"Gaskell, Jane - Atlan Saga (Cija) 05 - Some Summer Lands UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskell Jane)

another, and a completely unlike other at that. (Cija's view of
Seka, and Seka's view of Seka, should give pause to the
wisest parent.) Seka. naturally, has the child's pure skepti-
cism, which makes Cija's redundant. And Seka, unswayed
by the conscious or un- sexual-romantic yearnings of the
pubescent girl, judges all genders with equal asperity. Sex to
Seka is body-pleasure, which can be the gift of anything from
a door to a set of male fingers. On that level, door and man
have the same competing chance. But personalities, aurasЧ
Seka is sharp on those. And the wild dark witchcrafts, the
gleaming revelations gain a brilliance and a deceptive sim-
plicity, coming as they do out of the mouth of a babe.

To my mind, this book, the rogue of the quartet-quintet, is
perhaps the most significant of them all. It shows what

xli SOME SUMMER LANDS

sequels always should, a leap forward, using the previous
material as a launching pad. It shows a daring, and a vital
development, it shows the blazing spark is continuous.

That curious something I sensed beginning in Allan with its
hind-sight, is brought to full expression in Some Summer
Lands. Yes, it has the same burning or murky vistas, the
laughter and pain, the imaginative breadth and height of its
siblings, and a whole mosaic of outlandish, extraordinary
scenes all its own. But it has also a quality of inner thought,
of intellectual guts that the previous novels possess but do not
expand to the same degree. The very fact of Seka's pristine
perception enables you to see through the glamours to the
bedrock, or the fatal flaws. It is Seka who shows the corres-
ponding child in Zerd, and, too, the panther-demon of Zerd's
psychic lifeЧCija found only the boy and the god. While the
alternate attraction and repulsion of Smahi! is peeled away by
Seka's vision of him, bit by bit. If the new vision is less or
more palatable, will be the individual's choice. And mean-
while, the forces of the world, of Atlan herself, are given
room to work their destiny alongside the human personas. No
convention or moral, literary or commercial, is allowed to
hold anything up, or back. Everything fulfils itself, in what-
ever sense that fulfilment has come to mean.

Ail of which said, there is yet an elusive quality to the
book which frankly can only be discovered by reading it. So
turn the page and find out. Firsts are always special: I envy
you your first reading of Some Summer Lands.

ЧTanith Lee
London. 1984