Tales of Neveryon: Amazon.ca: Samuel R. Delany: Books

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

The first two volumes in Delaney's Neveryon series explore sexuality, race and subjectivity in an ancient, barbaric civilization.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"The tales of Neveryeon are postmodern sword-and-sorcery . . . Delany subverts the formulaic elements of sword-and-sorcery and around their empty husks constructs self-conscious meta-fictions about social and sexual behavior, the play of language and power, and - above all - the possibilities and limitations of narrative. Immensely sophisticated as literature . . . eminently readable and gorgeously entertaining." --Washington Post Book World

"Delany continues to surprise and delight . . . [his playfulness is the kind that involves you in the flow, forces you to see details in a larger context, yet never lets you forget that what you are reading is, after all, nothing but artifice, a series of signs."--New York Times Book Review

"This is fantasy that challenges the intellect . . . semiotic sword and sorcery, a very high level of literary gamesmanship. It's as if Umberto Eco had written about Conan the Barbarian." --USA Today

"Complex and carefully crafted . . . his language is lovely, often approaching the poetic."--Publishers Weekly --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

4.4 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Read the Series--Understand the Book, Jun 22 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Tales of Nev�r�on: Return to Nev�r�on, Book 1 (Paperback)

Before anyone indulges in the luxury of on-line criticism, one should at least know (and respect) the correct spelling of the authors name. Samuel R. Delany (like the literal French for "of the New York", abbreviated), by his own admission, wrote Tales of Neveryon partly in repsonse to his own consumption of the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, and Fritz Liebers (occasionally in collaboration with L. Sprague deCamp) Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser fantasy/fiction swords/sorcery stories. The French critics epigraphs which open the stories display SRDs depth of knowledge of literary criticism, although those critics and analysts of literature and society may no longer be popular. SRD also demonstrates his knowledge of archeology, ethnology, mathematics, physics, astronomy, and seamanship to a degree in all of the four (actually five, including Triton) books that are explicity about Neveryon, which itself is an intriguing "pun" or translation of a supposedly factual (it is, sadly, not) lost text or codex from repositories in Istanbul, Turkey (from which, only in 1906, the original proof by Archimedes for the volume and the area of the sphere were found in palimpsest form).

SRD indulges in the use of arcane terminology, as well, not in a bombastic way, but in a manner that will make you curious to research the meaning of the word. The tales, overall, are delightful, fascinating, and relevant to modern times in more ways than any individual could express. One leads into the other in a logical fashion, except perhaps the last book, alternatively titled "The Bridge of Lost Desire" or "Return to Neveryon", and all four (excluding Triton, which I have not as yet read) make a cohesive and interlocked whole experience and pleasurable, thoughtful reading.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Poetic, if uneven, Oct 5 2003

By

R. Wallace "Bob Wallace" (St. Louis, Mo USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Tales of Nev�r�on: Return to Nev�r�on, Book 1 (Paperback)

Delaney is a stylist; I'll give him that. His prose often
sounds like poetry. It's especially noticeable in novels like _Nova._ Unfortunately, he has a tendency to be almost
incomprehensible (try _The Einstein Intersection._) Of course, some of _this_ book, which consists of five interlocked stories, in almost incomprehensible. Delaney makes the mistake of actually thinking some of the most irrelevant French philosophers make sense--he uses their quotes to open every story. The quality is very uneven. In one story he spends pages on his theory of money, and only shows he doesn't understand what is it. Right on the heels of that one he discusses his version of [phallic] envy. The last story in the book slightly indulges Delaney's...fantasies. The first story is a pretty good introduction to a decadent society, and the politics of court life. Overall, it's a very good book, not really sword-and-sorcery, or fantasy, or science fiction. Mostly, it's just Delaney. It won't appeal to everyone.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Fantasy with a point, Feb 18 2003

By

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Tales of Nev�r�on: Return to Nev�r�on, Book 1 (Paperback)

If you're a big reader of fantasy, you might notice that sometimes the writers try to use their fantasy stories to make some sort of philosophical point, maybe try to comment on male/female relationships, or something equally weighty. More often than not, these come off as heavy-handed and clumsy, oversimplifying their point hideously to make sure everyone "gets it" and then hammering the same point home over the course of several books to the point of tediousness. Those type of books annoy the heck out of me. So it's nice to see someone actually doing it right with this book. Delany's fantasy world isn't strictly fantasy, per se (it has elements but is more like the world right when writing was first invented) but it's certainly not our world. So he creates this detailed world, shows it to us and then proceeds over the course of the stories in this book to make comments on our world and use the characters and situations to explore similar situations in the "real world". All of this is done without him standing up and screaming "Look! I'm being didactic!" and most of the time unless you're looking for the specific commentary, you won't even notice, that's how subtle it tends to be. Even better, Delany tends to just make his point and move, without laboring over the same idea in story after story. His ideas are different, too, than what you'd normally find in fantasy, it's not the usual "men and women don't understand each other" he looks into things like currency, the origins of feminism and the sexual nature of slavery. And even without the intellectual angle to these tales, they're entertaining in their own right, Delany's characters and settings are enormously exciting, and while there's not an overarching plot to the stories, characters do carry over from tale to tale and develop over time. And for all his examinations, Delany never forgets the most important thing about a story . . . keeping it interesting. His world is rendered with enough detail to fill several books and fortunately there were three other Neveryon books after this one. But those who think fantasy can't ever be smart should start here and see what else can be done with the genre. As fun as it is, it can't always boil down to "good versus evil."

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting look at humanity.
"Tales from Neveryon" examines many facets of human existence, from gender roles to marriage (the slight hint of S&M mentioned by a previous reviewer) to the way the... Read more

Published on Feb 9 2003 by kala-chan

4.0 out of 5 stars Enigmatic, lovely, and atypical
Samuel Delany's Tales of Neveryon is a book which accomplishes something few ever have: it takes all of the basic elements of cliched sword & sorcery fantasy stories and... Read more

Published on Feb 12 2002 by Matthew Cheney