Domes of Fire

[sawyl]

Im now making my way through David Eddings' Tamuli series starting with Domes of Fire. Given that I have problems with some parts of The Tamuli and I consider The Redemption of Althalus to be borderline unreadable and The Dreamers novels to be completely unreadable, this definitely marks the beginning of the end of my Eddings re-read.

The book proper opens in an of The Diamond Throne: returning to Cimmura in the rain after a mission to Lamorkand for the Archprelate, Sparhawk apologises to his wife — Queen Ehlana — for being out of communication for so long and proceeds to give her an extremely convenient update: an unsavoury aristocrat called Count Gerrich, supported a mythic hero and armies resurrected from the bronze age, is making a determined attempt to bring of northern Eosia into his civil war. Annoyed with the Archprelate for casually borrowing her husband, Ehlana is even less impressed when Sparhawk receives yet another peremptory summons. Arriving Chyrellos with most of her court in tow and an escort of Church Knights — who prove all to necessary after they encounter a group of anachronistic warriors on the road to Demos — Ehlana and her husband discover that an ambassador from the Tamul Empire has arrived to request Sparhawk's help with a problem that seems suspiciously similar to those in Lamorkand: civil unrest supported by ancient heroes and long-dead armies. Recognising the need to keep the world from collapsing, Ehlana and Patriarch Emban come up with a plan to include Sparhawk's trip an joint royal and religious deputation to the imperial capital.

The start isn't promising with a rather contrived info-dump, but it starts to pick up when Platime points Sparhawk in the direction of a rebel aristocrat who gets torn apart as soon they knights try and question them. Just in case this bit of foreshadowing wasn't obvious enough, the appearance of a group an ancient Lamorks pushes the message home and conveniently allows Patriarch Ortzel a chance to recite The Drychtnathasaga. Hardly the most thrilling of openings but things start to pick up when the group finally start out on the road.

After a pleasant sea voyage, the group — Sparhawk, Ehlana, their daughter Danae, Emban, the principals from The Elenium, and a modest number of knights, wander their way through Daresia towards the capital. Along they way the encounter some melancholy aristocrats in Astel, including a fool called Elron who fancies himself as a poet and sympathises with Sabre, the province's chief rabble rouser. On their way to the Styric capital of Sarsos the force encounter another group of ancient warriors, this time a mix of extinct Cyrgai and their Cygnescan descendants, who quickly fall when confronted with modern mounted cavalry and improvised catapults. In Sarsos they team up with Sephrenia and Vanion, now living in quiet retirement together, and get some advice on the current situation from Zalasta, one of the greatest wizards of Styricum and Sephrenia's oldest friend.

While there are few entertaining moments on the journey to and through Astel — more Russian than Russia with its Orthodox priests, morose aristos, and truculent serfs — things really start to pick up with the battle although the relative ease with which the Knights, Peloi and Atans achieve their victory is undercut by the suggestion that their hidden opponent may never have intended it to be a serious challenge. With their arrival in Sarsos, the reunion with Sephrenia, and, most especially, a helpful info-dump from zalasta on the wider situation in the Empire and their hidden opponents' use of magic, the existential threat, which had been rather vague jumps into abrupt focus.

The sudden focus on Styric culture — Sarsos is the only truly Styric city in the world — causes the Elenes, even the heroic ones, to come in a nasty bigotry rash. Perfectly happy to defend Eosian Styrics when their grotty villages are attacked by the local racists, even Sparhawk encounters a nasty bit of prejudice at the bottom of his soul when confronted with the results of 40,000 years of civilisation. Ehlana, despite being raised by Sparhawk to respect Styric traditions, takes an instant dislike to Zalasta — something that Sparhawk suggests may be due to his beard or eyebrows or accent rather than straight out racism; which feels less like a handwave when, shortly after, Ehlana reverses her opinion when confronted with unequivocal evidence of the man's heroism.

Resuming their journey through the province of Atan — the homeland of the Tamuls' fearless warriors — the knights find themselves in yet another battle, this time with a large group of trolls, a powerful wizard, and something a lot like a dinosaur. Through the use of cunning tactics and Zalasta's magic, the group prevails. After a brief pause in the Atan capital, where Mirtai goes through a rite of passage into adulthood, the arrive in the imperial capital of fire-domed Matherion — a city whose buildings are covered entirely in mother of pearl. After an initially inconclusive encounter with Emperor Sarabian, the Elenes manage to break through the formality and get down to work. They quickly discover a coup attempt in the planning and, in the best traditions, decide to combat it with a large party and some rather unorthodox fireworks.

This final section is definitely the most successful, starting with the spectacular fight against a horde of trolls. By far Eddings' best monster, the trolls have upped sticks from their ancestral homeland in Thalasia and moved en masse to Daresia, where they've started banding together and working in cooperation — something Ulath, the party's expert on all things trollish, claims is completely contrary to their nature. Mirtai's coming of age ceremony is also rather effective, providing a natural way to allow her to explain how she came to be a slave in Cimmura. Her bloody and murderous tale even goes so far as to include a positive portrayal of a gay character — something Mirtai claims is quite common but which, aside from a series of jokes about why girls shouldn't kiss girls in public, never appears again, so it's obviously not that common.

The arrival into Matherion obviously borrows heavily from Garion and Ce'Nedra's arrival in Mal Zeth in Demon Lord of Karanda, with each group being bowled over by the surprise discovery that their eastern — and Eastern — neighbours are not only civilised but several degrees more civilised than those to the west of them. The convenient cooperation of Emperor Sarabian and his enthusiasm for absolute monarchy also echoes that of both King Urgit and Emperor Zakath, although all three have quite different personalities. The subterfuge of the party on the boats is good fun, as is the resulting fight and the characteristic way Eddings skips over the triumphalism to end the book on a note of uncertainty: was the fight — indeed were all the book's fights — intended seriously or where they merely challenges, as the fight with the Cynescans implied?

In some ways Domes of Fire is an improvement over the Elenium — it has more than one female character! Some of the characters have doubts! Some even have parts of their personality that they're ashamed of! — there are a few signs that the author is starting to get a little bit tired of writing long travelogues, in which the characters travel for months and months and people complain at hime for the length of his seasons, and wants to start pushing the big events together as quickly as possible — something that comes to a head in his subsequent novels — making it hard for me to maintain an impartially and positive opinion of the book as a standalone novel. But perhaps I've just become jaded...