Serpent Catch
by Dave Wolverton
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Bantam (New York): 1991. Paperback: x, 419 pages. ISBN-10: 0-55328-983-7 Suggested retail price: $4.99 (US) Tag: Fantasy Tactical strength: [7/10] |
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In this his second novel, Wolverton shows a talent for handling a remarkable number of themes in a complex style surprising for such a "new" writer. Serpent Catch takes place in a future where paleobiologists have brought dinosaurs back to life from samples of DNA found in fossils. The scientists used the moon Anee to create a zoo planet with its three continents turned into separate zoos representing different ages of Earth's prehistoric eras. Between each continent, they placed animals (serpents and dragons) that effectively create an ecobarrier to keep the residents of each continent from crossing over into the other ecological zones.
An alien race, the Eridani, decides the human race does not have the experience to join other space-faring races and sends drone ships to shoot down all human space craft. Additional drones orbit each inhabited planet and shoot down anything that flies higher than 15,000 feet. The human "zoo keepers" of Anee, called Starfarers, had to move down to the moon's surface and live with the creatures they recreated.
A thousand years after the Eridani attack, the ecobarriers start to break down. Tull, the son of an abusive human father and a Neanderthal mother, receives a warning from the town spirit walker (one who can see the future in an out of body experience). To restore the ecobarier, Tull must travel into Craal, home of the Slave Lords and the evil god Adjonai. There he must capture baby serpents and bring them back to Smilodon Bay, Tull's home, to repopulate the serpents there.
Several of the Smilodon Bay townspeople accompany Tull on his journey: Scandal (the town innkeeper whose livelihood depends on the town surviving and who hopes to buy whores in the city of Denai for some extra profit), Ayuvah (Tull's adopted Neanderthal brother and son of Chaa the spirit walker who sends them on this journey), little Chaa (Ayuvah's little brother), Phylomon (last of the Starfarers, and over 1000 years old), and Wisteria (Tull's new wife who secretly plans to sabotage the quest). The journey begins and events speed along without much transition or even reason. Shortly after seeing a huge massacre of traders at a festival, Phylomon takes the party out of the way to the Worm Tower, a tall glass tower made by a deranged artist. Phylomon never explains why he feels the party must visit the tower. At the tower, Tull has a spirit walking experience, but Wolverton never has Tull use this experience or the ability in the rest of the book. The tower experience comes to form the basis of Tull's personal philosophy, but Phylomon should have had a better reason for taking the party there.
The journey challenges all the party members. Little Chaa dies right at the start. Tull constantly battles personal fears and an inability to love, both caused by his abusive father. In contrast to these emotional difficulties, Tull catches the young serpents too easily. Through the deaths of Wisteria and Ayuvah, Tull realizes the right time to catch serpents. While capturing serpents, I expected Tull to face some life threatening challenge where he uses a new skill or realization developed during the journey to catch a serpent. Instead, Tull catches serpents almost by chance.
Tull does go through huge changes. When he returns to Smilodon Bay with the serpents, he no longer fears his father and marries Fava, Ayuvah's sister, who had doted on Tull for years. Tull finds that he can love and finds his love for Fava even more fulfilling than his feelings for Wisteria. Tull feels devotion toward Fava, which Wolverton contrasts with Wisteria's love, a search for recreation, and Tirilee's love, the fleeting love of a Dryad driven by instinct.
In addition to love, Wolverton also addressees fear. Tull constantly battles his fears -- fear of his father, fear of the inability to love, and fear of the evil god Adjonai. Tull comes to realize that enslavement comes from man's (or Neanderthal's) personal fears, and not from any kind of power lauded over them by slave masters or soldiers. Tull also finds that contributing to the whole society gives him more satisfaction than merely seeking to fulfill personal needs. Wolverton puts all of this together in a socially relevant way that makes us reflect our own values. Unfortunately, the open sexuality throughout the book undermines much of this feeling of social consciousness. Although the sexuality does not seem out of place for the characters in their setting, the amount of sexuality and the words choice during sexual events borders on gratuitous.
Wolverton uses a unlimited-omniscient narrative style. He freely switches from one mind to the next, but early in the text he has some problems communicating the transitions from one character to another point of view. Occasionally he changes viewpoint character mid-paragraph without any indication that the view changed until the end of the paragraph. Except for this, Wolverton has a very readable style, and he portrays an excellent picture of his characters and their interactions with their world.
