Title: Darkmage:

By -Barbara Hambly

Publishing Info:  Garden City: Nelson Doubleday, 1990 (?)

General Category: Fiction

Genre: - The Novel

Sub-genre: - Fantasy

Nationality: - American

Time Period: - 20th Century / Contemporary

First and Last Read by Dr. Rearick - June 1998

Rated: - B+

Location: - The Rearick Home Library

Used for:- As of now, no "use" except for myself.  

Scripture that comes to mind:

Comments: - The specifics of the two novels that form Darkmage are described in each separate section mentioned above.  I just thought I'd comment here about the nature of two novels which artistically go together so closely they really should discussed as one work, even though they obviously were originally published as two.

The ending of the first part, The Silent Tower, is so incomplete that it screams "To Be Continued."  It gave me when I read it the same feeling I had when I saw the film Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back. In the conclusion of The Silent Tower there is still an unsolved murder, an unfinished love story, and the heroine being stalked by a figure who personifies the combination of evil and power.  There is no sense that the work could stand by itself.  This separates it from other novels I have read in a series, like Lewis; The Silent Planet, which stands alone although its major character appears in other works afterwards as well.  In can not even be said that there was a need for the division as there was, for example, in Tolkiens The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, in which the length of the work necessitated the dividing into three novels.  The entire Darkmage set fills up only 533 pages (not even the length of an average Dickens novel).

So why the division?  The answer is obvious--economics.  The American reading audience is tuned already for fairly short works.  Plunking down the money for a work of only 274 pages seems entirely reasonable. So why write a single long novel when one can be paid for two short ones which can make even more money later by being combined into the format I bought it in?

Such crass concerns about economics may bother others who would prefer that art stay in the abstract world of truth and beauty. However, the novel more than any other genre has always been heavily involved with the monetary needs of its creators. Few authors even those most difficult to read, have written from the ivy tower of economic security. Fielding of course lived primarily on his income from being a magistrate, but writing Tom Jones was motivated by a need for cash. Perhaps only Jane Austin wrote without economic hounds at her heels, but her situation was not overly wealthy either. Certainly anyone like myself who has studied Dickens must come to accept that great art can be created even while being concerned for cash. Dickens layout of Pickwick Papers is a prime example of this. The trouble arises when the artist somehow becomes untrue to him or herself because of the concerns of money. Then the vision can be "cheapened" but the possibility of such abuse should not mislead individuals to think that it must always be so.