The Dragon Sundered

I've been meaning to say a few more words about John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting, which I finally finished a week or so ago. It's a fabulous novel, full of politics and intrigue against the backdrop of one of the most interesting alternative histories (and certainly the most interesting alternative-history-with-magic) that I've ever seen. Unfortunately, the story comes apart down the middle, and the two halves don't really match.

The first half of the novel, which introduces the new history allusively by examining the current state of play in Wales, France, Florence and Milan, is a tour de force: it's this fantastic exercise in worldbuilding which is the novel's real strength.

The Byzantine Empire dominates a Europe which never knew Christianity, or at least never as a mainstream faith, and which is characterised by a bewilderingly diverse pagan pluralism. Perhaps because of this (although in fact neither group seems very religiously-minded), both wizards and vampires are present, and play prominent roles in European power-politics. (Oddly, the Duke of Milan is one of the latter, not of the former.) In non-Byzantine Britain, King Arthur once ruled and rumours of Robin Hood haunt the forests -- but oddly, the Wars of the Roses happened according to schedule, and now (in the late fifteenth century in our history) Richard Duke of Gloucester requires help to consolidate his brother's reign over a radically unstable England.

The second half of the book, which narrows in on Britain, the family of the soon-to-be King Richard III and the literally byzantine machinations of his enemies, is less impressive. The plot is well thought through, and so convoluted as to make one's eyes water, but in presenting England, Scotland and Wales in such detail -- and with a history so similar to our own despite the differences -- we lose the grander picture. While vampirism and wizardry continue to provide important plot functions, the paganism is reduced to occasional glancing references (indeed, the only character whose faith is examined in this half of the novel is a stray Christian) and Byzantium might be any nebulous overseas threat.

Richard himself is as witty, charming and intelligent as Shakespeare's, while being also loyal, altruistic and handsome (although there is a reference to his having been a sickly child). This Richard is simply too idealised: when he does show a flaw (in being too readily taken in by one facet of the labyrinthine conspiracy), you can't believe it of the character Ford's painted. This is in no sense (as I earlier suggested) a retelling of Shakespeare's Richard III: instead it's an entirely new interpretation of the historical story of Richard himself (one with what's probably a unique solution to the problem of the Princes in the Tower).

The four other central characters -- including a vampire and a wizard -- who connect the two halves of the novel are convincing enough, but somehow seem to be acting according to formula. One feels as if Ford is committed to characterisation as his novelistic duty, but finds it less interesting than (in the first half) his setting and (in the second) his plot.

It was the setting which really interested me. The story left me hungry to see more of its world: the Zoroastrian Saracens of the Middle East; the New World and its deities being brought under Byzantine or British rule; whatever mutations of our nineteenth and twentieth centuries this fascinating history might cast up. Most of all, I wanted to see the City of Byzantium itself, but this never happens -- instead London takes centre-stage, and is rather dull.

It's the world which Ford creates which is his real star here. What a shame that it's almost invisible for most of the second half.