panguitch's Full Review: Orson Scott Card - Enchantment: A Classic Fantasy ...
Unless we’ve just met you know that I’m into Russian folktales and I’m a fan of Orson Scott Card. Is his 1999 offering, Enchantment, the heavenly blending of these two loves? Not exactly. But you should give it a read nonetheless.
The Tale
We meet a ten year old Ivan whose parents have decided to embrace their Jewish heritage in order to secure permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union. For this Ivan not only suffers the persecutions of his society, but the ministrations of a mohel, i.e. circumcision. Needless to say, he takes up running as a pastime. And one day, on a jog through the woods in the Ukrainian countryside he stumbles across a mystery. On a platform on a pedestal in the center of a pit sleeps a beauty. Yes, that beauty. But the pit contains a dangerous guardian and Ivan flees.
Resettled with his parents in America, Ivan has become both a standout track and field athlete and a scholar, following his professorial father’s fascination for ancient Slavic folklore and linguistics. He’s met a nice Jewish girl and they get engaged just before he sets off to the (now independent) Ukraine to do his graduate research. When he’s all but wrapped things up he gets a hankering to visit old Uncle Marek with whom his family stayed all those years ago. While there he conscientiously jogs, and one day is drawn back into the woods where he rediscovers the pit and the beauty.
This time, thanks to his athleticism, he is able to rescue her. And lucky for him he’s been studying up on his Proto-Slavonic: it turns out more is expected than a kiss. This girl, Katerina, doesn’t give it up for any man. She has marriage on the mind (it is, after all, necessary to fully break the curse). What to do but meet the parents? Ladies first, so they return in time to the world of Taina, a generic Slavic nation from the earliest days of the Rus. Apparently Baba Yaga placed the curse on Katerina as a step toward acquiring the damsel’s father’s kingdom, and now King Matfei finds himself embattled. And Ivan is expected to help.
Their reluctant partnership takes Ivan and Katerina through plots and perils alike, even seeing them flee for respite back to Ivan’s time. But Baba Yaga follows them all the way to New York. Eventually, everyone heads back to Taina for the opening bell of the 15th round.
The Characters
Ivan starts out as a petulant, excessively intelligent child, old hat for Card (just as the circumcision is almost a nod to his early-career childish penchant for gross sexual and excremental fascinations). Card is deservedly noted for an aptitude at character portrayal. Ivan is a well-drawn and complex protagonist. If Katerina is Sleeping Beauty, then Ivan often seems like Cinderella, a nobody who feels out of place as he fills an unaccustomed heroic role. His thought processes are entirely credible as he whines about his circumstances and experiences conflicting emotions. A glaring contradiction surfaces, however, when Card tells us that the character whose athleticism Card has hyped, whose m.o. for bear-slaying is the shot put, cannot wield a medieval broadsword. Here I suspect Card’s wishes to emphasize both his protagonist’s wiry strength and the primitive power of old-tyme knights crash headlong. At the end, Ivan’s willingness to send Katerina aloft in the hang-glider is also dubious.
Katerina is entirely annoying to begin with. She can’t understand why Ivan is so strange and mercilessly castigates him for embarrassing her. We have little pleasure in watching her get her comeuppance, though, as she proves more adaptable when it’s her turn to time travel. Gradually we see more attractive sides to her personality, in conjunction with her softening to Ivan. Their romance is hardly a revolutionary portrayal. They get on each other’s nerves, embarrass each other, quarrel. "[Ivan] didn’t like the idea of marrying someone who thought he was a deformed cross-dressing peon." But they gradually begin to respect each other and even fall in love, though neither is willing to take the first step and risk rejection. A standard plotline, and indeed it sometimes waxes sappy and predictable. But overall Card makes it interesting. I’m not sure I agree with the timing of the climax of this story thread, but overall it’s a sweet tale.
The cast is full, and all serve well, whether they be secondary characters, tertiary, or even walk-ons. The dynamics between Ivan’s parents are entertainingly familiar. Bear and Baba Yaga are also interesting characters. Bear is gruffly likable, Baba Yaga predictably static but still fun to see in action. Her back story as a wronged princess, bitter and determined to make everyone else suffer too is inventive, and she’s somewhat reminiscent of Queen Beauty from Card’s earlier fantasy Hart’s Hope.
There are few quibbles. A mystery concerning the identity of Baba Tila remains aggravatingly unsolved. And while a secret to Card’s strength in characterization is his ability to portray characters reasoning with each other, and he unfailingly introduces and discusses themes in this manner, here he sometimes stretches it too far and you get the feeling he’s arguing philosophy with himself for the benefit of our enlightenment.
The Bear, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Skip this section if you don’t want to indulge my nitpicking.)
The mechanics of this fantastical melding of our reality with ancient Russian folklore are not particularly impressive. The pit that held Katerina prisoner is a ‘wardrobe’ with a bridge to Taina and one to modern Ukraine. Later Baba Yaga finds a more interesting mode of travel.
And what of Card’s scholarship? As he often does, he’s supplied a list, short in this case, of sources he researched. The only ones I have in my hot little hands are Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Russian Traditional Culture: Religion, Gender, and Customary Law, a collection of essays edited by Marjorie Balzer. The later treats many of Card’s themes, the political life of the ancient Slavs and the play between the old beliefs and the newly introduced Christianity.
Card’s approach to Propp’s theory that all Russian tales can be distilled to an ur-tale is interesting. While I find Propp’s notion somewhat silly, or at least shortsighted in its isolationism, Card’s exploitation of it by answering "yes, and it’s a true story about this nation called Taina" is fresh.
My complaints along the lines of folklore and history are perhaps petty, and entirely irrelevant for the normal reader. However, I found myself amused by the assertion that there was never an "Arthurian" period or genre in Russian folk tales, since Arthurian is exactly the word used by some to describe the druzhina of Vladimir and their round table-like exploits, though there’s certainly little correlation and the comparison is thin. And Card has Ivan making the mistake of supposing that Russian aristocracy would wear dress influenced by oriental styles. This is understandable, since all illustrations of such people portray them so, and indeed it was the fashion in the Muscovite period. But the era under examination was before the Tartar yoke, and the oriental influence would not yet be felt. The old notion that the first unifying princes of the Rus were actually Vikings is also given credence, though the theory has fallen out of favor with many, especially the Slavs themselves. Of course, most of Card’s sources are forty years old.
His deification of Bear is a bit of a stretch to my mind, or at least over-stated. And Baba Yaga is much more humanly evil than she is in most tales, where she simply follows different rules but can be bargained with. He also exaggerates the contrast between western fairy tales and their happy endings with Russian tales and their grittiness. In fact, true western tales were often as dark as are Russian tales, before they were censored by adults who foolishly thought fairy tales were for children.
Another quibble, unrelated, is that Card (in the persona of Katerina) describes the English language as harsh. To the contrary, most Russians I’ve known who had little experience with English emphasized the gliding dipthongs and the –ing suffixes in their descriptions of it. Children pretending to speak English sound like children in America pretending to speak Chinese.
The Themes
Like all my favorites, Card touches on a number of interesting ideas and themes. I’ve mentioned several regarding Russian folklore. Additionally, the sometimes intolerant interplay of various religions, paganism, Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, is pronounced throughout the opening chapters. And a guiding power, disguised as happenstance, seems to subtly direct key events and protect the protagonists.
Card also takes up Twain’s speculations from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Here, though, the interloper has more difficulty bringing superior technology to bear. The point that most of us don’t understand and couldn’t replicate the desired technology is highlighted. And the uselessness of the knowledge without the resources shows the necessity of context for technology’s effectiveness.
Most pronounced, however, is the reality of folk magic. In this way, Enchantment will remind many Card veterans of his Alvin Maker stories. Here we have a Russian flavor, but the dynamics are very similar. It’s a sub-genre I rather enjoy, but in this case I felt it would have been better to leave such things more in the domain of the Baba Yagas. Katerina’s skills seemed to crop out of nowhere, and Ivan’s mother really pushed the limits as a Samantha Stephens (of "Bewitched" fame) wannabe.
The Last Word
Despite some minute sore points in the credibility of a couple portrayals, and a perhaps indulgent denouement, Enchantment is a solid story. Compared to the rest of current popular fantasy, a merely average-length standalone novel is refreshing. There’s plenty of comedy in the misunderstandings Ivan and Katerina suffer in each other’s times, and Card succeeds, as always, in making us identify with and care about his characters.
This novel is representative of the kinder, gentler Card of recent years. This is both a good and bad thing—I don’t care for many of his early fixations and need to shock, but think some of the edge has been lost. The romance is endearing, though the sex is a bit cheesy (the rarest thing in the literary world is a sex scene that is both necessary and well-written). The dedication is to his wife and it’s certainly the kind of story one wouldn’t hesitate to dedicate so. If you’re a softie you’ll enjoy Ivan and Katerina’s reluctant romance.
In the end I have to say I was personally disappointed by Enchantment. I knew better, but I was hoping for something that would fit a vary narrow demographic: myself. If anyone knows of a good story accurately set in the milieu of Russian folk tales, please let me know. Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed Enchantment. It isn’t Card’s best work, but it has an undeniable sweetness. Coming from anyone else I’d give it five stars (sorry Scott, but I grade on a curve for my favorite authors). As it is, I don’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone, and highly. It’d be a good introduction to Card for those unfamiliar with him or uncomfortable in the SF and fantasy genres. Do yourself a favor and pick it up. This is a spell in the oldest, best sense of the word.
— Panguitch
Not convinced? You can read the first few chapters on OSC’s website, Hatrack River: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/enchantment.shtml
Or, for another fantasy with Russian folk elements, try C. J. Cherryh's Rusalka.
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