From: sheol!throopw@dg-rtp.dg.com (Wayne Throop)
Subject: "King of the Dead" by R. A. MacAvoy
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.misc
Organization: Advanced Human Interface Group
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 04:51:05 GMT

		King Of the Dead
		by R. A. MacAvoy

You may recall from Zelazny's _Lord_of_Light_ the sequence where Yama and
Tak are commenting that Sam wasn't accepting the one-ness of what he
observed, in order to penetrate the illusion of the world as he had taught
when impersonating Buddha, but rather was squinting and concentrating on
what he observed.  This seemed odd to them, until they realized that he was
seeking to bind his consciousness to the world, rather than seeking to
transcend the world.

A similar sort of realization came to me in reading the precursor to this
book, _The_Lens_of_the_World_.  In particular, in many martial or fantasy
books, one has the student who studies under a master, and by doing ordinary
chores and drudgery, the master imbues the student with the techniques
needed for combat, magecraft, enlightenment, whatever.  A very Eastern-
philosophy sort of thing.

The foundation of this series, it seems to me, is to do much the same thing,
but from a Western-philosophical, analytical perspective instead of from an
Eastern-philosophical synthetic perspective.

Both proceed from a student to whom a rock is a rock, a tree is a tree.
Both proceed through the stage where a rock is not a rock, a tree is not a
tree.  But MacAvoy's student and master do not teach technique with common
drudgery early on, but with complicated, relevant drudgery from the start,
making me think of the relationship of a graduate student to a thesis
advisor.  And they do not ever really conclude that a rock is a rock and a
tree is a tree after all.  They instead accept the infinite refinement that
is (at least arguably) the heart of "western" science, instead of the
perfection of essence that is (arguably) at the heart of "eastern"
scholasticism.

But enough airy and oversimplified interpretations.  What is the book really
about?  Well, we pick up the story of Nazhuret, told first person in a
correspondence to his teacher Powl.  The first book told of his training by
Powl (as interpreted above).  This book reviews a major adventure of his.

Nazhuret and his companion are attacked by assassins, and this disrupts the
sedentary life he had hoped to engage in.  In self-protection, he sets out
to investigate who should want him dead, and either negotiate or otherwise
resolve the situation.  But he ends up entering a much larger plot, as war
seems imminent with a neighboring nation, despite any reasons for such a war
being pretty much either negligible or trumped up.

Nazhuret owes allegiance to both countries in some measure, and this plus
his skills learned at Powl's instruction make him a good candidate for a
last-ditch james-bondian attempt to investigate the situation, and head off
what seems to be a pointless conflict.

A pretty vanilla plot, really.  What interests me is the subtext, involving
Nazhuret explaining as he goes along his thoughts on what he sees, and how
he reacts to various occurances along the way.  This gives us an interesting
insight into the way Nazhuret looks at the world, and it is a worldview that
I find well worth reading about.

The first two books in this series have been very good indeed.  I'm not sure
if the third will attempt to tie the three into some larger perspective, to
make something worth being called a trilogy, but whether it does or not, I
expect to savor it as I did the first two.

%A   R. A. MacAvoy
%D   December 1992
%G   ISBN 0-380-71017-X
%I   Avon
%P   286 pages
%S   The Lens of the World
%T   King of the Dead
%V   Volume 2
--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw