In
1998, Robert Silverberg published the enormous anthology Legends,
which invited several major fantasy novelists to write a novella to
explore their worlds and introduce them to a new audience.
Five years later, Silverberg has edited a second volume, containing
six of the same authors, but introducing five new worlds to his readers.
While
most of the worlds represented in Legends and Legends II
have already acquired a vast history through multiple (often lengthy)
volumes, one of the worlds included in Legends II has existed,
until now, only within the confines of a single novel, Neil Gaiman’s American
Gods. Taking Shadow
out of America and placing him in Scotland provides an interesting
juxtaposition for those familiar with the novel, but it doesn’t really
tie into the world he created. Perhaps
a Sandman story by Gaiman would have fit the anthology’s theme a little
better.
Other
stories also presume familiarity with the authors’ worlds.
Silverberg’s own story, “The Book of Changes,” while set
millennia before the events recounted in the various Majipoor novels, does
assume that the reader has some knowledge of what has gone before (come
after) in the series. This
is, perhaps, most notable in Anne McCaffrey’s “Beyond Between,”
which is a continuation of her novel Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, and introduces a supernatural element
into the world she has long claimed to be a science fictional land.
The
strongest stories in Legends II are the ones which, like Raymond
Feist’s “The Messenger” attempt to examine a previously unexplored
aspect of the world for which the author has become famous.
Also strong are the stories which do assume that the readers have
not read any of the previous tales, whether that is the case or not.
Diana Gabaldon’s “Lord John and the Succubus” succeeds in
part because, although she uses a character who has made previous
appearances in her “Outlander” series, Lord John is also embarking on
his own series of novels and this story provides an introduction as well
as a continuation.
Orson
Scott Card provides an excellent tale of “The Yazoo Queen” for
those who are already familiar with his Alvin Maker universe, but his
explanations of the world’s background are not enough for newcomers to
get a grip on his alternative America.
Instead, this story of Alvin and Arthur on a Mizzippy Riverboat
searves mostly as a prelude to the sixth novel in the series, The
Crystal City.
The stories in Legends II are enjoyable,
and most of them work even if the reader is not familiar with the world in
which they are set. They are
not, however, as introductory to those worlds as the stories which
appeared in the first volume. For
fans of epic (and even not-so-epic) fantasy, Legends II provides
insight into the current state of the field and an introduction, if
somewhat flawed, to some of the major fantasy worlds.
