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vasha's review against another edition
3.0
After [b:Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship|2971151|Domnei|James Branch Cabell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1267410037s/2971151.jpg|3001389] (1913), [b:Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice|1110887|Jurgen|James Branch Cabell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181086089s/1110887.jpg|1598851] (1919), and other novels set in the fictional medieval province of Poictesme, comes this 1926 tale, subtitled "A Comedy of Redemption". Here, as in Jurgen, James Branch Cabell gave full rein to his taste for low comedy, much of it misogynistic. I find paragraphs about nagging wives and stupid but sexy princesses quite stale; I was just waiting for the mother-in-law to put in a tiresome appearance (she eventually does). That apart, though, there's a lot in this book that's quite brilliant, as Cabell subtly takes apart the pieties associated with the posthumous elevation of Count Manuel to the status of Redeemer. Cabell heartily dislikes hypocrisy, and in all of his books he shows up the lies that people tell to one another and to themselves. Yet he doesn't have some great idealism to promote himself. He's a thoroughgoing skeptic, a doubter, and that (besides his splendid control of language) is the best thing about his stories.
smcleish's review against another edition
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in May 2003.
Many readers of fantasy today basically assume that it is a genre which originated with J.R.R. Tolkien; this is not at all the case, and the best of the earlier writing is, in my opinion, well worth resurrecting. James Branch Cabell is today almost completely unknown, even with the occasional cheap reprint in some "fantasy classics" series, and he has a charm and humour almost totally lacking in most post-Tolkien fantasy. In the second half of the twenties, he wrote a loosely connected trilogy set in the kingdom of Poictesme, of which this is the second. It was attacked at the time as blasphemous and indecent, two charges which would hardly be made today even though it is still just about possible to understand why people reacted in this way.
The Silver Stallion is the best of the volumes in the trilogy. [b:Figures of Earth|385811|Figures of Earth|James Branch Cabell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1174354372s/385811.jpg|375509] lacks the ingredients which mark out The Silver Stallion from just about every other fantasy novels, and [b:Jurgen|1110887|Jurgen|James Branch Cabell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328865792s/1110887.jpg|1598851] sometimes reads as though Cabell is trying too hard to shock the reader. The reason this novel is different is that it is about what happens after the end of the quest, during the living "happily every after". It starts with the death of Dom Manuel, central character (if not exactly hero) of Figures of Earth. The fellowship of nine companions who fought under the banner of the Silver Stallion ("rampant in every member") is disbanded, and his widow sets about turning his reputation as the liberator of Poictesme into that of a national saviour and redeemer, sort of a cross between Christ and King Arthur. (It is Cabell's appropriation of Christian ideas and even Biblical quotations to his manifestly false redeemer and particular what is said about the survival of any religion in Part IX which provoked the charge of blasphemy.) The Silver Stallion is about both how the cult of Dom Manuel becomes established and the ageing of his former companions. These nine men find it hard to fit in with the changes in Poictesme, partly because they remember better than anyone else what Dom Manuel was really like, and partly because they miss the old days of fighting and wenching.
The them of the ageing heroes makes The Silver Stallion pretty unusual in the fantasy genre, even today. (In this era of debunked heroes, fantasy has generally continued to depict the old fashioned superhuman goodies.) The closest parallels I can think of are the world weariness of some of [a:Michael Moorcock|16939|Michael Moorcock|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1222901251p2/16939.jpg]'s heroes, the character of the aged Bilbo in T[b:The Lord of the Rings|33|The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347257199s/33.jpg|3462456] and Cohen the Barbarian, who has a minor role in several of the Discworld novels. Reading the novel reveals, however, that stylistically Cabell is not like these authors stylistically, reminding me instead of [a:L. Sprague de Camp|3305|L. Sprague de Camp|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1218217726p2/3305.jpg] and [a:Tom Holt|9766|Tom Holt|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1246502762p2/9766.jpg]. It is a pity that Cabell is not still widely known, and this trilogy at least is well worth seeking out.
Many readers of fantasy today basically assume that it is a genre which originated with J.R.R. Tolkien; this is not at all the case, and the best of the earlier writing is, in my opinion, well worth resurrecting. James Branch Cabell is today almost completely unknown, even with the occasional cheap reprint in some "fantasy classics" series, and he has a charm and humour almost totally lacking in most post-Tolkien fantasy. In the second half of the twenties, he wrote a loosely connected trilogy set in the kingdom of Poictesme, of which this is the second. It was attacked at the time as blasphemous and indecent, two charges which would hardly be made today even though it is still just about possible to understand why people reacted in this way.
The Silver Stallion is the best of the volumes in the trilogy. [b:Figures of Earth|385811|Figures of Earth|James Branch Cabell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1174354372s/385811.jpg|375509] lacks the ingredients which mark out The Silver Stallion from just about every other fantasy novels, and [b:Jurgen|1110887|Jurgen|James Branch Cabell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328865792s/1110887.jpg|1598851] sometimes reads as though Cabell is trying too hard to shock the reader. The reason this novel is different is that it is about what happens after the end of the quest, during the living "happily every after". It starts with the death of Dom Manuel, central character (if not exactly hero) of Figures of Earth. The fellowship of nine companions who fought under the banner of the Silver Stallion ("rampant in every member") is disbanded, and his widow sets about turning his reputation as the liberator of Poictesme into that of a national saviour and redeemer, sort of a cross between Christ and King Arthur. (It is Cabell's appropriation of Christian ideas and even Biblical quotations to his manifestly false redeemer and particular what is said about the survival of any religion in Part IX which provoked the charge of blasphemy.) The Silver Stallion is about both how the cult of Dom Manuel becomes established and the ageing of his former companions. These nine men find it hard to fit in with the changes in Poictesme, partly because they remember better than anyone else what Dom Manuel was really like, and partly because they miss the old days of fighting and wenching.
The them of the ageing heroes makes The Silver Stallion pretty unusual in the fantasy genre, even today. (In this era of debunked heroes, fantasy has generally continued to depict the old fashioned superhuman goodies.) The closest parallels I can think of are the world weariness of some of [a:Michael Moorcock|16939|Michael Moorcock|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1222901251p2/16939.jpg]'s heroes, the character of the aged Bilbo in T[b:The Lord of the Rings|33|The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347257199s/33.jpg|3462456] and Cohen the Barbarian, who has a minor role in several of the Discworld novels. Reading the novel reveals, however, that stylistically Cabell is not like these authors stylistically, reminding me instead of [a:L. Sprague de Camp|3305|L. Sprague de Camp|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1218217726p2/3305.jpg] and [a:Tom Holt|9766|Tom Holt|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1246502762p2/9766.jpg]. It is a pity that Cabell is not still widely known, and this trilogy at least is well worth seeking out.
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