No, not of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, but of another Rider, a Dawn Rider, in a time long past when Elves and Dwarves, Mages and Dragons, Waerlinga and Utruni, Hidden Ones and other creatures still strode the land of Mithgar. Silver Wolf, Black Falcon is the most recent (and very possibly the last) book in Dennis L. McKiernan's Mithgar series, and it tells the story of the Impossible Child whose coming was foretold.
Some Background on the Series
Though all of the books of Mithgar stand alone, they each reference events contained in the other books. I would recommend saving Silver Wolf, Black Falcon for last for two reasons: one, because chronologically it falls last in the series, and two, because it both gives away much from the earlier books and makes more obscure references whose import new readers may miss. That said, the rest can be read in any order, though I list them here chronologically (not in publication order, but in order of their placement in Mithgar's history):
The Dragonstone
Voyage of the Fox Rider
Hèl's Crucible Duology: Into the Forge and Into the Fire
Dragondoom
Tales of Mithgar (collected short stories)
The Iron Tower: (Originally published as The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day, now available in an omnibus edition.)
The Silver Call: (Originally published as Trek to Kraggen-Cor and The Brega Path, due out in December as an omnibus edition.)
The Eye of the Hunter
Silver Wolf, Black Falcon picks up events from the end of The Eye of the Hunter, so I would recommend at least having read that book before reading this one.
The Story
In Arden Vale the impossible has happened: a child has been born, a child of an Elven mother (Dara Riatha) and a Baeran father (Urus), whose bloodlines will allow him to travel the planes of existence and very possibly set right ancient wrongs. The child is named Bair, and as he grows he gains the skills he will need to fulfill his destiny, including control over his inborn gift of shapeshifting. His teachers range from the Baeran of the Great Greenhall to the Dwarves of Drimmendeeve, and his boon companions are heroes all, from his own parents to their Warrow friend Faeril, Bair's honorary aunt, and Alor Aravan, famed Elven sea captain and Bair's honorary uncle.
But like many children, Bair is curious, and his family has much to hide from him concerning his destiny as the Impossible Child, the Dawn Rider, bearer of the Silver Sword. With the impetuousness of youth, Bair swears an oath to aid Aravan in tracking down a great evil - a yellow-eyed Demon-man called Ydral who works to free his god and thus enslave Mithgar and all the planes of existence. Their quest will lead Bair and Aravan across Mithgar, through desert and mountain and ocean, and even unto other planes through the in-between places.
Ydral, meanwhile, has allied himself with the Masula Yongsa Wang, the Mage Warrior King, whose Golden Horde rises in the east and threatens to overtake the wide world. When even the dragons must answer his call, can any creature on Mithgar be safe from his grasp?
Commentary
In some ways this book can never live up to the expectations of Mithgar fans. Does it explain too few of the mysteries of Mithgar? Or does it give away too much? Should we expect to know all there is to know when we finally close this book? And what if the answers aren't the ones we wanted? There is both triumph and failure contained in these pages, because endings are always a little of both, and what pleases us one day may not on the next. Even as I enjoyed the tale, I mourned the loss of the mystery.
Silver Wolf, Black Falcon is primarily a coming of age tale. McKiernan begins in the middle of the action, then brings readers back to Bair's birth and spends the first hundred pages exploring his childhood in Arden Vale. Though the information revealed in those pages is both interesting and important, the pacing is languid, and the brief opening snippet is hardly enough of a glimpse at action to hold the reader's attention through the first 350 pages, when the story finally meets the prologue again and continues on from that point. Most chapters follow Bair as he grows and quests after his destiny, though McKiernan does shift to Ydral and the Masula Yongsa Wang - it is in those chapters that most of the action in the first half of the book occurs. Some battle and torture scenes may disturb tenderhearted readers; Ydral practices necromancy, which generally involves being drenched in blood, as he prefers to flay his victims.
Too, I found this book, more so than any of McKiernan's other Mithgar books, a story for boys. There is no strong female presence for most of the book; The Eye of the Hunter had Riatha and Faeril, The Dragonstone had Arin, Dragondoom had Elyn, Voyage of the Fox Rider had Jinnarin, etc., yet Silver Wolf, Black Falcon is Bair and Aravan's adventure, and the story it tells is one of a boy's journey to manhood.
But perhaps even more importantly, McKiernan seems undecided about his target audience, and Silver Wolf, Black Falcon is sometimes choppy as a result. Bair is the main character, the stand-in for the reader, but he is also a child, and thus completely unaware of the history of Mithgar - of the adventures of his parents and others, of the Winter War and the War of the Ban, of the quest for the Dragonstone and the Kammerling, of the reclaiming of Kraggen-Cor and the exploits of the Eorean. At times Aravan must relay this knowledge to Bair (both for his benefit and for the benefit of readers who may not have read the relevant books yet), but the telling is unnecessary for readers of the series, who already have the information and likely need only a sentence or two to recall it, and is too explicit for newcomers, who may find that the information thus revealed ruins their reading of the other books. In trying to strike a balance between giving enough relevant information to newcomers and not losing the interest of long-time readers, McKiernan often errs to both sides, in some cases merely giving a hint (which, as a long-time reader, I appreciated, but may leave newcomers confused) and in others practically summarizing previous books much like a back cover blurb. Finally, some later events in the book may be completely impenetrable to new readers, who may wonder why McKiernan bothers following some people's actions at all, while long-time readers find themselves feeling nostalgic. I would have preferred that McKiernan avoid the summaries of previous books altogether where possible, because the benefit to long-time readers is nil, and the benefit to newcomers is dubious at best, since they lack the background to grasp the depth of the events re-told and will have some of the major events of the earlier books spoiled by Aravan's comments to Bair. I can only urge new readers to begin with some other book, and long-time readers to push through the poorly-integrated re-tellings.
The Mithgar series in general is aimed at fans of high fantasy in the classic style - stories told as legend, as myth, with lengthy, vivid description; with strange lands and long quests through them; with characters who are either clearly heroic or clearly evil. Silver Wolf, Black Falcon is Eurocentric fantasy - the good guys come from the lands of the west, the bad guys come from the east and the south (think Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan) - not unlike Tolkien's stories. Readers looking for something more politically correct would be well-advised to look elsewhere. But McKiernan also has a storytelling voice similar to Tolkien's, though he allows readers a bit closer to the characters. At times his books feel like prose poetry that begs to be read aloud; in this case, I think it wise to let the book speak for itself, so I'll leave you with the beginning of Silver Wolf, Black Falcon:
Deep snow cascading in its wake, up the mountain steeps lunged the Silver Wolf, a yawling pack of Vulgs baying after. A howling Ghul on a gasping Hèlsteed surged up the slant aft of the pack, and struggling alongside the corpse-foe and his scaled steed, a yowling band of Rucks and Hloks clambered up the cant as well. Black-shafted arrows flew upward, some aimed at the Silver Wolf, others aimed at the dark falcon crying in rage in the churning skies above, both arrows and falcon buffeted by the shrieking winds aloft as the boiling wall of the oncoming storm drew nigh, and a forerunning blast drove snow swirling up from the ground.
For more information on the Mithgar series and McKiernan's other works, including the complete forewords to his books and an excerpt from Silver Wolf, Black Falcon, visit his website at http://home.att.net/~dlmck/
Note: I read the paperback version, which has 529 pages; I assume the Epinions page count is for the hardcover.
Recommended:
