The House of the Stag
I’ve remarked before how much I like the structure of comic books — the way that little episodes build into a bigger story arc, which then weaves into a long history. Kage Baker’s The House of the Stag is maybe the closest I’ve seen to that in prose fiction.
What it does is tell a handful of stories, each of them more-or-less complete in their own right, with their own individual style and focus, but all of them building up to a single story arc of two characters. It’s reminiscent of what Gaiman does in Sandman, looking at the protagonist’s story from different angles and perspectives, and it works well here, providing a sense of meta-fictionality that’s in line with the story.
The House of the Stag is set in the same world as Baker’s The Anvil of the World, but it’s not a sequel in any meaningful sense. In fact, I don’t think you have to have read the earlier book at all to fully appreciate this one; as far as I recall, none of the characters are the same, and only some of the place names provide any particular overlap. Even the style is different — The Anvil of the World had a very Vancian feel, whereas this book has a more mythic fantasy feel to it.
I haven’t read anything quite like The House of the Stag, and I enjoyed it a great deal. Highly recommended to anyone who’s bored of more conventional fantasy, or those who found it too boring to get bored with.
Comments
Did you get this through some sort of special pre-release program?
No, it’s been out for a while.
Weird. Amazon has a trade paper version coming out next month, and an out of print hardcover that I didn’t notice before and is apparently already quite rare, as someone appears to be asking $200 for it!
I’ll sell you my copy for $150?
It’s the backstory for the half-demon kids’ parents from Anvil, isn’t it? We do see them briefly toward the end.
I am told that it would make me want to throw the book against the wall (in a comment to a post that spoils the Company series), so I am avoiding it.
Kate, I know exactly what element people are talking about when they say that, and I don’t know that they’re wrong. It didn’t bother me, though, because I treat stuff written in a mythic mode (like this, or Vance’s Cugel books) differently than I do more realist works.