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Moongather (book one of The Duel of Sorcery…
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Moongather (book one of The Duel of Sorcery Trilogy) (original 1982; udgave 1982)

af Jo Clayton (Forfatter)

Serier: Duel of Sorcery (1)

MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingOmtaler
297587,864 (3.44)4
A young warrior woman, Serroi fights to keep dark magic from destroying her world, in the first book of Jo Clayton's acclaimed Duel of Sorcery fantasy trilogy.   Serroi is unique in her world, and was nearly put to death in infancy as a result. A green-skinned "misborn," small in stature with an unnatural connection to the natural world, she was nonetheless chosen and exceptionally trained as a meie warrior. As such, she fears nothing, except the cold and inscrutable Nor and their dark magic.   Something in Serroi's childhood awakened her to a shocking and terrible truth about these malevolent wizards, one of whom both saved and cursed her in her earliest years. It is her deep-seated terror that causes her to betray and abandon her shieldmate, Tayyan, during a rooftop battle with a magic-wielder, a craven act that threatens to haunt Serroi to the end of her days.   However, it is not cowardice that makes her run, but rather her knowledge of a great evil in the offing. In that instant before flight, Serroi recognizes the coming of something monstrous, though she cannot yet put a name to it. Now it is up to the young warrior to somehow prevent the unthinkable: She must alter a grim destiny that is set to occur on the fateful and fearful night known as Moongather, when demons will be free to enter the world.   Richly imaginative and stylistically inventive--told from the alternate viewpoints of the child Serroi just coming of age and of Serroi as a grown woman--author Jo Clayton's epic fantasy is a magnificent reading experience, evoking wonder and terror in equal measure. Moongather details a complex world of magic and dark political intrigue where divine forces do secret battle, and where the foundations of a matriarchal society and of native life itself are threatened by the twisted desires of a jealous queen and a powerful wizard. Creator of the much loved Diadem Saga and Skeen Trilogy, Clayton's engrossing, endlessly exciting Duel of Sorcery Trilogy firmly places her among the ranks of revered fantasists Jane Yolen, Mercedes Lackey, and Marion Zimmer Bradley.  … (mere)
Medlem:strangerrrs
Titel:Moongather (book one of The Duel of Sorcery Trilogy)
Forfattere:Jo Clayton (Forfatter)
Info:DAW (1982), Edition: First Edition, 240 pages
Samlinger:Dit bibliotek
Vurdering:
Nøgleord:to-read

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Moongather af Jo Clayton (1982)

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Viser 5 af 5
A little vague on the details. It's as if the author deliberately obfuscated the world building. And the ending just seemed ... off, tonally, thematically and logically.

But it was frequently well written, psychologically interesting and a promising start to a trilogy. ( )
  3Oranges | Jun 24, 2023 |
Described as "she's a bisexual swordswoman with a magical nature, her lover's an asskicking fatty out to reclaim his throne. They fight misogynists! (No really.)" Intriguing!
  wealhtheowwylfing | Feb 29, 2016 |
The first in the "Duel of Sorcery" series, but works as a stand-alone.
Jo Clayton pretty much pioneered the woman-centered "Sword-and-Sorceress" subgenre of fantasy, and although not much like this is getting published today, I think her writing holds up quite well.
It's not deep or metaphorical - it's pure fantasy-action-adventure, but her characters and settings are interesting and individual.
"Moongather" tells the story of Serroi, alternating between chapters that show her as a young girl and as a woman.
As a child, we learn, she was rejected by her tribe for being 'mis-born' - but the same traits that caused her people to reject her attracts the attention of a Noris, or sorcerer, who adopts her. But his motives in doing so may be suspect...
As a woman, we see Serroi as an independent meie, or swordswoman. Unfortunately, she's in a bad situation right now. Inadvertently, she has gained knowledge of a nefarious political plot, and she's being pursued by those who would rather see her dead than tell what she knows... ( )
  AltheaAnn | Feb 9, 2016 |
After writing the very belated 2010 reviews for Jo Clayton's Drinker of Souls trilogy, I was inspired to revisit her Duel of Sorcery trilogy. This is one of my childhood favorites. Moongather was published in 1982, followed quickly by Moonscatter in 1983 and three years later closed with Changer's Moon. The Dancer trilogy revisits the central protagonist and this phenomenal world a couple centuries later.

I consider this to be a seminal work of feminist fantasy, though I was not conscious of this as a child. It is very much an exploration of gender roles, how girls and women survive patriarchal societies, and to a lesser degree love and sexuality. It is the first instance I can recall reading of a lesbian (or at least bisexual) relationship, though as I indicated, sex is a relatively minor part of the story. And the bisexual characters aren't bad guys, unlike in the romance genre--sexual perversity clearly indicating their villainous nature.

The premise is an archetypical struggle between the (masculine) impulse to command and control and concomitant desire for efficiency and order, represented by Ser Noris, who has near-immortality and mastery of elemental powers that allow him to control anything inanimate yet is emotionally stunted, and the wasteful, extravagant, endlessly creative diversity of life, embodied in the goddess representing the feminine mysteries, fertility, love, and nature.

On a clifftop overlooking the valley that is the heart of her power, in the prelude of Moongather, Ser Noris challenges the goddess (embodied in her avatar Reiki Janja, a shamaness of a nomadic desert tribe) to a game for mastery of the world, or maybe just this continent. They draw cards to determine their "pieces," which is to say, the key characters and plot elements. In Moonscatter the face-off between Ser Noris and Reiki Janja on the cliff looks more like an abstract strategy game(say, for example, go): a gridlike game surface with stone playing pieces; in Changer's Moon it's more like a role-playing game, with dice and miniatures.

And so opens the wild adventure, following the epic quest format of most fantasy books. Our band of heroes emerges over the course of three books to resist the political and religious coup and subsequent oppression arising from the duel of sorcery as Ser Noris attempts to dominate the world through his pawns: a fundamentalist patriarchal sect (Sons of the Flame) seeking to overthrow worship of the Maiden aspect of the triple goddess (Maiden, Matron, and Crone--it's a common enough trope), the lesser sorcerors (as a whole, known as the Nearga Nor) and all of the magics at their fingertips, and the power-hungry members of court plotting against the hereditary ruler (Domnor) Heslin Hern--wives and military leaders.

Moongather concentrates almost entirely on Serroi, the main protagonist and pivot point for events in the ongoing duel. She's small, she's green, and she has some special abilities in addition to being a kick-ass fighter. Like many Jo Clayton novels, Moongather follows a nonlinear format--jumping back and forth between Serroi's childhood training with Ser Noris ("The Child" chapters) and the present as Serroi flees for her life in the first chapter and then desperately tries to get out word of the plot against the Domnor ("The Woman" chapters). She's the solitary star of the first book.

Along the way, we meet minor characters, many of whom appear in the later books, either as key players or in brief cameos. These include Domnor Hern himself; Dinafar, the unwanted legacy of a fisherwoman's rape by a hill raider who is approaching puberty and desperate to escape the hatred and destitution of her life in the fishing village; Tarom Tesc Gradin and his family, particularly the twins Tuli and Teras, a wealthy plantation family on pilgrimage; Coperic, the shifty barkeep and spy in the capitol city of Oras. I won't bother listing the bad guys, since they have a tendency to not survive their encounters with Serroi.

The precipitating crisis is only hinted at in the beginning of Moongather. As the story progresses, Serroi keeps revisiting it in flashbacks and nightmares and dialogue with other characters, all of which slowly fleshes out the sequence of events that led to her mental breakdown in the midst of a thunderstorm. The concomitant backstory developed in parallel help us understand her actions and motivations in the opening chapter.

Both Ser Noris and Reiki Janja are important characters in the childhood half of the plot. In the later two books, they play only peripheral roles confined to the metastory interludes and the final climactic confrontations in Moonscatter and Changer's Moon. These subsequent books are far more linear in narrative, simply jumping around POVs as more characters become central to the increasingly interwoven and complicated plot.

As I mentioned in my review of the Drinker of Souls trilogy, I love Jo Clayton's originality, inclusiveness, world-building, gritty realism, strong characters, plots, and dialogue, and alternative writing styles in at least some sequences (much like Stand on Zanzibar in some respects). The Duel of Sorcery epitomizes these strengths. Serroi also resonated a great deal with me.

Serroi describes herself as a tribe of one, since she's a misborn of the windrunners, destined to be burned but for the intervention of Ser Noris, which means that there is no one else like her in the world: green and with her magical connection to animals, which the master sorceror uses to create animal-like demons. As a child, I felt more connections to animals than to people who were too often inexplicably cruel or simply incomprehensible, and I also felt alone, since no one in my family resembles me. She's small and female, so constantly underestimated and not taken seriously as a warrior. I get that too, though I grew up to be slightly above average in height. And as a child I desperately longed for the skills that Serroi displayed as an adult: master archer, competent fighter, self-sufficient, able to survive in the wild. So I strongly identified with this protagonist, which wasn't surprising given a genre overwhelmingly dominated by male protagonists.

Plus I was fascinated with the description of the Biserica. This is the valley that Ser Noris covets--the center of the goddess faith and symbol of the limitations of his power. It is a refuge for women escaping the traditional gender roles of their societies. The Biserica trains the priestesses who staff the temples around the country, the healerwomen who provide the medical care, and the meien, the warrior women pairs who serve as guards for women-run caravans, royal women's quarters, ruling queens, etc. (anyplace where male fighters might prove problematic). The meien provide essential cash income to the Biserica, along with the female artisans in the valley who specialize in such esoteric arts as glass-blowing. The entire community consists of women who provide all of the skills and labor needed to maintain an independent enclave.

Marian Zimmer Bradley suggests something similar in Thendara House, published the same time as Moonscatter: a community of women warriors that provide shelter and training to women fleeing abusive relationships or simply the confines of traditional gender roles. Jane Yolen explored similar female-only communities with warrior women in her books Sister Light, Sister Dark (published in 1989) and White Jenna. I can't think of any other books off-hand that develop this idea.

All in all, a great read that has stood the test of time and many rereadings. ( )
1 stem justchris | Mar 9, 2011 |
Fantasy ( )
  Proudwoman | Oct 5, 2007 |
Viser 5 af 5
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A young warrior woman, Serroi fights to keep dark magic from destroying her world, in the first book of Jo Clayton's acclaimed Duel of Sorcery fantasy trilogy.   Serroi is unique in her world, and was nearly put to death in infancy as a result. A green-skinned "misborn," small in stature with an unnatural connection to the natural world, she was nonetheless chosen and exceptionally trained as a meie warrior. As such, she fears nothing, except the cold and inscrutable Nor and their dark magic.   Something in Serroi's childhood awakened her to a shocking and terrible truth about these malevolent wizards, one of whom both saved and cursed her in her earliest years. It is her deep-seated terror that causes her to betray and abandon her shieldmate, Tayyan, during a rooftop battle with a magic-wielder, a craven act that threatens to haunt Serroi to the end of her days.   However, it is not cowardice that makes her run, but rather her knowledge of a great evil in the offing. In that instant before flight, Serroi recognizes the coming of something monstrous, though she cannot yet put a name to it. Now it is up to the young warrior to somehow prevent the unthinkable: She must alter a grim destiny that is set to occur on the fateful and fearful night known as Moongather, when demons will be free to enter the world.   Richly imaginative and stylistically inventive--told from the alternate viewpoints of the child Serroi just coming of age and of Serroi as a grown woman--author Jo Clayton's epic fantasy is a magnificent reading experience, evoking wonder and terror in equal measure. Moongather details a complex world of magic and dark political intrigue where divine forces do secret battle, and where the foundations of a matriarchal society and of native life itself are threatened by the twisted desires of a jealous queen and a powerful wizard. Creator of the much loved Diadem Saga and Skeen Trilogy, Clayton's engrossing, endlessly exciting Duel of Sorcery Trilogy firmly places her among the ranks of revered fantasists Jane Yolen, Mercedes Lackey, and Marion Zimmer Bradley.  

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