/
DRACULA/ SCIENCE
FICTION / FANTASY /GODSHOME/ SWORDS/
BERSERKER/
DRACULA/ SCIENCE
FICTION / FANTASY /GODS
Centuries ago, it seemed that the gods had deserted humanity. But, now, suddenly they are back. Not only the sun god Apollo, but his unrelenting enemy--dark Hades, lord of the Underworld, greedy for human bodies and souls to gather into his domain. And others, including Thanatos, the personification of Death; the enigmatic Trickster; and Hephaestus the Smith, the wonderworker of magical technology. The past meets the present in a struggle of wills, and life will never be the same for young Jeremy Redthorn. Jeremy, a young farm laborer, is unwittingly caught up in the clash when he pledges to deliver a mysterious mask given to him by a beautiful wounded stranger.
Reviews
THE FACE OF APOLLO
by Fred Saberhagen
Source: Publishers Weekly
Date: March 30, 1998;
Review: Rural youth Jeremy Redthorn puts on a
mask that imbues him with the power and nature of Apollo.
Consequently, he is chased by the avatars of Hades and Thanatos and
aided by friends of his who have taken on the identities of the
forge-god Vulcan and the trickster Hermes (sometimes called Coyote).
This energetic novel, which kicks off Saberhagen's fourth series
(after the Berserker, Dracula and Swords series), explores both
Jeremy's growing understanding of the gods and the war of the gods in
which he finds himself a participant. The world laid out by
Saberhagen is like yet unlike our own, somewhere between classical
and medieval but also inhabited by "mutant' animals and hints of an
ancient technology beyond modern accomplishments that may have
produced the gods themselves. The characterization is about average
for a fantasy series but the action is invigorating. Saberhagen has
proven himself a reliable--and popular--author for many years, and
his latest offering proves no exception.
Source: KIRKUS REVIEWS
Date: January, 1998.
First of a new series from Saberhagen--your choice whether you call it fantasy or far-future science fiction--an offshoot of, or prequel to, his Lost Swords yarns (The Last Book of Swords, 1994, etc). In a terrible battle inside Mount Olympus, Hades the god of the underworld kills Apollo the god of light. Some days later, a severely wounded young woman, Sal, begs help from 15-year-old field-worker Jeremy Redthorn. Soon, soldiers seeking Sal--and the mysterious object of power she carries--attack and destroy Jeremy's village. Jeremy, though, manages to escape after recovering the object and promising Sal he'll take it to either Professor Alexander or Margaret Chalandon of the Academy at distant Pangur Ban. Jeremy later examines the object: a strange, translucent fragment of a modeled mask. He puts it on, and it sinks into his head! Moreover, the mask, or Face, contains the memories, personality, and powers of the god Apollo. Slowly, as Jeremy becomes accustomed to this Intruder, he realizes that his--Apollo's--battle with Hades is far from over. With new friends Carlotta and Amobius, Jeremy reaches the Academy, but Alexander is murdered by an avatar of Thanatos, god of death, and Margaret Chalandon has gone missing on an expedition to Mount Olympus. Hoping to capture the oracle of the gods, Pangur Ban's Lord Victor sends a force to Olympus, which Jeremy joins (nobody yet suspects he's also Apollo). Testing his powers, he acquires allies: Carlotta relinquishes her Face of Loki the Trickster to Jeremy's beloved, Katy, and his soldier friend Andy Ferrante becomes the god Vulcan. Matters build toward the inevitable confrontation with Hades and his minions.
Another winner for Saberhagen--like his
Swords, the possibilities and permutations seem endless--
This was in fact a very minor birthday party. Aunt Lynn had sung
him a song--and poured Jeremy a second glass of wine.
Tonight gray-bearded Uncle Humbert had emptied somewhat more of
the wine jug into his own cup than usual, and had started telling
stories. On most nights, and most days, Jeremy's uncle had little
enough to say about anything. But tonight the birthday occasion had
been melded with the prospect of a good harvest, now in late summer
already under way. For the latter reason Humbert was in a good mood
now, refilling his clay cup yet again from the cheap jug on the
table.
Tonight was going to be one of the rare times when Uncle drank
enough wine to alter his behavior. Not that Jeremy had ever seen him
take enough to bring on any drastic change. The only noticeable
effect was that he would start chuckling and hiccuping, and then reel
off a string of stories concerning the legendary gods, gradually
focusing more and more on their romantic encounters.
Months ago Jeremy had given up expecting ever to be thanked for
his hard work. He had to admit that the old people worked hard too,
most of the time. It was just the way things were, when you lived on
the land.
As a rule, the boy consumed only one cup of wine at a meal. His
uncle was stingy about that, as about much else. But tonight Jeremy
dared to pour himself a second cup, and his uncle looked at him for a
moment, but then let it pass.
The boy was not particularly restricted in his consumption of
wine, but so far had not been tempted to overdo it--he wasn't sure he
liked the sensations brought on by swallowing more than a little of
the red stuff straight.
Earlier Aunt Lynn, contemplating the fact of his turning fifteen,
had asked him: "S'pose you might be marrying soon?"
That was a surprise; he wondered if the old woman really hadn't
noticed that he was barely on speaking terms with any of the other
villagers, male or female, young or old. The folk here tended to view
any outsiders with suspicion. "Don't know who I'd marry."
Aunt Lynn sat thinking that over. Or more likely her mind was
already on something else--the gods knew what. Now Jeremy sat drawing
little circles with his finger in the spots of spilled wine on the
table. Often it seemed to the boy that there must be more than one
generation between himself and the two gray people now sitting at his
right and left. Such were the differences. Now Uncle Humbert, tongue
well loosened, was well into his third tale concerned with the old
days, of a time when the world was young, and the gods too were young
and vital beings, fully capable of bearing the responsibility for
keeping the universe more or less in order. He supposed the old folk
must have heard the stories thousands of times, but they never seemed
tired of telling or hearing them yet again.
Many people viewed the past, when supposedly the gods had been
dependable, and frequently beneficent, as a Golden Age, irretrievably
lost in this late and degenerate period of the world. But Uncle
Humbert's view, as his nephew had become acquainted with it over the
past several months, was somewhat different. A deity might do a human
being a favor now and then, on a whim, but by and large the gods were
not beneficent. Instead they viewed the world as their own
playground, and humanity as merely an amusing set of toys.
Humbert derived a kind of satisfaction from this view of life--it
was not his fault that the world, as he saw it, had cheated him in
many ways. Certain of the gods seemed to spend a good deal of their
time thinking up nasty tricks to play on Uncle Humbert. Jeremy
supposed that seeing himself as a victim of the gods allowed his
uncle to have a feeling of importance.
The other half of Humbert's audience, on most nights for the past
five months, had been his weary, overworked nephew. Tonight was no
exception, and the boy sat, head spinning over his second cup,
falling asleep with his head propped up in one hand, both his elbows
on the table. Nothing was forcing him to stay at the table--he could
have got up at any moment, and climbed the ladder to his bed. But in
fact he wanted to hear the stories. Any distraction from the mundane
world in which he spent the monotony of his days was welcome.
Now Jeremy's eyelids opened a little wider. Uncle Humbert was
varying his performance somewhat tonight. He was actually telling a
tale that the boy hadn't heard before, in the five months that he'd
been living here.
The legend that Jeremy had never heard before related how two male
gods, Dionysus and one other, Mercury according to Uncle, who
happened to be traveling together in disguise, made a wager between
themselves as to what kind of reception they would be granted at the
next peasants' hut, if they appeared incognito.
"So, they wrapped 'emselves up in their cloaks,
and--hiccup--walked on."
Aunt Lynn, who tonight had hoisted an extra cup or two herself,
was already shrieking with laughter, at almost every line of every
story, and pounding her husband on the arm. Silently Jeremy marveled
at her. No doubt she had heard this one a hundred times before, or a
thousand, in a quarter-century or so of marriage, and already knew
the point of the joke, but that didn't dampen her enjoyment. Jeremy
hadn't heard it yet, and didn't much care whether he heard it
now.
Uncle Humbert's raspy voice resumed. "So great Hermes--some call'm
Mercury-- 'n Lord Di'nysus went on, and stopped at the next peasants'
hut--it was a grim old man who came to th' door, but the gods could
see he had a young and lively wife . . . she was jus' standing there
behind the old man, kind of smiling at the visitors . . . an' when
she saw they were two han'some, young-lookin' men, dressed like they
were rich, she winked at 'em . . . "
Aunt Lynn had largely got over her latest laughing fit, and now
sat smiling, giggling a little, listening patiently. She might be
thinking that she could have been burdened with a husband a lot worse
than Humbert, who hardly ever beat her. And Jeremy was already so
well-grown that Uncle, not exactly huge and powerful himself, would
doubtless have thought twice or thrice before whaling into him--but
then, such speculation was probably unfair. In the boy's experience
Uncle Humbert had never demonstrated a wish to beat on anyone--his
faults were of a different kind.
The story came quickly to its inevitable end, with the grim,
greedy old peasant cuckolded, the lecherous gods triumphant, the
young wife, for the moment, satisfied. Judging by Uncle Humbert's
laughter, the old man still enjoyed the joke as much as the first
time he'd heard it, doubtless when he was a young and lecherous lad
himself. The thought crossed Jeremy's mind that his father would
never have told stories like this--not in the family circle,
anyway--and his mother would never have laughed at them.
That was the last joke of the night, probably because it was the last
that Uncle could dredge up out of his memory just now. When all three
people stood up from the table, the boy, still too young to have a
beard at all, was exactly the same height as the aging graybeard who
was not yet fifty.
While the woman puttered about, carrying out a minimum of
table-clearing and kitchen work, young Jeremy turned away from his
elders with a muttered goodnight, and began to drag his tired body up
to the loft where he routinely slept. That second cup of wine was
buzzing in his head, and once his callused foot-sole almost slipped
free from a smooth-worn rung on the built-in wooden ladder.
Now in the early night the tiny, unlighted loft was still hot with
the day-long roasting of summer sun. Without pausing, the boy crawled
straight through the narrow, cramped, ovenlike space, and slid right
on out of it again, through the crude opening which served as its
single window. He emerged into moonlit night, on the flat roof of an
adjoining shed.
Here he immediately paused to pull off his homespun shirt. The
open air was cooler now than it had been all day, and a slight breeze
had come up at sunset, promising to minimize the number of active
mosquitoes. To Jeremy's right and left the branches of a shade tree
rustled faintly, brushing the shed roof. Even in daylight this flat
space, obscured by leaves and branches, was all but invisible from
any of the other village houses. In a moment Jeremy had shed his
trousers too.
He drained his bladder over the edge of the roof, saving himself a
walk to the backyard privy. Then he stretched out naked on the
sun-warmed shingles of the flat, slightly sloping surface, his shirt
rolled up for a pillow beneath his head.
There, almost straight above him, was the moon. Jeremy could
manage to locate a bright moon in a clear sky, though for him its
image had never been more than a blur, and talk of lunar phases was
practically meaningless. Stars were far beyond his capability--never
in his life had his nearsighted vision let him discover even the
brightest, except that once or twice, on frozen winter nights, he'd
seen, or thought he'd seen, a blurry version of the Dog Star's
twinkling point. Now and then, when Venus was especially bright, he
had been able to make out her wandering image near dawn or sunset, a
smaller, whiter version of the moon-blur. But tonight, though his
eyelids were sagging with wine and weariness, he marveled at how
moonlight--and what must be the communal glow of the multitude of
bright points he had been told were there--had transformed the world
into a silvery mystery.
Earlier in the day, Aunt Lynn had said she'd heard a boatman from
downriver talking about some kind of strange battle, supposed to have
recently taken place at the Cave of Prophecy. Whole human armies had
been engaged, and two or more gods had fought to the death.
Uncle had only sighed on hearing the story. "The gods all died a
long time ago," was his comment finally. "Fore I was born." Then he
went on to speak of several deities as if they had been personal
acquaintances. "Dionysus, now--there was a god for you. One who led
an interesting life." Uncle Humbert, whose voice was gravelly but not
unpleasant, supplied the emphasis with a wink and a nod and a
laugh.
Jeremy wanted to ask his uncle just how well he had known
Dionysus--who had died before Humbert was born--just to see what the
old man would say. But the boy felt too tired to bother. Besides, he
had the feeling that his uncle would simply ignore the question.
Now, despite fatigue, an inner restlessness compelled him to hold his
eyelids open a little longer. Not everyone agreed with Uncle Humbert
that all the gods had been dead for a human lifetime or longer.
Somewhere up there in the distant heavens, or so the stories had it,
the gods still lived, or some of them at least, though they were no
more to be seen by any human eyes than Jeremy could see the stars.
Unless the stories about a recent battle might be true . . .
Others of that divine company, according to other stories,
preferred to spend their time in inaccessible mountain fastnesses on
earth. High places, from which they sometimes came down to bother
people, or befriend them . . . at least in the old days, hundreds of
years ago, they had done that.
He wondered if the gods, whatever gods there might be in reality,
behaved anything at all like their representations in Uncle's
stories. People who were inclined to philosophy argued about such
matters, and even his parents had not been sure. But Jeremy preferred
to believe that there were some gods in the world. Because magic
really happened, sometimes. Not that he had actually experienced any
himself. But there were so many stories, that he thought there must
be something . . .
. . . his mind was drifting now. Let Dionysus and Hermes come to
the door of this house tonight, and they'd find a crabbed old man,
but no young wife to make the visit worth their while. Neither gods
nor men could work up much craving for Aunt Lynn.
From down in the dark house, the rhythmic snores of his aunt and
uncle were already drifting up. Wine and hard work had stupefied
them; and in the real world, what else could anyone look forward to,
but sleep?
Weariness and wine quickly pushed Jeremy over into the borderland
of sleep. And now the invisible boundary had been passed. Bright
dreams came, beginning with the young peasant wife of Uncle Humbert's
tale, as she lay on her back in her small bedroom, making an eager
offering of herself to the gods. Her husband had been got cleverly
out of the way, and now she wantonly displayed her naked body.
Between her raised knees stood the towering figure of jolly, bearded
Dionysus, his muscles and his phallus alike demonstrating his
superiority to mere mankind.
And now, in the sudden manner of dreams, the body of the farm wife
on her bed was replaced by that of a certain village girl of about
Jeremy's age. Her name was Myra, and more than once this summer the
boy had seen her cooling herself in the river. Each time Myra and her
younger girl companions had looked their suspicion and dislike at the
red-haired, odd-looking newcomer. They'd turned their backs on the
intruder in their village, who spoke with a strange accent. Whichever
way Myra stood in the water, however she moved, her long dark hair
tantalizingly obscured her bare breasts, and the curved flesh of her
body jiggled.
The boy on the shed roof was drifting now, between sleep and waking.
Something delightful was about to happen.
Well, and what did he care if some ignorant village girl might
choose not to let him near her? Let her act any way she liked. Here,
behind the closed lids of his eyes, he was the king, the god. the
ruler, and he would decide what happened and what did not.
And even in the dream, the question could arise: What would
Dionysus, if there really was a Dionysus, do with a girl like Myra?
How great, how marvelous, to be a god!
But in another moment the dream was deepening again. The
fascinating images were as real as life itself. And it was he, not
Dionysus, who stood between the raised knees of the female on the
bed. Even as Myra smiled up at him and reached out her arms, even as
their bodies melted into one . . .
Groaning, he came partially awake at the last moment, enough to
know that he was lying alone, had spent himself on wooden shingles.
Real life was messy, however marvelous the dreams it sometimes
brought.
Less than a minute later, Jeremy had turned on his back again,
once more asleep. This time his dreams were of the unseen stars.
END OF CHAPTER ONE
Taken from THE FACE OF APOLLO by Fred Saberhagen, 1998. To be
released by TOR.
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