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An engaging science fantasy in the tradition of Andre Norton's Witch World and Leigh Brackett' from the author of Renfield and I'll Take My Stand.
About Lawrence BarkerMother Feral's Love (October 2006; 288pp; ISBN 9 781934 041086) is published by Swimming Kangaroo Books, and is reviewed here. Lawrence Barker's previous novels, I'll Take my Stand (set in the reconstruction-era South) and Renfield (written from the lunatic from Dracula’s perspective) are both horror novels, and his short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Hell's Hangmen, Damned in Dixie, Travel a Time Historic, and Terror on the Rural Route. He lives outside Atlanta, Georgia, and when not writing, plays hammered dulcimer and listens to old-time music, as well as working full-time as an epidemiologist. With his new novel Mother Feral's Love, he has changed genres. Mother Feral’s LoveEvrandal is a Feral, half-human, scorned by society; even her daughter Broglin does not know that she is Evrandel’s child – if it were known that Broglin were a ‘taint’ she would be outcast too. When she witnesses a murder, Evrandal’s first thought is solely to stay out of the way and to hope that she will not become involved. It is a vain hope. When Broglin’s foster-mother is arrested on trumped-up charges, the child faces punishment by proxy. She will be sent to work in the mines, and her life-span will be brief and brutal. Evrandal knows that she must find out the truth if she is to have any hope of saving the girl. And she has only four days in which to do it. She will have to cross the deserts of Vrantum, protect herself from the fearsome creatures of the dark, and even to ally herself with heretics who deny Holy Law, and avoid being compelled from taking her own life under the baleful influence of the local peacekeepers. All within four days. Science FantasyMother Feral’s Love belongs to a sub-genre in which Science Fiction masquerades through symbols and language as Fantasy. In a reversal of the post second world-war market, where fantasy writers like Leigh Brackett, Sprague de Camp and –most famously—Andre Norton had to sell fantasy novels such as the Witch World series as SF in order to find buyers, fantasy now dominates. So beneath twin suns alchemists and seers seek to protect the old forbidden knowledge from seekers after truth. Barker manages to avoid lecturing the reader, as Evrandel imparts information through action and in brief asides. The tension from the threat to Broglin builds to a resounding climax, the villains and supporting characters show an admirable ambiguity --many of the supposedly ‘good’ people are prepared to go to any lengths to achieve their ends, while some of the villains often show unexpected generosity— and Barker’s setting is splendidly exotic, evoking echoes of SF’s Golden Age.
The copyright of the article Mother Feral's Love in Modern American Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish Mother Feral's Love in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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