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Book Home  Books Information Lyonesse Trilogy
Lyonesse Trilogy
The Lyonesse Trilogy of fantasy novels by Jack Vance
consists of three novels of approximately 350 pages each.
Books
In order of plot chronology:
Lyonesse (subtitled Book I: Suldrun's Garden on the title page)
The Green Pearl
Madouc
Setting the scene
The trilogy is set in the European dark ages, in mythical Elder Isles
west of France and southwest of the British Isles, a generation or
two before the birth of King Arthur. An Atlantis meme haunts the story,
though the Isles do not sink during the course of the trilogy.
The Isles, formerly a great kingdom, are now divided
into several competing principalities, with the ruler of each scheming
to get ahead as best he may. The most ambitious of all, Casmir of
Lyonesse, schemes to re-unite the Isles under his own rule.
Other parties have other plans...
A family tree in Book I reveals that most of the petty
kings of the Elder Isles are distantly related, all descendants of
a certain Olam Magnus who first united the isles long before. The
genealogy also links the world of Lyonesse to the real world (e.g.,
"Belwig the Goth", "Sollace of Aquitaine") and
to familiar real-world legend ("Arthur I, King of Britain").
The primary protagonist and antagonist of the series are both presented
as distant relatives of Arthur.
Magic and the supernatural are active in the trilogy,
though often subordinated to other elements of the stories. Spells
are cast only by fairies and members of a college of wizards and witches
who live apart from society and mostly remain aloof from the struggles
of the main characters — pursuing struggles among themselves
instead. The spells are mostly effected by exotic, whimsical entities
with wills of their own and a propensity for logic chopping.
Magical devices sometimes make magic available to ordinary
folk, and artifacts such as The Mirror Persilian and the table Cairbra
an Meadhan play important roles in the overall story.
There is a kingdom of fairies hidden away in the midst
of the Elder Isles, and they play an important role in the story through
their seemingly minor entanglements with various humans.
The Elder Isles are also plagued by incursions of the
Ska, a dour nation loosely based on the Vikings, but presumed to have
arisen millennia earlier. Possibly this is a reference to Euskadi,
or Basque.
The stories include a few weak hints that the world
of Lyonesse is the same fictional Earth of Vance's Dying Earth novels
(e.g. Shimrod's quest to retrieve IOUN stones, which figure prominently
in Rhialto the Marvellous), albeit at a much earlier period.
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