Read the next entry in this series here.
“The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr”
Fantastic, 1976
“Laren Dorr” was the first of what was
meant to be a series of short stories about Sharra, the girl who goes between
the worlds, but Martin never managed to write any more of them. As he mentions
in the preface to this section, however, he rarely abandons an idea, and some
of the worldbuilding in “Laren Dorr” shows up in later stories and books—even A Song of Ice and Fire.
Plotwise, there’s not much to talk about
here; it’s one incident in the larger adventures of Sharra as she seeks her
lover, who was stolen from her by the mysterious Seven, the gods of the
universe. She stumbles into Laren’s world, where she stays for a while, then
moves on. There is a minor plot twist—each gate between worlds has a guardian
that will try to stop Sharra from crossing, usually violently, but it turns out
that Laren is the guardian of this gate and he’s tried to stop her with love. Ultimately,
however, Sharra moves on, continuing her search for Kaydar in other worlds.
Thematically and artistically, though,
there’s a lot to admire about “Laren Dorr.” The writing is lovely. The
worldbuilding in fantasy relies heavily on the author’s ability to describe the
magical landscapes the characters are seeing, and as anyone who’s fussed about
the “food porn” in A Song of Ice and Fire
can tell you, Martin loves
description. Early-ish in the story, Laren shows his power by either moving
Sharra around the world or creating illusions to show her different places
(which one isn’t clear and doesn’t really matter). Here’s an excerpt of that
bit:
~*~
He set the castle flying over restless
churning seas, where long black serpent-heads peered up out of the water to
watch them pass. He moved them to a vast echoing cavern under the earth, all
aglow with a soft green light, where dripping stalactites brushed down against
the towers and herds of blind white goats moaned outside the battlements. He
clapped his hands and smiled, and steam-thick jungle rose around them; trees
that climbed each other in rubber ladders to the sky, giant flowers of a dozen
different colors, fanged monkeys chittered from the walls. He clapped again,
and the walls were swept clean, and suddenly the courtyard dirt was sand and
they were on an endless beach by the shore of a bleak grey ocean, and above the
slow wheeling of a great blue bird with tissue-paper wings was the only
movement to be seen.
~*~
His description of the images created by
Laren’s songs is equally lovely, capturing powerful images in relatively few
words.
There’s a lot of unrealized potential
(given that this is the only story) in the worldbuilding. I always appreciate
it when it’s clear the author has far more in their head about how the world
works and what’s in it than we get to see on the page; it gives the story a
sense of depth that you don’t get when world elements are introduced just
because the writer needs them and not because they’re organic to the story. In
this case, there’s an entire universe/multiverse full of worlds that Sharra
travels between using “gates” to go from one to the next. She wears a crown
that protects her—somehow—against the gate guardians and other dangers and also
seems to help facilitate travel between worlds. The Seven are mysterious,
clearly all-powerful and hostile to Sharra and Laren, but the exact reasons for
this hostility are unclear. So are the reasons the Seven might kidnap and
imprison Sharra’s lover, Kaydar. Specifics aren’t necessary for this particular
story—all we really need for the atmosphere of this story is what we get—but it
would have been really interesting to watch the worldbuilding unfold and expand
if Martin had managed to do more of these stories.
~*~
There are some [guardians] who try to claw
you to pieces, and some who try to get you lost, and some who try to trick you
into taking the wrong gate. There are some who hold you with weapons, some with
chains, some with lies. And there is one, at least, who tried to stop you with
love. Yet he was true for all that, and he never sang you false.
~*~
Like his protagonist in “The Second Kind of
Loneliness,” Laren is deeply lonely, but in this case with the first kind of
loneliness—the Seven have trapped him here, alone, taken away most of his
power, and every time he goes mad, they cure him. Also like the “Loneliness”
protagonist, he treats Sharra with respect, not going all stalker on her or
trying to guilt-trip her into staying when it’s clear she needs to move on. He
loves her, but he recognizes that she’s also the first person he’s seen in
literally eons and she’s in love with someone else. Rather than trying to trap
her or otherwise keep her from leaving, he lets her go—rather, he takes her to
the gate and shoves her through.
Next week I’ll tackle Martin’s famous
children’s story “The Ice Dragon,” a clear precursor to A Song of Ice and Fire.
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