'd blame the book. But it seems to get such unanimous praise that I feel the fault is mine. It's a horrible feeling to just not "get" a book. I'll probably move on to book 2 eventually, but mostly because I have an omnibus edition and I'd feel even more guilty leaving half of it unread.
January 28, 2018
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In the first book of the Kencyrath, Jame, a young woman missing her memories, struggles out of the haunted wastes into Tai-tastigon, the old, corrupt, rich and god-infested city between the mountains and the lost lands of the Kencyrath.
Jame's struggle to regain her strength, her memories, and the resources to travel to join her people, the Kencyrath, drag her into several relationships, earning affection, respect, bitter hatred and, as always, haunting memories of friends and enemies dead in her wake.
My Review: I read this 35-year-old fantasy novel because a good LibraryThing friend of mine ran a group read of it. She contended that the book was underfamous and underappreciated. I don't know about you, but I'd say any first-in-series book that's followed by eight others (to date) set in the same universe, and which has an 816 page fandom wiki, isn't exactly a concealed target.
Still.
Reading older books in the speculative fiction genre is an education in revised expectations and their invisibility until challenged. Modern fantasy nonillionologies, each volume a minimum of a jillion pages densely packed with made-up language vocabulary and/or Randomly capitalized normal Words that indicate they're being used as something More Than their mundane meaning, are now the minimum standard. This book predates that trend. As a result, its brevity can feel...unfinished...to a 21st century sensibility. There were many, many moments that the author moved through hastily or simply glided past entirely that would, in modern times, be entire novels.
I've complained about book bloat and editing fails so often and so publicly that I expect someone will quite soon point this out with a smug "gotcha!" of some sort. To those legions of carping natterers, I say "oh shut up" and remind them that 1) consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and 2) there's such a thing as a happy medium.
I'm not a huge consumer of fantasy novels at the best of times because magic makes me itch. It seems so nonsensical, so counter to the realities of physical laws under which we live; it flies in the face of experiential existence; but it satisfies a deep need in many people, just not me. Also, almost always, the protagonist is An Exceptional Adolescent (usually female), and that's very much not my favorite kind of person. Adolescence stank, and so do adolescents. Just not where I want to be, or to stay for any length of time.
This novel's magical system got in under my radar because it feels to me, like the magic in Kai Ashante Wilson's marvelous Africa-set fantasy stories, as though any second we're going to be told that it's a form of technology we don't recognize as such. I can hang with that. Most of what the main character does isn't terribly magical, and the city of Tai-Tastigon itself is the source of the overall magic. We're teased with the notion of the city's magic being the reason there are so many gods in it; in fact, there's a truly delicious idea that temples to the gods are actually ways for the mundane people to *trap* the gods, to limit their scope for activity, instead of mere places of worship.
Jame, our main character, even targets one of these gods in an experiment to test the limits of its power. She causes the god to lose its worshipers in the process, and the results prove to Jame that there is something very hinky about the way the gods function. This subplot is played for comedy, but I was happy to note that the very real consequences for this god and its priest were later sources of shame and remorse for Jame. She goes out of her way to fix the damage she's done, and in the process discovers an amazing library of knowledge that this god's temple has hidden for ages. It is one of the wonderful things about the tapestry of Tai-Tastigon created by Author Hodgell.
The city and its quirks, its societal and legal peculiarities, are incredibly enough left to one side as soon as they're revealed! Inconceivable, and that word does mean what I think it means, in today's publishing world. I was intrigued by the Cloudies, a subset of society that's decided to take to the rooftops and not touch the ground: whence came they, what do they do for a living, how come they're not subject to groundling law, and so on and so forth. Never answered. Never addressed. The Thieves' Guild that Jame enters without the smallest tiniest bit of effort on her part is an entire multi-volume storytelling universe! The history that Jame barely skates over with her sort of accidental Thieves' Guild master, one Penari the ancient master thief, is another multi-volume series of novels. I am all for rich texture in a story, and I got it here, but there are way too many delicious side trails that lead nowhere in this book.
At the end of the book came my personal biggest disappointment as Jame left Tai-Tastigon for parts unknown. This was inevitable, given the fact that she enters the city from parts only slightly less unknown and for reasons utterly unclear and unclarified. This is a fantasy novel, and the first in a series. Of course there will be a quest, and of course it will lead away from any one location. That doesn't make me any happier about it. The textures of Tai-Tastigon's tapestry are involving and exciting, and I'd like to stay here please.
Which is how I know Author Hodgell created a wonderful thing in this book, and why it's no real surprise that her fantasy universe has spawned an 816-page wiki. She understands her readers' need to feel immersed and invested in more than a simple, surface-gleaming world. She delivers those goods. My various dissatisfactions with the execution of this tale aside, I admire her ability and her vision. I won't continue reading the series because I'm less interested in Jame than I am in Tai-Tastigon, but I will likely pick up any future book that returns to this setting.
The Publisher Says: In the first book of the Kencyrath, Jame, a young woman missing her memories, struggles out of the haunted wastes into Tai-tastigon, the old, corrupt, rich and god-infested city between the mountains and the lost lands of the Kencyrath.
Jame's struggle to regain her strength, her memories, and the resources to travel to join her people, the Kencyrath, drag her into several relationships, earning affection, respect, bitter hatred and, as always, haunting memories of friends and enemies dead in her wake.
My Review: I read this 35-year-old fantasy novel because a good LibraryThing friend of mine ran a group read of it. She contended that the book was underfamous and underappreciated. I don't know about you, but I'd say any first-in-series book that's followed by eight others (to date) set in the same universe, and which has an 816 page fandom wiki, isn't exactly a concealed target.
Still.
Reading older books in the speculative fiction genre is an education in revised expectations and their invisibility until challenged. Modern fantasy nonillionologies, each volume a minimum of a jillion pages densely packed with made-up language vocabulary and/or Randomly capitalized normal Words that indicate they're being used as something More Than their mundane meaning, are now the minimum standard. This book predates that trend. As a result, its brevity can feel...unfinished...to a 21st century sensibility. There were many, many moments that the author moved through hastily or simply glided past entirely that would, in modern times, be entire novels.
I've complained about book bloat and editing fails so often and so publicly that I expect someone will quite soon point this out with a smug "gotcha!" of some sort. To those legions of carping natterers, I say "oh shut up" and remind them that 1) consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and 2) there's such a thing as a happy medium.
I'm not a huge consumer of fantasy novels at the best of times because magic makes me itch. It seems so nonsensical, so counter to the realities of physical laws under which we live; it flies in the face of experiential existence; but it satisfies a deep need in many people, just not me. Also, almost always, the protagonist is An Exceptional Adolescent (usually female), and that's very much not my favorite kind of person. Adolescence stank, and so do adolescents. Just not where I want to be, or to stay for any length of time.
This novel's magical system got in under my radar because it feels to me, like the magic in Kai Ashante Wilson's marvelous Africa-set fantasy stories, as though any second we're going to be told that it's a form of technology we don't recognize as such. I can hang with that. Most of what the main character does isn't terribly magical, and the city of Tai-Tastigon itself is the source of the overall magic. We're teased with the notion of the city's magic being the reason there are so many gods in it; in fact, there's a truly delicious idea that temples to the gods are actually ways for the mundane people to *trap* the gods, to limit their scope for activity, instead of mere places of worship.
Jame, our main character, even targets one of these gods in an experiment to test the limits of its power. She causes the god to lose its worshipers in the process, and the results prove to Jame that there is something very hinky about the way the gods function. This subplot is played for comedy, but I was happy to note that the very real consequences for this god and its priest were later sources of shame and remorse for Jame. She goes out of her way to fix the damage she's done, and in the process discovers an amazing library of knowledge that this god's temple has hidden for ages. It is one of the wonderful things about the tapestry of Tai-Tastigon created by Author Hodgell.
The city and its quirks, its societal and legal peculiarities, are incredibly enough left to one side as soon as they're revealed! Inconceivable, and that word does mean what I think it means, in today's publishing world. I was intrigued by the Cloudies, a subset of society that's decided to take to the rooftops and not touch the ground: whence came they, what do they do for a living, how come they're not subject to groundling law, and so on and so forth. Never answered. Never addressed. The Thieves' Guild that Jame enters without the smallest tiniest bit of effort on her part is an entire multi-volume storytelling universe! The history that Jame barely skates over with her sort of accidental Thieves' Guild master, one Penari the ancient master thief, is another multi-volume series of novels. I am all for rich texture in a story, and I got it here, but there are way too many delicious side trails that lead nowhere in this book.
At the end of the book came my personal biggest disappointment as Jame left Tai-Tastigon for parts unknown. This was inevitable, given the fact that she enters the city from parts only slightly less unknown and for reasons utterly unclear and unclarified. This is a fantasy novel, and the first in a series. Of course there will be a quest, and of course it will lead away from any one location. That doesn't make me any happier about it. The textures of Tai-Tastigon's tapestry are involving and exciting, and I'd like to stay here please.
Which is how I know Author Hodgell created a wonderful thing in this book, and why it's no real surprise that her fantasy universe has spawned an 816-page wiki. She understands her readers' need to feel immersed and invested in more than a simple, surface-gleaming world. She delivers those goods. My various dissatisfactions with the execution of this tale aside, I admire her ability and her vision. I won't continue reading the series because I'm less interested in Jame than I am in Tai-Tastigon, but I will likely pick up any future book that returns to this setting.
January 4, 2015
Re-read 1/4/15: I'm struck this time (every time I read this, I see it from a different angle) by the ambiguity of Jame's relationship with her God. Yes, the question of her identity is an interesting tangle, but it affects what we learn about the Kencyrath's God and how it touches Jame's people even in its absence. Crazy priests aren't new to fantasy literature, but I like that their insanity, when it happens, arises from the power that makes it possible for them to be priests in the first place. It raises another question, this one about the nature of their God and why it/he/whatever would abandon the Kencyrath: is God's abandonment necessary to the plan for defeating Perimal Darkling? Certainly being God-touched, in this world, is a bad thing, but I have to ask, what does it say about their God that that's so?
May 2013: What do I love about this book? Pretty much everything. From the moment protagonist Jame enters the god-ridden city Tai-tastigon, the prose is rich and evocative. Hodgell spins out a couple of different mysteries, not least of which is the mystery of Jame herself--who is she, where did she come from, why does she know things first-hand which are supposedly only legend? Jame's experiences as thief and dancer in Tai-tastigon make for an entertaining and sometimes horrific story.
But I think the thing I love most is the tension between Jame's people, the Kencyrath, and the people of Rathillien, the world in which the Kencyr find themselves. The Kencyrath, a people of three races united by the mission their god set them millennia ago, travel from world to world down the chain of creation, fighting and ultimately losing to the evil of Perimal Darkling. Jame, having grown up knowing, not believing but knowing and having proof that God exists, is thrown by the hundreds of gods inhabiting Tai-tastigon and being worshipped by its people. Jame has been taught that the Kencyrath's god is the only real god, and she spends a good part of the story trying to work out what it is the Tai-tastigonians worship. This ends up being an intriguing take on the nature of faith and the meaning of belief. Hodgell continues to play with this concept through the rest of the series, and this provides an interesting thread that connects all of the books. God Stalk is an excellent beginning to a fascinating series.
May 2013: What do I love about this book? Pretty much everything. From the moment protagonist Jame enters the god-ridden city Tai-tastigon, the prose is rich and evocative. Hodgell spins out a couple of different mysteries, not least of which is the mystery of Jame herself--who is she, where did she come from, why does she know things first-hand which are supposedly only legend? Jame's experiences as thief and dancer in Tai-tastigon make for an entertaining and sometimes horrific story.
But I think the thing I love most is the tension between Jame's people, the Kencyrath, and the people of Rathillien, the world in which the Kencyr find themselves. The Kencyrath, a people of three races united by the mission their god set them millennia ago, travel from world to world down the chain of creation, fighting and ultimately losing to the evil of Perimal Darkling. Jame, having grown up knowing, not believing but knowing and having proof that God exists, is thrown by the hundreds of gods inhabiting Tai-tastigon and being worshipped by its people. Jame has been taught that the Kencyrath's god is the only real god, and she spends a good part of the story trying to work out what it is the Tai-tastigonians worship. This ends up being an intriguing take on the nature of faith and the meaning of belief. Hodgell continues to play with this concept through the rest of the series, and this provides an interesting thread that connects all of the books. God Stalk is an excellent beginning to a fascinating series.
March 13, 2017
So, God Stalk is the first book in a series by P.C. Hodgell that seems to have a cult following but otherwise is shrouded in obscurity. I can’t remember where I first saw it mentioned, but it sounded interesting. I read the omnibus edition of the first two books.
It seems like God Stalk is a book that provokes one of two reactions: either one loves its rich, evocative characters and environment, or one hates the confusing and vague style of writing that leaves one constantly feeling like one is missing important chunks of the story. Alas, I fall into the latter camp. As much as I can recognize the imagination behind this book, I found reading it more of a chore than anything resembling pleasure—and unlike many books that are, perhaps rightfully, chore-like in their reading, this one did not reward me with much in the way of substantive, thought-provoking themes.
There is so much going on here that it’s difficult to examine the book without slipping into summary mode. I’ll restrict myself to two things: Tai-tastigon and the Kencyrath. In these Hodgell creates some of the best examples of a fantasy city and a fantasy culture that I’ve seen in a while.
Tai-tastigon is the city in which Jame finds herself after she stumbles out of Perimal Darkling and flees the Haunted Lands. She falls in with the owners/inhabitants of a local tavern, the House of the Luck-Bringers. Eventually she becomes a thief, which is a paradoxical position for a Kencyr who values honour above all things. But even thieving in Tai-tastigon isn’t straightforward. There’s a complex system of guilds and guilt to make it all work, just as there are formalized systems for having guild wars and trade wars and religious wars while keeping the city largely intact and functional.
Fantasy cities are hard to do right without slipping into medieval tropes, and Hodgell does a good job here. Tai-tastigon is fantastic enough that it shouldn’t really exist—it’s a cosmopolitan mish-mash of temples to all sorts of gods and a maze of streets that would never work in reality. Yet this very liveliness is an important part of the plot; it’s what allows Jame, as an outsider, to make such a distinctive mark on the life of the city.
Jame is a Kencyr, one of a group of three peoples who are not indigenous to the world of Rathillien. The Kencyrath came to this world from a parallel one, fleeing the expansion of Perimal Darkling. Jame believes herself at first to be Kendar, a warrior, but gradually recovers memories that reveal her to be a Highborn—a different caste entirely. And as she remembers more of her life within Perimal Darkling, Jame wonders whether she is on the right path. She believes she should reunite with her long-lost twin brother, bring him a book and a sword she recovered from the dark—but the more she learns about what has happened on Rathillien, the less she likes it. So she spends God Stalk living in Tai-tastigon, taking in the local culture, and learning to be a thief.
Hodgell’s attempts to juxtapose Jame’s Kencyr honour and honesty with her newfound apprenticeship didn’t work for me. This is just one example of an uneasy balance between humour and deadly self-righteous seriousness (on Jame’s part) that makes God Stalk difficult to enjoy. Every time I think I’m just about to sink into the culture of the city and enjoy the absurdity of it, Jame lapses into another one of her serious moments where she meditates upon the seriousness of all the serious things that are going to happen. Seriously.
I can see why other people laud this book for its depth and detail. Yet these are the reasons it doesn’t hold much appeal for me. There is too much detail, to the point where I regularly found myself getting lost and having to re-read page-by-page because I thought I had missed something (I hadn’t). In this respect the narrative resembles something like Dhalgren in its confusing tendency to introduce twist after twist without much in the way of foreshadowing or warning.
God Stalk is incredibly clever and definitely original. It’s a shame it’s so obscure. But I don’t feel all that enriched for having unearthed a copy and taken the time to read it. Though I went on to trudge through The Dark of the Moon, I’m ambivalent about investing any additional time in this series. For ongoing stories like Jame’s, it’s all about the characters—and I just don’t feel like spending much time with these ones.
It seems like God Stalk is a book that provokes one of two reactions: either one loves its rich, evocative characters and environment, or one hates the confusing and vague style of writing that leaves one constantly feeling like one is missing important chunks of the story. Alas, I fall into the latter camp. As much as I can recognize the imagination behind this book, I found reading it more of a chore than anything resembling pleasure—and unlike many books that are, perhaps rightfully, chore-like in their reading, this one did not reward me with much in the way of substantive, thought-provoking themes.
There is so much going on here that it’s difficult to examine the book without slipping into summary mode. I’ll restrict myself to two things: Tai-tastigon and the Kencyrath. In these Hodgell creates some of the best examples of a fantasy city and a fantasy culture that I’ve seen in a while.
Tai-tastigon is the city in which Jame finds herself after she stumbles out of Perimal Darkling and flees the Haunted Lands. She falls in with the owners/inhabitants of a local tavern, the House of the Luck-Bringers. Eventually she becomes a thief, which is a paradoxical position for a Kencyr who values honour above all things. But even thieving in Tai-tastigon isn’t straightforward. There’s a complex system of guilds and guilt to make it all work, just as there are formalized systems for having guild wars and trade wars and religious wars while keeping the city largely intact and functional.
Fantasy cities are hard to do right without slipping into medieval tropes, and Hodgell does a good job here. Tai-tastigon is fantastic enough that it shouldn’t really exist—it’s a cosmopolitan mish-mash of temples to all sorts of gods and a maze of streets that would never work in reality. Yet this very liveliness is an important part of the plot; it’s what allows Jame, as an outsider, to make such a distinctive mark on the life of the city.
Jame is a Kencyr, one of a group of three peoples who are not indigenous to the world of Rathillien. The Kencyrath came to this world from a parallel one, fleeing the expansion of Perimal Darkling. Jame believes herself at first to be Kendar, a warrior, but gradually recovers memories that reveal her to be a Highborn—a different caste entirely. And as she remembers more of her life within Perimal Darkling, Jame wonders whether she is on the right path. She believes she should reunite with her long-lost twin brother, bring him a book and a sword she recovered from the dark—but the more she learns about what has happened on Rathillien, the less she likes it. So she spends God Stalk living in Tai-tastigon, taking in the local culture, and learning to be a thief.
Hodgell’s attempts to juxtapose Jame’s Kencyr honour and honesty with her newfound apprenticeship didn’t work for me. This is just one example of an uneasy balance between humour and deadly self-righteous seriousness (on Jame’s part) that makes God Stalk difficult to enjoy. Every time I think I’m just about to sink into the culture of the city and enjoy the absurdity of it, Jame lapses into another one of her serious moments where she meditates upon the seriousness of all the serious things that are going to happen. Seriously.
I can see why other people laud this book for its depth and detail. Yet these are the reasons it doesn’t hold much appeal for me. There is too much detail, to the point where I regularly found myself getting lost and having to re-read page-by-page because I thought I had missed something (I hadn’t). In this respect the narrative resembles something like Dhalgren in its confusing tendency to introduce twist after twist without much in the way of foreshadowing or warning.
God Stalk is incredibly clever and definitely original. It’s a shame it’s so obscure. But I don’t feel all that enriched for having unearthed a copy and taken the time to read it. Though I went on to trudge through The Dark of the Moon, I’m ambivalent about investing any additional time in this series. For ongoing stories like Jame’s, it’s all about the characters—and I just don’t feel like spending much time with these ones.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 8, 2011
This series is among my all-time favorites, and I'm a big fan, but I'll try to give it a balanced review. Since this starts a series, this is a series review as well.
I don't want to waste your time, so I'll begin with the series' negatives:
1. The series is unfinished, and there are at least three or four more books to go.
2. The first book and the most recent are a quarter century apart. The writer's style has changed over time; she plots better now, but the excess of imagination and ideas slows.
3. The books have their highly depressing moments. Books 2 and 3, particularly, are downers.
4. If hinted-at adult sibling incest bothers you, then you should steer clear.
OK, that's enough "why not", so I'll move into the "why".
These are well-written secondary-world fantasies with a backdrop of epic scope, but without a large number of viewpoints. Hodgell has a great imagination for character and setting; while she uses some familiar elements, puts them together in a very inventive way. She has interesting cultures that are not ones from our world with new names. The world is not like ours; things are magic to a degree that I miss in the work of others.
Jame, the seventeen-year-old heroine, is a good one. She's morally complex; ultimately on the side of good and honorable, but she is not necessarily nice, and is most definitely dangerous. She's an androgynous, tomboyish heroine, but unlike many such, never tries to pass as a boy, although she's frequently mistaken for one.
She's a loner, and rather emotionally cold at times; this may work well with some readers and less so with others.
God Stalk has one of the best versions of a Thieves' Guild in fantasy. It has a fascinating city environment that, alas, is not the setting of the sequels. The author promises to return her there someday.
Strongly recommended, but with the provisos above.
I don't want to waste your time, so I'll begin with the series' negatives:
1. The series is unfinished, and there are at least three or four more books to go.
2. The first book and the most recent are a quarter century apart. The writer's style has changed over time; she plots better now, but the excess of imagination and ideas slows.
3. The books have their highly depressing moments. Books 2 and 3, particularly, are downers.
4. If hinted-at adult sibling incest bothers you, then you should steer clear.
OK, that's enough "why not", so I'll move into the "why".
These are well-written secondary-world fantasies with a backdrop of epic scope, but without a large number of viewpoints. Hodgell has a great imagination for character and setting; while she uses some familiar elements, puts them together in a very inventive way. She has interesting cultures that are not ones from our world with new names. The world is not like ours; things are magic to a degree that I miss in the work of others.
Jame, the seventeen-year-old heroine, is a good one. She's morally complex; ultimately on the side of good and honorable, but she is not necessarily nice, and is most definitely dangerous. She's an androgynous, tomboyish heroine, but unlike many such, never tries to pass as a boy, although she's frequently mistaken for one.
She's a loner, and rather emotionally cold at times; this may work well with some readers and less so with others.
God Stalk has one of the best versions of a Thieves' Guild in fantasy. It has a fascinating city environment that, alas, is not the setting of the sequels. The author promises to return her there someday.
Strongly recommended, but with the provisos above.
October 12, 2009
The city of Tai-tastigon, mysterious as it is, fails to draw me in. It forms no shape in my mind's eye, and slips like shadows from my dreams' landscape.
The main character, Jame, mysterious as she is, with cryptic memories sprouting like weeds from her brain, a thief incomparably skilled yet honorable, a being of as-yet-undiscovered powers, fails to form as a coherent person. Sometimes she is tortured. The next instant, she is carefree and joking. No transition between these two states.
The tone of this novel is confusing. Some passages describes darkness and misery. Others, mere fluffy everyday nonsense. It does not seem to matter that people die and gods are wrathful and houses fall and burn. These leave no mark on the characters, and I am not moved either.
Many characters have highlighted cryptic, quirky personalities, yet have no real impact on the plot line. I am left scratching my head. Why did abc spend all this time plotting cryptically, yet nothing comes out of it but...this? Why did xyz exchange long probing gazes all that time, and nothing results but...that?
Finally, and worst of all, this novel is in serious need of a single, good villain. Result: an underwhelming climax.
However, the Kencyr mythology seems quite interesting. I will move on to the next book in this series, and hope that is a better read!
The main character, Jame, mysterious as she is, with cryptic memories sprouting like weeds from her brain, a thief incomparably skilled yet honorable, a being of as-yet-undiscovered powers, fails to form as a coherent person. Sometimes she is tortured. The next instant, she is carefree and joking. No transition between these two states.
The tone of this novel is confusing. Some passages describes darkness and misery. Others, mere fluffy everyday nonsense. It does not seem to matter that people die and gods are wrathful and houses fall and burn. These leave no mark on the characters, and I am not moved either.
Many characters have highlighted cryptic, quirky personalities, yet have no real impact on the plot line. I am left scratching my head. Why did abc spend all this time plotting cryptically, yet nothing comes out of it but...this? Why did xyz exchange long probing gazes all that time, and nothing results but...that?
Finally, and worst of all, this novel is in serious need of a single, good villain. Result: an underwhelming climax.
However, the Kencyr mythology seems quite interesting. I will move on to the next book in this series, and hope that is a better read!
Read
May 25, 2013I am not rating or reviewing this book, because the author's use of words rubs me the wrong way and my brain keeps analyzing it as a Bulwer-Lytton contest entry. For example:
As opposed to being perpendicular to him in the shadows?
How does an indistinct form take shape? It started out looking indistinct, but as it took shape I could more clearly see that it was indistinct. The words struggle against each other.
I have at least four more examples from the first 15 pages, and I'm just not going to be able to enjoy the good parts of the book.
He didn't see Jame, who was already parallel to him in the shadows.
As opposed to being perpendicular to him in the shadows?
Then Jame saw that a large, indistinct form was taking shape before her.
How does an indistinct form take shape? It started out looking indistinct, but as it took shape I could more clearly see that it was indistinct. The words struggle against each other.
I have at least four more examples from the first 15 pages, and I'm just not going to be able to enjoy the good parts of the book.
September 11, 2014
The start grabbed me: an amnesiac young woman dashes out of the haunted wasteland and into a complex, baroque city that shares more than a thread of DNA with immortal Lankhmar. She navigates city politics and the paradox of the city's religious life, all while discovering or rediscovering her own talents and history. Whatever the larger issues of this world or worlds, Jame is left to her own devices and for now her entanglements are of her own design.
Each step of her discovery results in a more complex web of obligations and repercussions, to the point where I couldn't quite follow Guild politics or the ballooning cast of characters. What becomes apparent quite soon is that the history of the Kencyrath--the long retreat across the worlds of the Chain and the losing battle against Parimal Darkling--while incidental to this book will unfold in greater scale over the rest of the series.
Each step of her discovery results in a more complex web of obligations and repercussions, to the point where I couldn't quite follow Guild politics or the ballooning cast of characters. What becomes apparent quite soon is that the history of the Kencyrath--the long retreat across the worlds of the Chain and the losing battle against Parimal Darkling--while incidental to this book will unfold in greater scale over the rest of the series.
February 9, 2017
December 5, 2014:
Fantasy may be my first love in literature ... I read it non-stop in my teens and found this book the year it was published. I cherished it--still cherish it--as one of the best fantasy novels that have ever fallen between my hot little hands. Of course in the late 70's, early 80's there was much less to choose from if you were a girl--either the embarrassing woman-in-jeopardy fantasy or hard-core feminista stuff. All I had to compare it to was that awful Dragon Riders of Pern, which made me feel sorry to have been born part of the female sex, or Joanna Russ's delightful Alyxx books, which made me feel a bit nauseas. She wrote from anger, not joy. There, I said it. Sorry, Joanna.
As a character, Jame is both uniquely flawed and blessed: she knows the difference between right and wrong and strives to do her best, not always getting there. I am intrigued by a character who, in the midst of all the action will slow down to examine the moral repercussions. For a long time I wondered whether the author, Ms. Hodgell was a former yeshiva student--moral hair splitting had a big place in the narrative.
Jame is crafty and has a genuine skill for making friends. Her most marked characteristic is that she is likeable. I liked her and I wanted to associate with people like her. Don't you love reading about female characters who are energetic and who don't spend a lot of their time thinking about boys? It makes me feel alive and unsullied. That's a lot to ask from a fictional piece of work.
Godstalk is a smart book, full of creative details like Jame--who has sort sort of PTSD because of a foggy captivity prior to the beginning of the book and thus is unsure of her the extent of her magic--trying a simple spell to raise bread and instead causing it to grow a set of internal organs. Clever, clever, clever.
I have always been enjoyed when authors make weather, place or transportation-mode so tactile they evolve into a character. [Like Joss Whedon did with Serenity in "Firefly."] Tai-tastigon is the original city with a personality; it is complexly built, layer upon layer--a worthy rival to Edinburgh, London, or Ankh Morpork. Inhabiting it is a burgeoning, churning mass of humanitas, and a Mahabharata-like pantheon of active gods who populate the streets and alley-ways. This was novel in the 1980's. The pantheon of walking-talking gods have been done so many times since then it reads remedially now, but back then it was crisp as freezer-fresh iceberg lettuce. Terry Pratchett's first Discworld book was published after this book. Obviously parallel evolution at work.
Godstalk couldn't have been as bad as most of the fan fiction that populates the fantasy circuit at the moment, for the mere fact that many of these writers consume only other fantasy novels, whereas Ms. Hodgell is an English scholar and reads from the classics. Her prose and her language reflects this.
After this book was published it was shocking to discover the author could not find a publisher for her next book. In the 90's I discovered that a small publisher had issued the next two books in the series.
Alas, they were simply dreadful. Everything that made Jaime loveable--her freedom of movement, her charming scampery--was ironed flat, like the chest of a twelve year old Cameroonian girl, whose mother hopes for the best. It was almost as if Ms. Hodgell said, "Well, if you are going to hamper my freedom because Jaime is too free-spirited, I'll just do an end around." Accordingly she stuck Jaime in Purdah. Having figured out by then what J.K. Rowling knew from the get-go with the Harry Potter books--that girls will read about boys, but boys will not read about girls, Ms. Hodgell then made the main character Jame's boring brother.
December 7, 2014:
As a 50 year old, I wondered how or if my appreciation of this book would change. Well yes, it did.
I had forgotten that there was a lot of very blurry edges to the story--quasi impressionistic writing, that left a lot of holes in the story. I perfectly recall the mind of my 16 year old self reading it (kind of with terror because I cruised through it asking no questions. That kind of confident lack of inquiry is terrifying to me now) ... As I cruised through it then, I found myself thinking, "Well, it doesn't make sense and this wasn't explained too well, but that's just 'cause I'm not a better reader."
Now ... I'm a better reader and I found myself being hauled up short in exactly the same places I was before.
There are a lot of difficulties with this book--when Ms. Hodgell got to a rough place she has a tendancy to side-step and use good old fashioned classic Star Wars-era special effects to create a rift between real time and mystical time. It was slightly annoying. Nevertheless, I find myself still irrationally attached to Jame, and also, I have to remind myself this book was written years before this language became refined.
To the reviewer who wrote:
I would say that I don't know what he's looking for--when I struggle with a sentence like that I try to rewrite it and make it better. There is no better was to describe something that blurry and shapeless apart from saying: It was blurry and shapeless. How do you say a form is coalescing from nothing without saying, "A form coalesced from nothing"? Ms. Hodgell is working from an unknown world. She is solving problems in a new way, and it doesn't look clean and neat like David Eddings' off the rack stuff, but it feels organic and fresh to me.
Ms. Hodgell is a classically trained writer--her sentences are short, but they have beautiful meter, her grammar is surprising and varied--there's none of that George Martin declarative sentence followed by declarative sentence sort of thing. She's not a poet--none of her sentences shine by themselves, but in the whole they captivate without demeaning their audience. It's rare I see a word I have t olook up--Godstalk uses dozens of words--real words, not smeerps--that beckoned from another time. One aspect of the novel I do fault her on is the shifting point of view ... this was far more prevalent in the 80's than it is today, as we've gotten ahold of it, in part because film and television has so far surpassed our reading understandings and we are used to a muscular camera that takes control of the point of view and tells us what to think and feel. By these standards flitting from Dally back to Jame in a paragraph can be annoying. I've seen that Ms. Hodgell has written several more in the series, some as recently as the aughts. I will be interested to see if this is something she has grown into as well.
Five happy stars because it stood up to having been read three times prior, because it didn't insult my intelligence and because I didn't feel disgusted to be female. There is a tiny bit of hesitancy here because I did find problems that I skimmed over, and I do recognize that some of this book's detractors have a point. Still ....
Fantasy may be my first love in literature ... I read it non-stop in my teens and found this book the year it was published. I cherished it--still cherish it--as one of the best fantasy novels that have ever fallen between my hot little hands. Of course in the late 70's, early 80's there was much less to choose from if you were a girl--either the embarrassing woman-in-jeopardy fantasy or hard-core feminista stuff. All I had to compare it to was that awful Dragon Riders of Pern, which made me feel sorry to have been born part of the female sex, or Joanna Russ's delightful Alyxx books, which made me feel a bit nauseas. She wrote from anger, not joy. There, I said it. Sorry, Joanna.
As a character, Jame is both uniquely flawed and blessed: she knows the difference between right and wrong and strives to do her best, not always getting there. I am intrigued by a character who, in the midst of all the action will slow down to examine the moral repercussions. For a long time I wondered whether the author, Ms. Hodgell was a former yeshiva student--moral hair splitting had a big place in the narrative.
Jame is crafty and has a genuine skill for making friends. Her most marked characteristic is that she is likeable. I liked her and I wanted to associate with people like her. Don't you love reading about female characters who are energetic and who don't spend a lot of their time thinking about boys? It makes me feel alive and unsullied. That's a lot to ask from a fictional piece of work.
Godstalk is a smart book, full of creative details like Jame--who has sort sort of PTSD because of a foggy captivity prior to the beginning of the book and thus is unsure of her the extent of her magic--trying a simple spell to raise bread and instead causing it to grow a set of internal organs. Clever, clever, clever.
I have always been enjoyed when authors make weather, place or transportation-mode so tactile they evolve into a character. [Like Joss Whedon did with Serenity in "Firefly."] Tai-tastigon is the original city with a personality; it is complexly built, layer upon layer--a worthy rival to Edinburgh, London, or Ankh Morpork. Inhabiting it is a burgeoning, churning mass of humanitas, and a Mahabharata-like pantheon of active gods who populate the streets and alley-ways. This was novel in the 1980's. The pantheon of walking-talking gods have been done so many times since then it reads remedially now, but back then it was crisp as freezer-fresh iceberg lettuce. Terry Pratchett's first Discworld book was published after this book. Obviously parallel evolution at work.
Godstalk couldn't have been as bad as most of the fan fiction that populates the fantasy circuit at the moment, for the mere fact that many of these writers consume only other fantasy novels, whereas Ms. Hodgell is an English scholar and reads from the classics. Her prose and her language reflects this.
After this book was published it was shocking to discover the author could not find a publisher for her next book. In the 90's I discovered that a small publisher had issued the next two books in the series.
Alas, they were simply dreadful. Everything that made Jaime loveable--her freedom of movement, her charming scampery--was ironed flat, like the chest of a twelve year old Cameroonian girl, whose mother hopes for the best. It was almost as if Ms. Hodgell said, "Well, if you are going to hamper my freedom because Jaime is too free-spirited, I'll just do an end around." Accordingly she stuck Jaime in Purdah. Having figured out by then what J.K. Rowling knew from the get-go with the Harry Potter books--that girls will read about boys, but boys will not read about girls, Ms. Hodgell then made the main character Jame's boring brother.
December 7, 2014:
As a 50 year old, I wondered how or if my appreciation of this book would change. Well yes, it did.
I had forgotten that there was a lot of very blurry edges to the story--quasi impressionistic writing, that left a lot of holes in the story. I perfectly recall the mind of my 16 year old self reading it (kind of with terror because I cruised through it asking no questions. That kind of confident lack of inquiry is terrifying to me now) ... As I cruised through it then, I found myself thinking, "Well, it doesn't make sense and this wasn't explained too well, but that's just 'cause I'm not a better reader."
Now ... I'm a better reader and I found myself being hauled up short in exactly the same places I was before.
There are a lot of difficulties with this book--when Ms. Hodgell got to a rough place she has a tendancy to side-step and use good old fashioned classic Star Wars-era special effects to create a rift between real time and mystical time. It was slightly annoying. Nevertheless, I find myself still irrationally attached to Jame, and also, I have to remind myself this book was written years before this language became refined.
To the reviewer who wrote:
Then Jame saw that a large, indistinct form was taking shape before her.
How does an indistinct form take shape? It started out looking indistinct, but as it took shape I could more clearly see that it was indistinct. The words struggle against each other.
I would say that I don't know what he's looking for--when I struggle with a sentence like that I try to rewrite it and make it better. There is no better was to describe something that blurry and shapeless apart from saying: It was blurry and shapeless. How do you say a form is coalescing from nothing without saying, "A form coalesced from nothing"? Ms. Hodgell is working from an unknown world. She is solving problems in a new way, and it doesn't look clean and neat like David Eddings' off the rack stuff, but it feels organic and fresh to me.
Ms. Hodgell is a classically trained writer--her sentences are short, but they have beautiful meter, her grammar is surprising and varied--there's none of that George Martin declarative sentence followed by declarative sentence sort of thing. She's not a poet--none of her sentences shine by themselves, but in the whole they captivate without demeaning their audience. It's rare I see a word I have t olook up--Godstalk uses dozens of words--real words, not smeerps--that beckoned from another time. One aspect of the novel I do fault her on is the shifting point of view ... this was far more prevalent in the 80's than it is today, as we've gotten ahold of it, in part because film and television has so far surpassed our reading understandings and we are used to a muscular camera that takes control of the point of view and tells us what to think and feel. By these standards flitting from Dally back to Jame in a paragraph can be annoying. I've seen that Ms. Hodgell has written several more in the series, some as recently as the aughts. I will be interested to see if this is something she has grown into as well.
Five happy stars because it stood up to having been read three times prior, because it didn't insult my intelligence and because I didn't feel disgusted to be female. There is a tiny bit of hesitancy here because I did find problems that I skimmed over, and I do recognize that some of this book's detractors have a point. Still ....
May 14, 2015
This is 2.5 stars, for “it was okay.” There are aspects of the book that I appreciate, but my reading experience was a slow one; when I take more than 3 weeks to read a 265-page fantasy novel, it hasn’t fully engaged me.
God Stalk was first published in 1982, and has evidently become a cult classic. The beginning is strong, with Jame, a warrior woman of sorts who has lost several years of her memory, stumbling into Tai-tastigon, a city inhabited by dozens of minor gods and their worshippers. Not knowing what to do next, she spends the book in the city, making friends, navigating guild tensions and trying to understand the nature of its gods.
Some of the book’s ideas are great fun: the concept of the gods, for instance, which really are otherworldly beings rather than overly-powerful humans. The city has plenty of atmosphere, and what little we see of its politics seems more realistic than your typical fantasy fare. The writing is also somewhat better than in an average fantasy book, and the book pleasant enough to read even though I rarely felt much urge to pick it up.
But while the characters are inoffensive, there isn’t much to them. In some ways Jame reads like a superhero, which could be lots of fun, but I never fully entered into her story. Many of the climactic scenes are breezed through too quickly for the reader to become immersed in the moment, and Jame’s thoughts and motivations remained unclear to me throughout. This is the most offhand use of amnesia I’ve ever seen in fiction; Jame knows she has it but barely seems to care, and it affects the story hardly at all. Meanwhile, she takes an oath as an apprentice thief despite being, as we are repeatedly told, extremely honest, honorable, and unwilling to engage in ordinary thievery; she just joins as a way to gain access to the wider society of the city. Does not compute. There’s also simply a vagueness about the character, such that who she is, and how she would think or feel about anything, never became clear to me. And the supporting cast is mostly one-note, including too many minor characters for the story being told, such that many of them run together.
Meanwhile, the worldbuilding and at times even the plot seem to assume background knowledge from the reader, as if this were a sequel to something else rather than the first in a series. I’m all for letting the reader figure out the world as she goes, but the author has to carefully construct that experience rather than dumping random bits of information willy-nilly. This is the type of fantasy novel that includes three appendices with background information, one of them all about the complicated, science-fictional ancient history of Jame’s people, which is brought up frequently in the story and which I could not have cared less about.
But there are readers who enjoy that sort of thing, and if you do, this book may be worth a shot. It’s not awful, but my interest diminished the more I read, and by the time it ended (a bit anticlimactically) I was just glad to be done. My ultimate verdict is that, while this isn’t bad enough to deserve 2 stars, nor is it good enough to merit 3.
God Stalk was first published in 1982, and has evidently become a cult classic. The beginning is strong, with Jame, a warrior woman of sorts who has lost several years of her memory, stumbling into Tai-tastigon, a city inhabited by dozens of minor gods and their worshippers. Not knowing what to do next, she spends the book in the city, making friends, navigating guild tensions and trying to understand the nature of its gods.
Some of the book’s ideas are great fun: the concept of the gods, for instance, which really are otherworldly beings rather than overly-powerful humans. The city has plenty of atmosphere, and what little we see of its politics seems more realistic than your typical fantasy fare. The writing is also somewhat better than in an average fantasy book, and the book pleasant enough to read even though I rarely felt much urge to pick it up.
But while the characters are inoffensive, there isn’t much to them. In some ways Jame reads like a superhero, which could be lots of fun, but I never fully entered into her story. Many of the climactic scenes are breezed through too quickly for the reader to become immersed in the moment, and Jame’s thoughts and motivations remained unclear to me throughout. This is the most offhand use of amnesia I’ve ever seen in fiction; Jame knows she has it but barely seems to care, and it affects the story hardly at all. Meanwhile, she takes an oath as an apprentice thief despite being, as we are repeatedly told, extremely honest, honorable, and unwilling to engage in ordinary thievery; she just joins as a way to gain access to the wider society of the city. Does not compute. There’s also simply a vagueness about the character, such that who she is, and how she would think or feel about anything, never became clear to me. And the supporting cast is mostly one-note, including too many minor characters for the story being told, such that many of them run together.
Meanwhile, the worldbuilding and at times even the plot seem to assume background knowledge from the reader, as if this were a sequel to something else rather than the first in a series. I’m all for letting the reader figure out the world as she goes, but the author has to carefully construct that experience rather than dumping random bits of information willy-nilly. This is the type of fantasy novel that includes three appendices with background information, one of them all about the complicated, science-fictional ancient history of Jame’s people, which is brought up frequently in the story and which I could not have cared less about.
But there are readers who enjoy that sort of thing, and if you do, this book may be worth a shot. It’s not awful, but my interest diminished the more I read, and by the time it ended (a bit anticlimactically) I was just glad to be done. My ultimate verdict is that, while this isn’t bad enough to deserve 2 stars, nor is it good enough to merit 3.
March 15, 2011
This is one of the most epic Mary Sues I have encountered outside of Harry Potter or teenie self-insert het fanfic. The extent of her Mary Sue powers is pretty mind-boggling, in fact, so much so that "What improbable special power will she discover next?" got to be as interesting and suspenseful as the highly adventurous adventure plot - which actually was rather interesting, though not without various serious flaws. The flaws are mostly what you'd expect of a Mary Sue's adventure, at least, if you've read many fandom Mary Sues, and they drove me crazy while also keeping me entertained, much like a lot of fanfiction that I read. On the other hand, it's such an outstanding example of everything about Mary Sue that it's one of the more memorable fantasy novels I've read, though not one of the more skillfully written, original, gripping, or ~magical.
Overall, the book struck me as a young novel, perhaps the writer's first written ever? I'm not sure if she was actually very young when she wrote it, either, but its aesthetic struck me as very, oh, 14 or so. For me that was both entertaining and highly annoying, so I probably won't be able to ever reread it, even though it was funny.
Overall, the book struck me as a young novel, perhaps the writer's first written ever? I'm not sure if she was actually very young when she wrote it, either, but its aesthetic struck me as very, oh, 14 or so. For me that was both entertaining and highly annoying, so I probably won't be able to ever reread it, even though it was funny.
February 15, 2013
4/5; 4 stars; A-
This was a fantasy story with a female protagonist. There were some pretty dark moments but no so much that it overshadowed the sense of adventure evoked by the story. I enjoyed the different characters, the presence of magic, the strange culture of the city, and all the gods. The appendices at the end were really useful. (In fact, I think I would have enjoyed the story more if I read them before the book.)
This was a fantasy story with a female protagonist. There were some pretty dark moments but no so much that it overshadowed the sense of adventure evoked by the story. I enjoyed the different characters, the presence of magic, the strange culture of the city, and all the gods. The appendices at the end were really useful. (In fact, I think I would have enjoyed the story more if I read them before the book.)
July 19, 2020
That rare kind of fantasy book that does not set a stage and perform a story. It turns into a window through which you stare out at the mad city of Tai-tastegon, watching the people walk the crooked streets, the cloud-king's folk fishing from the roofs, the temples performing their intricate dance of devotion and doubt.
And when we peer close out the window, we see a girl-woman with a black banner of hair, wearing the peacock gloves, leaping and running through the Puzzle Quarter, else dancing in a tavern by night while folk stare transfixed as before a priestess...
Hey! Good book.
And when we peer close out the window, we see a girl-woman with a black banner of hair, wearing the peacock gloves, leaping and running through the Puzzle Quarter, else dancing in a tavern by night while folk stare transfixed as before a priestess...
Hey! Good book.
February 5, 2023
I listened to the audiobook. I’m not sure about the voices. I might need to read it again myself, but it also could have just been too much (subjective) time between listening intervals. That said, the characters were all memorable and I was never confused about who was who.
This might have been five stars except for a few things that boil down to the following: while much is resolved, a lot isn’t, and the story as a whole feels like a footnote on a prologue. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ll probably continue with the series, as the overarching story that is hinted at seems intriguing, which could cause me to up my rating.
This might have been five stars except for a few things that boil down to the following: while much is resolved, a lot isn’t, and the story as a whole feels like a footnote on a prologue. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ll probably continue with the series, as the overarching story that is hinted at seems intriguing, which could cause me to up my rating.
July 30, 2018
This is another book I remembered very fondly from my teenagehood (I even had a limited-edition hardcover), and recently re-read to see how it withstood the test of time (as well as comparing older and newer young-adult fantasy). I enjoyed it tremendously. Below are my thoughts for prospective readers.
What to Expect
A highly entertaining story, setting up the beginning of an epic fantasy cycle. Hodgell is slowly building the mythology around the people, characters, and places in the world. Hints and back stories are alluded to, giving tantalising tastes of things to come. Structurally, the story takes place in important episodes over the span of a year and a bit. We get to know Jame, her companions, and the fantastic city and world as events interweave and grow in tempo to conclusion.
Allow me to go on a tangent: there is the question of the thieves guild. While this is a fantasy trope (and in Hodgell's defence, she published this in 1982), one always wonders about how cities can support this. There is the basic predator/pray populations ratio that every biologist will tell you about. Conversely, large enough populations to support such a large guild would be expected to develop mechanisms to cohabitate in close proximity. Be that as it may, this is handled well in the novel.
What I liked
Hodgell's story-telling and world-building are top-notch, her story pacing is excellent, and she balances light and dark themes perfectly. I love the tantalising glimpses into Jame's past, and the slowly-building tension around her. One can't help but feel immersed in the story, love Jame's vibrancy, and wish to learn more.
What to be aware of
The story is more or less self-contained, but it's obvious at the end that it is merely the beginning of a larger cycle. This novel was published in 1982, and I imagine some modern readers might find the style a bit dated. The latest installment (book 8) was published last year -- 35 years on. I believe the series is still not complete, though I expect GRRM fans will likely not mind this in the least.
The city of Tai-tastigon is wonderful, but the rest of the series takes place in other locations. Style also changes between novels, although I find the writing consistently excellent (specific notes on each volume are coming as I re-read them).
Summary
A highly recommended series. This is epic fantasy done right, with perfect balance of light and dark, and excellent, slowly-building pacing. I'm off to re-read the rest of the series (and read those newer volumes for the first time). If you love fantasy, I strongly suggest you add God Stalk to your TBR pile.
--
Assaph Mehr, author of Murder In Absentia: A story of Togas, Daggers, and Magic - for lovers of Ancient Rome, Murder Mysteries, and Urban Fantasy.
What to Expect
A highly entertaining story, setting up the beginning of an epic fantasy cycle. Hodgell is slowly building the mythology around the people, characters, and places in the world. Hints and back stories are alluded to, giving tantalising tastes of things to come. Structurally, the story takes place in important episodes over the span of a year and a bit. We get to know Jame, her companions, and the fantastic city and world as events interweave and grow in tempo to conclusion.
Allow me to go on a tangent: there is the question of the thieves guild. While this is a fantasy trope (and in Hodgell's defence, she published this in 1982), one always wonders about how cities can support this. There is the basic predator/pray populations ratio that every biologist will tell you about. Conversely, large enough populations to support such a large guild would be expected to develop mechanisms to cohabitate in close proximity. Be that as it may, this is handled well in the novel.
What I liked
Hodgell's story-telling and world-building are top-notch, her story pacing is excellent, and she balances light and dark themes perfectly. I love the tantalising glimpses into Jame's past, and the slowly-building tension around her. One can't help but feel immersed in the story, love Jame's vibrancy, and wish to learn more.
What to be aware of
The story is more or less self-contained, but it's obvious at the end that it is merely the beginning of a larger cycle. This novel was published in 1982, and I imagine some modern readers might find the style a bit dated. The latest installment (book 8) was published last year -- 35 years on. I believe the series is still not complete, though I expect GRRM fans will likely not mind this in the least.
The city of Tai-tastigon is wonderful, but the rest of the series takes place in other locations. Style also changes between novels, although I find the writing consistently excellent (specific notes on each volume are coming as I re-read them).
Summary
A highly recommended series. This is epic fantasy done right, with perfect balance of light and dark, and excellent, slowly-building pacing. I'm off to re-read the rest of the series (and read those newer volumes for the first time). If you love fantasy, I strongly suggest you add God Stalk to your TBR pile.
--
Assaph Mehr, author of Murder In Absentia: A story of Togas, Daggers, and Magic - for lovers of Ancient Rome, Murder Mysteries, and Urban Fantasy.
January 6, 2015
I've been vaguely aware of this book, and that it's generally considered a Good Thing, for some time now, so when it impinged upon my consciousness again lately, I popped over to the Kobo shop and bought it (hooray for the magic of ebooks!). And I found it...hm...I'm not sure I think it as brilliant as some people I know seem to, but I did enjoy it.
Jame, injured and pursued by boggles, comes running out of the badlands and into the distinctly weird city of Tai-tastigon. There she finds friends, and a job as an apprentice thief, and another job as a dancer, and takes up theological research to fill up her spare time. She causes assorted kinds of havoc, generally without meaning to, and rather a lot of her friends and acquaintances die.
There's an awful lot in this book that doesn't really hold together when you stop to think about it. The city of Tai-tastigon appears to be run by the Thieves' Guild, which doesn't really make much sense, and there's barely any mention of anyone engaging in any honest work (apart from a few innkeepers and market traders (and where are the market traders getting their produce? The city seems to be in the middle of wilderness, not farmland), which makes me wonder who the thieves are stealing from, and how they're disposing of their ill-gotten gains. Then there's the Temple Quarter, which seems to be another sink for money and goods. I know practically nothing about economics, but even I can tell that this city cannot possibly work.
The plot, to be honest, is a bit shaky as well. Jame comes out of the badlands with a large hole in her memories, but startling skills at dancing, fighting, and (in due course) pick-pocketing. She tends to do things not only without much thought for consequences, but often without much thought for what she wants the consequences to be. And then the book just ends, without her really having resolved anything. (Luckily the ebook I bought is an omnibus of the first two volumes in the series.)
Having said all that, though, there's an awful lot to like in this book too. Despite its impracticality, Tai-tastigon caught my fancy, with its mazes and its temples and its monsters (human and otherwise).
As a character, Jame is not particularly likeable, but she is compelling. I definitely wanted to read more about her, know more about her, see what she'd do next. Most of her friends, by contrast, are likeable, and often interestingly quirky too. And her enemies are interesting, and variously horrible.
And the gods. I really liked the bits with the gods. Especially Gorgo, whose part of the story was fascinating. And of course Jame's own god, who is distinctly worrying.
I'm really looking forward to book two now, to see how the revelations at the end of this book play out...and what havoc Jame creates next!
Jame, injured and pursued by boggles, comes running out of the badlands and into the distinctly weird city of Tai-tastigon. There she finds friends, and a job as an apprentice thief, and another job as a dancer, and takes up theological research to fill up her spare time. She causes assorted kinds of havoc, generally without meaning to, and rather a lot of her friends and acquaintances die.
There's an awful lot in this book that doesn't really hold together when you stop to think about it. The city of Tai-tastigon appears to be run by the Thieves' Guild, which doesn't really make much sense, and there's barely any mention of anyone engaging in any honest work (apart from a few innkeepers and market traders (and where are the market traders getting their produce? The city seems to be in the middle of wilderness, not farmland), which makes me wonder who the thieves are stealing from, and how they're disposing of their ill-gotten gains. Then there's the Temple Quarter, which seems to be another sink for money and goods. I know practically nothing about economics, but even I can tell that this city cannot possibly work.
The plot, to be honest, is a bit shaky as well. Jame comes out of the badlands with a large hole in her memories, but startling skills at dancing, fighting, and (in due course) pick-pocketing. She tends to do things not only without much thought for consequences, but often without much thought for what she wants the consequences to be. And then the book just ends, without her really having resolved anything. (Luckily the ebook I bought is an omnibus of the first two volumes in the series.)
Having said all that, though, there's an awful lot to like in this book too. Despite its impracticality, Tai-tastigon caught my fancy, with its mazes and its temples and its monsters (human and otherwise).
As a character, Jame is not particularly likeable, but she is compelling. I definitely wanted to read more about her, know more about her, see what she'd do next. Most of her friends, by contrast, are likeable, and often interestingly quirky too. And her enemies are interesting, and variously horrible.
And the gods. I really liked the bits with the gods. Especially Gorgo, whose part of the story was fascinating. And of course Jame's own god, who is distinctly worrying.
I'm really looking forward to book two now, to see how the revelations at the end of this book play out...and what havoc Jame creates next!
July 13, 2011
6/11/11
I am in fact reading an omnibus edition, but since the books were written so far apart, I thought that I would record/review them separately.
My first impression is really good. The writing has been very nice so far and the story catching.
-----
6/12/11
This is a very good book, there is no doubt about it. As most people said, there is one word to characterize it: creative. P.C. Hodgell has a deluge of original ideas. In fact she has so many that the strongest point of this novel is also its weakest one. We are offered a surfeit of information in such a short interval that it leaves the reader (or at least it left me) breathless, wondering what exactly did just happen.
This is excellent information, that one doesn't want to miss, but because it flows so fast, the reader hardly has time to assimilate it and think of what it might mean in the big picture. It is truly a pity because I believe, if the author didn't move that quick from one idea to another, it would have been a great book.
The most undesirable side effect to this overabundance of facts is that it takes a (very long) while to unearth the synopsis and to segregate the main details of the story from the secondary details. For a book of 268 pages, to figure out only around page 190 what fuels Jame's actions is a bit excessive. It's not that we are not given that information soon after she arrives in Tai-tastigon! No, we are told about it... along with twenty other reasons she finds the city interesting.
So let me share this bit of information with you and save you some rummaging. Jame is a 17-year-old Kencyr girl suffering from partial amnesia: she can remember her childhood but nothing about the recent years. Her arrival to Tai-tastigon (a holy city, that houses the temples of current and forgotten/"dead" gods) triggers her search about the true nature of the gods. Kencyrs were monotheists, but here, faced with almost palpable proof of hundreds of other gods, she starts setting up experiments that would reveal whether the other gods exist or they were simply created by the people's belief in them.
Yes, she actually sets up experiments trying to "force" the gods to produce miracles that would confirm them as real... A god stalker! As I said, this is one of the most original ideas I read in a book (even if I have encountered it in real-life before).
I do recommend this novel to fiction-lovers, in spite of its occasional lack of focus.
I am in fact reading an omnibus edition, but since the books were written so far apart, I thought that I would record/review them separately.
My first impression is really good. The writing has been very nice so far and the story catching.
-----
6/12/11
This is a very good book, there is no doubt about it. As most people said, there is one word to characterize it: creative. P.C. Hodgell has a deluge of original ideas. In fact she has so many that the strongest point of this novel is also its weakest one. We are offered a surfeit of information in such a short interval that it leaves the reader (or at least it left me) breathless, wondering what exactly did just happen.
This is excellent information, that one doesn't want to miss, but because it flows so fast, the reader hardly has time to assimilate it and think of what it might mean in the big picture. It is truly a pity because I believe, if the author didn't move that quick from one idea to another, it would have been a great book.
The most undesirable side effect to this overabundance of facts is that it takes a (very long) while to unearth the synopsis and to segregate the main details of the story from the secondary details. For a book of 268 pages, to figure out only around page 190 what fuels Jame's actions is a bit excessive. It's not that we are not given that information soon after she arrives in Tai-tastigon! No, we are told about it... along with twenty other reasons she finds the city interesting.
So let me share this bit of information with you and save you some rummaging. Jame is a 17-year-old Kencyr girl suffering from partial amnesia: she can remember her childhood but nothing about the recent years. Her arrival to Tai-tastigon (a holy city, that houses the temples of current and forgotten/"dead" gods) triggers her search about the true nature of the gods. Kencyrs were monotheists, but here, faced with almost palpable proof of hundreds of other gods, she starts setting up experiments that would reveal whether the other gods exist or they were simply created by the people's belief in them.
Yes, she actually sets up experiments trying to "force" the gods to produce miracles that would confirm them as real... A god stalker! As I said, this is one of the most original ideas I read in a book (even if I have encountered it in real-life before).
I do recommend this novel to fiction-lovers, in spite of its occasional lack of focus.
July 8, 2012
I loved this book back in the 80s; I can still remember the art on the hardcover edition from my local library, which obviously isn't this cover. Nor is it the cover of the edition which I have, Chronicles of the Kencyrath, which also includes the second book, Dark of the Moon. Anyway, I recently reread it with a slightly different perspective - PC Hodgell was a graduate of Clarion, and somehow that made me read it differently. It's still a reasonably well-crafted book; the city of Tai-tastigon is definitely one of the main characters and its complexity is one of the chief pleasures. When I was a teen, I think I also had a bit of a crush/wanted to be the main character, Jame. She has a tortured, mysterious past (check). She is athletic and has a slight build, leading her to be mistaken for a boy; yet when she puts on her sexy dancing clothes and dances, she literally makes men lose their minds (checkity-check). She's curious and daring and constantly getting into one scrape or another (check). And there's a certain amount of current tragedy to match the tortured, mysterious past (swoon). As an adult, I found her less appealing. Her indifference to the effect her actions and inactions have on her friends and the other people around her is typical of a young adult, but less interesting now that I'm not one. She is deeply affected by dramatic incidents, but only while they're happening. It's a very shallow kind of existence that young Jame leads, and although she's marginally more complicated than I've made her sound, I found myself more interested in the city, in the mythology, in the whole idea of the gods being shaped and deriving their entire existence from the belief of their followers. Fortunately, Hodgell was clearly interested in these aspects too, so there's a bit of them. A good read still, but not as riveting as I remember it being.
August 13, 2016
I have heard some good things about this series and I wanted to like it. However, this story didn't really work for me. The plot seems to jerk along. I would be reading a section and getting into the story and suddenly the story would move in time and space and something seemingly unrelated would happen. Also, I really couldn't develop any empathy for the characters -- not even Jame the main POV character. This reduced my enjoyment of the story. Things did finally pull together ... but I really didn't care so much by that time.
July 6, 2022
Well, I never intended to review this book. After all, I wrote it. However, that author was me forty years ago. Now I'm on the 11th and probably final novel in the series -- a life's work, in other words. I think my imagination was more fertile in the beginning, but my technique wasn't as good. One learns some things and forgets others. It also takes a major part of one's brain to keep so many details continually in mind, not helped by the fact that I don't like to re-read my own work.
That said, I'm still glad that I wrote it and think it is one of my best.
That said, I'm still glad that I wrote it and think it is one of my best.
March 30, 2025
4.5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews
Summary
Jame, unwilling devotee of her people's Three-Faced God, escapes from the Haunted Lands to the temple city of Tai-Tastigon, arriving on the one night of the year that forgotten gods roam the streets. Uncertain where she's been or for how long, she finds both refuge and political machinations she's unwittingly involved in.
Review
God Stalk was easily one of the best SFF books of the 1980s – inventive, original, engaging, etc. It eventually kicked off a series that was generally enthralling, if sometimes opaque, and that was sabotaged by poor marketing.
This first book created just the right amount of mystery and uncertainty – who is Jame, and what are these artifacts she carries around? What relationship do she and her people have with their god, and what is that god? The story answers enough of the questions to satisfy, but leaves enough uncertain to leave us wanting more.
Hodgell blends action, humor, magic, and characters in a great balance – little touches (like the thread about Gorgo the Lugubrious god) that keep it all from getting too dark while keeping the story moving. I really enjoyed this when I first read it, and immediately kept an eye out for more in the series and by Hodgell in general (which there’s little of aside from this series). I’ve read the book a few times since.
Unfortunately, my interest in the series was also cut off by bad marketing. Subsequent books were released as individual volumes, but pretty soon were also released in omnibus volumes that combined two books each, but with similar titles. Especially in times and places with limited internet, it became hard to figure out which books were which. After buying at least one omnibus, thinking it was a new series entry, but finding it incorporated both a book I had and one I didn’t, I got frustrated with the whole thing. Despite this having originally been one of my favorite series, I just stopped following it, putting it out of my mind and thinking maybe I’d invest the effort to figure it all out later. I was surprised just now to learn it had reached book 10 (counting only individual books), and am eager to get back to it. Still, it’s a good example of how terrible marketing can lead not to more sales, but to true fans giving up.
If you haven’t yet encountered Hodgell’s writing, I urge you to start with this; you’ll enjoy it.
Summary
Jame, unwilling devotee of her people's Three-Faced God, escapes from the Haunted Lands to the temple city of Tai-Tastigon, arriving on the one night of the year that forgotten gods roam the streets. Uncertain where she's been or for how long, she finds both refuge and political machinations she's unwittingly involved in.
Review
God Stalk was easily one of the best SFF books of the 1980s – inventive, original, engaging, etc. It eventually kicked off a series that was generally enthralling, if sometimes opaque, and that was sabotaged by poor marketing.
This first book created just the right amount of mystery and uncertainty – who is Jame, and what are these artifacts she carries around? What relationship do she and her people have with their god, and what is that god? The story answers enough of the questions to satisfy, but leaves enough uncertain to leave us wanting more.
Hodgell blends action, humor, magic, and characters in a great balance – little touches (like the thread about Gorgo the Lugubrious god) that keep it all from getting too dark while keeping the story moving. I really enjoyed this when I first read it, and immediately kept an eye out for more in the series and by Hodgell in general (which there’s little of aside from this series). I’ve read the book a few times since.
Unfortunately, my interest in the series was also cut off by bad marketing. Subsequent books were released as individual volumes, but pretty soon were also released in omnibus volumes that combined two books each, but with similar titles. Especially in times and places with limited internet, it became hard to figure out which books were which. After buying at least one omnibus, thinking it was a new series entry, but finding it incorporated both a book I had and one I didn’t, I got frustrated with the whole thing. Despite this having originally been one of my favorite series, I just stopped following it, putting it out of my mind and thinking maybe I’d invest the effort to figure it all out later. I was surprised just now to learn it had reached book 10 (counting only individual books), and am eager to get back to it. Still, it’s a good example of how terrible marketing can lead not to more sales, but to true fans giving up.
If you haven’t yet encountered Hodgell’s writing, I urge you to start with this; you’ll enjoy it.
August 31, 2011
I enjoyed everything but the first and last chapter of the book very much. Those left me with the feeling that the rest of the novel didn’t really matter, and that the bigger questions weren’t answered.
Initially I had trouble getting into the book, as the heroine (Jame) doesn’t know what’s going on now and she has a 10-year memory gap in her past. The initial mysteries who and what Jame is, and what she was doing outside the city of Tai-Tastigon are all presented in chapter 1 but are not resolved. However, as soon as Jame stumbles into the inn of Res aB’tyrr the story really get’s going and it’s much easier to follow.
Much of this story is built on contradictions; Jame is from a rare race known for their honor – so she’s immediately offered an apprenticeship in the Thieves Guild, which runs the city of Tai-Tastigon. Jame’s culture is monotheistic, denying the existence of other gods – yet Tai-Tastigon is brimming with other gods. The inn of Res aB’tyrr is locked in an undeclared trade war with another inn and Jame successfully diverts many attacks, yet that inn’s proprietor likes and respects Jame.
I like how Jame frequently had to deal with the consequences of her own actions – she always tried to be responsible, but sometimes her actions have negative consequences she did not intend. Just like real life. Throughout the book it seems like there are many different unrelated incidents with consequences rippling out, however, I was completely surprised by how they all intermeshed and come together at the end.
Initially I had trouble getting into the book, as the heroine (Jame) doesn’t know what’s going on now and she has a 10-year memory gap in her past. The initial mysteries who and what Jame is, and what she was doing outside the city of Tai-Tastigon are all presented in chapter 1 but are not resolved. However, as soon as Jame stumbles into the inn of Res aB’tyrr the story really get’s going and it’s much easier to follow.
Much of this story is built on contradictions; Jame is from a rare race known for their honor – so she’s immediately offered an apprenticeship in the Thieves Guild, which runs the city of Tai-Tastigon. Jame’s culture is monotheistic, denying the existence of other gods – yet Tai-Tastigon is brimming with other gods. The inn of Res aB’tyrr is locked in an undeclared trade war with another inn and Jame successfully diverts many attacks, yet that inn’s proprietor likes and respects Jame.
I like how Jame frequently had to deal with the consequences of her own actions – she always tried to be responsible, but sometimes her actions have negative consequences she did not intend. Just like real life. Throughout the book it seems like there are many different unrelated incidents with consequences rippling out, however, I was completely surprised by how they all intermeshed and come together at the end.
March 11, 2014
I don't understand why this book has such great reviews...when I read it it feels like I have blinders on. She has great ideas but they seem to come together in a shambled way. I keep wanting to like it, wanting to get the plot, or be surprised when some new development happens, but the world feels too colorless (literally, I can't imagine what it looks like, what people look like, why they might feel the way they do). Good authors pull you in, they get you to a state that you know what the character might be thinking, how they might react and definitely the things they would never do. You also have an image in your head of what the alley way outside their home might look like etc. I love fantasy books and have read as many as I can get my hands on, and usually the ratings on good reads make sense and can be relied on...I just don't get it at all in this case.
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