Lord Valentine's Castle (Lord Valentine, #1) in Beyond Reality

Dec 30, 2012 mark monday rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-60s-70s-80s, z-robert-silverberg, fantasy-60s-70s-80s

Valentine finds himself outside the city of Pidruid one afternoon, completely bereft of memory, as the city makes ready for the arrival of Lord Valentine - one of the four great Powers of the mega-world of Majipoor. what's a man to do in such a situation? why, join a traveling band of jugglers, of course. travel a lot, meets lots of new people and see lots of new things, have a bunch of trippy dreams, and eventually reclaim a fabulous destiny. that's what i'd do too.

i reread this due to a group Valentine finds himself outside the city of Pidruid one afternoon, completely bereft of memory, as the city makes ready for the arrival of Lord Valentine - one of the four great Powers of the mega-world of Majipoor. what's a man to do in such a situation? why, join a traveling band of jugglers, of course. travel a lot, meets lots of new people and see lots of new things, have a bunch of trippy dreams, and eventually reclaim a fabulous destiny. that's what i'd do too.

i reread this due to a group read. i first read it when living in Virginia Beach, sometime in junior high. it is an often dense novel and certainly a surreal one at times, but there is a purity to it that made me realize i must have been able to fully grasp it when first reading it age 14 or so. it became one of my favorite things. rereading it, it remains one of my favorite things. maybe not 5 stars worth of gold, but it is still pretty precious.

when i first bought the book - and this whole paragraph will just be a rambly recollection that has nothing to do with the book whatsoever, so you may as well just skip this part and move on to the next paragraph - the demented old woman who sold it to me thought i was buying a biography of St. Valentine of Valentine's Day. she proceeded to tell me the "true story" of St. Valentine. apparently he was not simply a saint for lovers. according to the bookseller, St. Valentine was a fiery sort who was captured by malevolent anti-christian forces and tortured for his christian beliefs. nothing would break Valentine. finally, his torturers sent an evil harlot to tempt Valentine. since he was chained down, there was little he could do to stop this nasty temptress from laying her hands all over his precious christian body. so he bit off his own tongue and spat it at her. hello sainthood! i just want you all to remember this the next time you are celebrating Valentine's Day with your loved one. anyway, the odd senior told me to report back to her after reading this novel and let her know if the author got the story right. i think i was too scared to return to that bookstore.

so this book has nothing to do with St. Valentine, whew.

although it is ostensibly about Finding Your True Self and What Makes A Good Leader, i found the novel was equally concerned with two other things: World Building and Silverberg's Vision of a (Semi) Perfect World.

haters of world building need to give this novel a pass. but for those who appreciate the intensely detailed visions of otherworlds created by various scifi and fantasy authors, this is the book for you. "intensely detailed" is a good phrase for this but it should be qualified. not intensely detailed like George RR Martin (you won't always know what color sash a person is wearing and if it matches their brocade jacket) but intensely detailed in that we visit so many different places across the grand world of Majipoor and they are all so beautifully described and so well-differentiated from each other. at times i was reminded of how easily Jack Vance rolls out cities & countries & worlds, one after the other, with such style and skill that he makes world-building look like a lark. however Silverberg does not have Vance's economy of language or spartan stylishness. this is world building in the classic sense in that the reader gets to enjoy sentence after sentence and paragraph after paragraph of gorgeous description. boring for some; entrancing for me. reading this really made me feel like a romantic (also in the classic sense of the word) young nerd again. the language is beautiful and Majipoor really came alive.

this is also in many ways a near-perfect world. it does not know war or famine or cruel leaders or reality tv. its species and races live in relative harmony. personalities are either sunny & open or, if not, at least genuinely amusing in their grouchiness or arrogance. cold-eyed justice and professional emotional support are both given by far off dream-senders, so no need for pesky police or helpful therapists to get up in your face - they'll see you in your dreams, whether you've been good or bad or inbetween. Majipoor is a liberal, generous, and usually cheerful society. its people respect the natural wonders of the world and various preserves are specifically set aside for keeping those wonders sacrosanct. reading Lord Valentine's Castle made me realize that this was all the author's version of his own ideal world. good for you, Silverberg. your dreams are wonderful and i would like to live in them, please.

Silverberg is known to be a sometimes challenging and often provacative author of the New Wave Science Fiction genre. Lord Valentine's Castle was a step in an entirely different direction: epic science fantasy. but such a curious version of an epic! writing that makes you slow down and enjoy things instead of rushing forward to the next conflict. a narrative that is full of dreams and dream battles and dream epiphanies. characters who are mainly undramatic and often trying to do right. an emphasis on the environment as a precious thing. turning the other cheek and not automatically drawing your sword when someone gets in your way. and writing that is charming and sometimes eerie and brightened by a lacquer of pleasantly vivid psychedelia. splendid writing.

look, one sentence:

"He saw himself standing rooted at Zimroel's edge with the sea behind him and a continent unrolling before him, and the Inner Sea punctuated by the Isle of Sleep, and Alhanroel beyond, rising on its nether side to the great swollen bulge of Castle Mount, and the sun overhead, yellow with a bronze-green tint, sending blistering rays down on dusty Suvrael and into the tropics, and warming everything else, and the worlds from which the Skandars came and the Hjorts and the Liimen and all the rest, even the world from which his own folk had emigrated, Old Earth, fourteen thousand years ago, a small blue world absurdly tiny when compared to Majipoor, far away, half forgotten in some other corner of the universe, and he journeyed back down across the stars to this world, this continent, this city, this inn, this courtyard, this small plot of moist yielding soil in which his boots were rooted, and told Sleet he was ready."

cool!

a version of this review is a part of a longer article on Robert Silverberg posted on Shelf Inflicted. ...more

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Feb 16, 2009 Stephen rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fantasy, audiobook, easton-press, award-nominee-hugo, the-worlds-the-thing, award-winner-locus, award-nominee-locus, kings-and-queens, multiple-award-nominee

4.0 to 4.5 stars. I really debated whether to give this book 4 or 5 stars. The world of Majipoor created by Robert Silverberg is very well thought out. It is both complex enough to provide an endless supply of stories and yet defined enough in this first book to give you an excellent understanding of how it is governed and the composition of the world. I am a big fan of world-building so my favorite books usually have that as a component (Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards, China Mieville's New Cr ...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Kerry rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, 9-out-of-10, fantasy, reread, ebooks, 2007

REREAD #1: 9/10 (26 October 2007 - 2 November 2007)

Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg

Come to the magical planet of Majipoor. Follow Valentine as he joins a motley band of jugglers to seek the secret of his lost past across a wide and wondrous world. In the shattered city of the Shapeshifters, in the temple of the Lady of Sleep and the Isle of the King of Dreams. From the depths of a dying emperor's dark domain, to the destiny that awaits him high atop Lord Valentine's Castle.

I first re ...more

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Oct 06, 2012 S.P. rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, fiction

By the looks of the blurb on this book, it seemed like it would be a fairly standard 'quest' type book with elves and dwarves and nasty evil folk. And you know what, it pretty much is (only elves and dwarves are replaced by 'aliens' making it Sci-Fi not fantasy).

At times it can be a little slow, and other times too fast – almost dismissive of huge tracts of journey. Didn't feel any particular affinity for any of the characters and didn't really care if they finished their quest successfully or ...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Oni rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy

Lord Valentine's Castle is not one of Silverberg's best. Reading this book is just like watching a PG-13 movies for a supposed Rated movies.

First, the story is so simple. A rightful king, trying to regain his rightful throne from his usurper. Throughout his journey to become a king, he gathered friends and loyalists, later become his most trustful servants. Simple. Less than one paragraph. It might work for a story written for RPG or adventure computer game, but for a novel? Na...

The plot is sim Lord Valentine's Castle is not one of Silverberg's best. Reading this book is just like watching a PG-13 movies for a supposed Rated movies.

First, the story is so simple. A rightful king, trying to regain his rightful throne from his usurper. Throughout his journey to become a king, he gathered friends and loyalists, later become his most trustful servants. Simple. Less than one paragraph. It might work for a story written for RPG or adventure computer game, but for a novel? Na...

The plot is simple. Only the beginning part is interesting. But once it is clear that this is all about an exiled king trying to regain his throne, the plot is a bore. It is truly like playing an RPG computer game. The hero gathered companions during his quest, a human female consort and male followers, a giant, a wizard, some aliens, in and off-planet, and then later some other followers. He traveled from one exotic location to another location. Having to solve puzzles and problems before he can advance into another location (should I say stage?) Sounds like an adventure game right? Fortunately, Silverberg knows how to write. Even though the plot is crumbling apart, his writing is still readable.

Secondly, the genre. I don't know why some classify this book into sci-fi genre. It is not a sci-fi novel. You can easily change the race of aliens in this book into dwarves, elves, throlls, gnomes, goblins, or whatever magical creature that you like, without affecting the story at all. It is a fantasy book. By introducing some aliens in this book does not make it a sci-fi book.

If you want to classify it as a sci-fi book, it is a bad sci-fi. How could the author explains a giant terrestrial planet, governed by a central figure, a king (or Coronal in the story), with only medieval technology. The city is populated up to tens of millions! It is impossible for populations that big to live in a huge city without proper technology. Surely they cannot depends on mounts to move from one point to another, not to mention how they move the commodities (unless you use some extraordinary magic, which is not the case in this book). And the population of the planet surpass ten billions! How to feed all of those people without technology? It is just not sustainable. ...more

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Jan 22, 2008 Jeffrey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, read-in-high-school

A classic of the genre.

Valentine, the ruler of a fabulous land, wakes up one day as a juggler in a traveling roadshow. He has forgotten his true self as he has amnesia.

Well worth reading.

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Jan 06, 2019 Natalie rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy

Valentine is a fairly entertaining book with a slow pace that picks up towards the end of the novel. Valentine starts out with a character who can't remember who he is and where he is going. He meets a troupe of jugglers and joins them, finding he has skills in juggling. He meets and falls in love with one of the fellow jugglers, Carabella. The troupe travels around and slowly Valentine discovers, through dreams, which are magical and are often interpreted as being sent from the King of Dreams o ...more

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Oct 01, 2009 Frank Taranto rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

A wonderful mixture of fantasy and SF on a strange planet with stranger denizens.
Lord Valentine has lost his memory and his learning juggling as a means to survive.
This is the tale of how he gets his memory and kingdom back.

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