Hart's Hope

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Hart's Hope (1983) is a novel by the prolific science fiction author Orson Scott Card, set in a semi-medieval fantasy world. It was written before his much more widely-known novel Ender's Game (1985) and is relatively obscure, although some believe it should be given much more attention.

[edit] Plot summary

Hart's Hope begins by describing the state of the country of which the city of Hart's Hope is capital: its tyrannical king, damaged young princess Asineth, and bloody martial law. The world is dominated by four major deities: the Hart, an ancient nature god whose power is closely related to blood magic; the Sweet Sisters, a pair of conjoined twins who are joined, horribly, at the face, with one looking out just enough to have an eye free and a mouth to breathe from; and the new, powerful god named God, by whose power the young Count of Traffing, Palicrovol, overthrows the King and renames the city Inwit. He is assisted by Zymas, the old king's right-hand man and general.

Palicrovol kills the king and, to cement his new rule, marries and publicly rapes the twelve-year-old Asineth and then sends her away with his ally Sleeve, an albino user of blood magic, instead of killing her. He then sends for the Flower Princess, whose nearly unpronounceable name (Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin) is rarely used and whose hand he secured during his bid for power; she is the most beautiful woman in the world, because she will never lie.

Unknown to King Palicrovol, Asineth is bearing his child, a supernaturally powerful daughter whom Asineth sacrifices for blood magic, with which she overthrows the gods and the city of Hart's Hope, setting Palicrovol in place as a humiliated (and continually tormented) puppet ruler. She steals the Flower Princess's face and body and keeps Sleeve, Zymas and the Flower Princess as her personal pets in altered forms, along with her collection of enslaved gods-- the Hart a pile of bones beneath the castle, the god named God a blind slave scrubbing floors, and the Sweet Sisters sold out as whores. She renames herself Queen Beauty and rules with omnipotent power from the capital city.

But the gods still have some power, and they arrange for Palicrovol to father a son with specific magical properties who will eventually marry and then destroy Queen Beauty-- but not without a host of agonizing trials and sacrifices of his own. Orem is his name.

In the end, the restored Flower Princess tells her husband that he must make the choice: will he kill young Orem for usurping, however briefly, his place on the throne? Or will he decide that enough blood has been shed needlessly for the city and his rule? The book doesn't decide for the reader, who must rely on his understanding of the characters to realize the necessary end.

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

Hart's Hope is short on fantastic creatures and the popular sword-and-sorcery magic of many fantasy novels, but the plot is immensely complex and the dynamics of power carefully thought out. Magic in this world is bought with blood, or inherent in an alphanumeric system that allows writing to be read in any direction with a possibility of many different meanings, depending on the direction they are deciphered in.

Some have complained of difficult prose and a hard-to-follow plot; the story is told in a mass of smaller stories, like vignettes along the way of a much larger storyline. At times the actual meaning or importance of an event is obscured; at other times the sheer volume of detail becomes distracting. The book is laid out almost in a biblical manner, which is confusing to some readers. However, the story is as rewarding as it is demanding and the detail never quite swamps the story, adding instead to the depth of the world Card is building. To his credit, the author avoids being bogged down in the backstory of his fantastic world; we are given glimpses of traditions and magic that would be groundwork for an entire novel on its own, only to be drawn away from these as the plot rushes on. The overall effect is one of gravity and depth, and the novel leaves the reader with a burning sense of curiosity about the rest of the world they're leaving.

The book is gritty and realistic; graphic subject matter abounds, from child rape to blood sacrifice. It deals with weighty moral issues in an intelligent manner that avoids black-and-white stereotyping; the reader is challenged at the end to work out the final outcome of the plot for himself, and to make his own verdicts about the characters, none of whom fit well into the typical dichotomy of good vs. evil. It is not a light book.

[edit] Trivia

• Orson Scott Card invented the world of Hart's Hope after drawing a map of the city on a huge roll of onion paper (How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, 1990). He was mainly inspired by an accident in which he drew houses that closed up an entire gate of the city, leading him to wonder why someone would close up a gate. The reason? A prophecy was made that the man who overthrew Queen Beauty would enter through that gate. (Orem enters through a smuggler's tunnel in that exact spot.)