Night Of Madness (Hardcover)

NoM is a tale that anyone who has read any of the other Ethshar novels has been waiting to get their hands on. It is the tale of what happens on the night Warlockery is iontorduced into the world. As such, it is kind of rigid in what it can and cannot do. It COULD show how people reacted when they first became warlocks, how rulers and wizards worried over the new magic, and show how the Council of Warlocks came into being complete with how all their laws and rules came about. It simply could NOT tell us what caused warlockery to occur, since earlier novels (which take place much later after the night of madness)left the whole event shrouded in mystery. LWE couldn't reveal what caused the event or why it happened, but he did reveal some tantalizing clues, which if you gather tidbits from other novels in the series gives you a better (if somewhat lacking) idea of what is going on.

In usual LWE fasion the protagonist makes out by not being greedy or power hungry, so there is no surprises there. Read it, it is still a high quality book.

The characters are pretty pedestrian, even granting that some of them can fly. A few gained the ability to lift heavy objects (except for the plot) by thinking about them. The hero, Hanner becomes one of the 'lifters.' He is also a self-described palace parasite, a humorless young man, but nevertheless willing to take charge and do something productive during the night of madness. Hanner tries to figure out why some people were turned into warlocks on that night, and why others simply disappeared, but he approaches the mystery with the well-meaning plod of a Watson whose Holmes went over the falls at Reichenbach.

The mystery never is solved, so I'm assuming there is going to be a sequel to this fantasy.

The magic in "Night of Madness" is interesting, but it lacks the inspired fizz produced by, say a Neil Gaiman, a John Bellairs, or a Patricia McKillip. In one of wittiest scenes, a flying telephone lands in the sorceress Ithinia's backyard, and her gargoyles try to frighten it away:

"Old Rocky and Glitter were the two creatures still guarding it [the phone]. Ithinia glanced at Old Rocky's niche, on the south-west corner of the house.

"'Did you see where it came from?'

"'No, mistress. It came down out of the sun while we were meditating.'

"'You were sleeping, not meditating,' Ithinia said. 'I've told you not to try to fool me. Stone should sleep---it's nothing to hide."

"'Yes, Mistress," the gargoyle said, abashed.'

"'It called my name? Did it say anything else?'

"'It said it needed to speak with you.'"

Ha ha ha. Clunk.

Most of the dialogue comes in the form of big, chunky explanatory text, in order to elucidate the rules of Ethsharian magic, what a sorcerer may or may not do, what a witch may or may not do, etc. etc. By their very nature, sequels suffer from a degree of explanatory text, but this rules-bound fantasy takes it to an extreme. If you've already read one of the prequels to "Night of Madness" you'll be able to skip through whole pages of this book.

In fact, you might want to give the entire book a pass.

Hanner gathers a small group of warlocks and tries to find a way out of the mess. He certainly doesn't want to accept exile or execution, but neither does he believe that the warlocks can or should use their power to control the government. The old rules of separation are still valid, but will the older magicians accept the new warlocks or will magic battle magic.

Watt-Evans has written a fascinating novel. Hanner, in particular, is an intriguing and likable character. His tendency toward pudgyness and his problems with the opposite sex make him more sympathetic and Watt-Evans builds on this nicely.

About the only flaw I could find in this book was in its characters' strange reluctance to pursue the question of what caused the outbreak of the warlock magic visitation and what caused so many warlocks to fly away from everything they knew into the mysterious north. I can't imagine characters such as Watt-Evans described not wanting to find the answers to these questions, yet they didn't--or at least they didn't try very hard.

With this one quibble aside, NIGHT OF MADNESS was an enjoyable romp of a novel--funny, but with enough social heft to give the reader something to think about.