The Morgaine Stories

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gate of Ivrel (DAW Books, 1976), the first novel in the Morgaine Cycle. The cover art depicts Morgaine and Vanye in front of a time-gate; Morgaine is unsheathing her gate-destroying sword.

The Morgaine Stories, also known as The Morgaine Cycle, are a series of science fantasy novels by science fiction and fantasy writer C. J. Cherryh, published by DAW Books. They concern a time-traveling heroine, Morgaine, and her loyal companion Nhi Vanye i Chya.

The first book in the series, Gate of Ivrel (1976), was Cherryh's first published novel, and was followed soon thereafter by Well of Shiuan and Fires of Azeroth. These three works were later collected in an omnibus edition, The Morgaine Saga. In 1988, Cherryh published a fourth book in the series, Exile's Gate.

Also in the 1980s, Jane Fancher began a graphic novel adaptation of Gate of Ivrel in close collaboration with Cherryh. Although it was never completed, Fancher self-published one segment of the work with a color cover and black & white interior art entitled C. J. Cherryh's Gate of Ivrel No. 1 (1985). Two parts of the adaptation were subsequently published as full color versions by The Donning Company under its Starblaze Graphics imprint: Gate of Ivrel: Claiming Rites (1986) and Gate of Ivrel: Fever Dreams (1987). And in 1987, Tor Books published an interactive novel set in Morgaine's universe, Witchfires of Leth.

This series has been identified as an extension of the Alliance-Union universe, saying that Morgaine was sent from the "Union Science Bureau" on her quest.

[edit] Background

The construct at the center of these novels is a set of "gates" that facilitate travel among a series of distant worlds connected by these gates. In addition to traveling from place to place, the gates can also be used to facilitate time travel. Cherryh has cited the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Andre Norton as influences in the development of her gate system.[1]

Because of the temporal paradoxes involved in time travel, the gates are a threat to universal causality and therefore to the future of innumerable worlds. In fact, as presented in the backstory of the Cycle, unwise use of the gates' temporal properties has already decimated at least one highly advanced civilization, the qhal. To prevent additional such calamaties, Morgaine is engaged on a centuries-long quest that takes her from world to world via the gates, setting each gate to self-destruct just after she has used it to move on to the next. It is not clear from the storyline how long Morgaine has been traveling, but it is spelled out that she was sent by the Union Science Bureau as a member of a sizable task force given the mission to destroy the gates. There has been attrition over time, with an act of treachery prior to the first novel that left Morgaine the sole survivor.

The gates and other items in the stories are based on advanced technology, and there are no magical or supernatural elements presented, so the works can be properly classified as science fiction. But the books feature several tropes common to fantasy, including medieval-type settings and low levels of technology on the worlds depicted in the novels, a feudal-like relationship between the main characters, and medieval-style warfare and weaponry.

The device Morgaine uses to destroy the gates, for example, though it incorporates advanced technology, has the appearance of a sword. In the tradition of heroic-epic swords, it has its own name, Changeling. This blending of technology and elements more common to fantasy often results in the books being labeled as works of "Science Fantasy." Indeed, on the author's own Web site she lists them under the heading of "Fantasy Novels," not "Science Fiction."[2] The stories have also been identified as Heroic Fantasy, and earned Cherryh membership in the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a literary society that recognizes notable achievements in heroic fantasy fiction.

[edit] Narrative Themes

One theme of the books is the exchange of bodies: those who know how to manipulate the power of the Gates may take the body of another, younger person to prolong their life, sometimes indefinitely through a series of such exchanges. This lust for immortality at the expense of others is seen at first as a kind of ultimate horror, but it emerges that there can be a contest of wills within the host body, one personality becoming dominant, but retaining the memories and skills of the others. The first three books form a trilogy linked by the pursuit of Morgaine’s ancient qhal betrayer Liell, who takes the body of Vanye’s cousin Chya Roh and flees from her via the Gates from world to world. Roh’s personality gradually subsumes the evil Liell; when Morgaine finally catches him, she spares him for both Roh and Vanye's sake. The fourth book is a sequel to the first three but in narrative terms is independent.

Another theme is the status of the ruined alien race, the qhal (the name and its derivatives are spelled differently on each world Morgaine visits: e.g. qujal, khal) in relation to human beings. The qhal had been the dominant species, but were ruined by their misuse of the Gates. (The Gates themselves are relics of a more ancient, vanished race.) All the worlds described have both qhal and human inhabitants, and are at a quasi-medieval level of development (travel is by foot or on horseback, for instance), with advanced technology present but more or less hidden. It is not always explained where the human populations have come from. In Gate of Ivrel, among the ruined human principalities of Andur-Kursh, qhal are hated and feared and few survive, though they remain powerful. In the slowly-drowning landscape of Well of Shuian the qhal are the dominant, cultured society and humans live in miserable squalor. In the forest world of Fires of Azeroth, qhal and some humans have learned to live in mutual respect, carefully tending their environment (which includes another sentient race, more obviously alien): this paradisial arrangement is threatened by the irruption of the aggressive qhal-human host of refugees from Shiuan. In the world of Exile’s Gate, a dominant qhal society keeps the human-populated areas subject through qhal governors - the exiles from the Lord's court - who have been forced to take human form.

A third theme is the mystery of Morgaine’s own species identity. She resembles the qhal, being tall and slender with long fair hair and pale eyes and skin, but maintains she is not qhal. It is hinted in Fires of Azeroth and eventually more explicitly revealed in Exile’s Gate that Morgaine is a half-breed, with a human mother and a father from the race preceding the qhal, who built the gates. She may have killed her father, perhaps as an early part of her mission. Isolated members of this immensely ancient race still survive, such as the evil Lord of the world of Exile’s Gate.

[edit] Character delineation

The mystery surrounding Morgaine is increased by the fact that, perhaps uniquely among Cherryh’s major protagonists, we never see the action through her eyes. She is always observed by others, and she is not much inclined to talk about her origins, her purposes or her motivations. Chief among those who observe her, and receive a slow series of revelations on these matters, is her faithful helper Nhi Vanye, a bastard son of one of the lords of Andur-Kursh, and therefore a man whose original culture makes it hard for him to comprehend the advanced technology with which, and against which, Morgaine makes war. Outcast as a brother-slayer from his own land, he is claimed as ilin (a combination of bondsman, servant and esquire) by Morgaine according to an ancient Kurshin rite which, with the stubbornness and exaggerated sense of honour associated with his people, he is unable to break. Though she frees him of his servitude at the end of Gate of Ivrel he follows her through the gate to Shuian, and their relationship continues. They come to love one another, but the experience is often painful and confusing. Unlike most genre fantasy, the narrative dwells much on the exhaustion, discomfort, pain and fear of their presumably endless quest. At an early stage Vanye has begged the privilege not to be told many things Morgaine would be willing to communicate to him, which retards the pace of revelation further. All four novels contain at least one section in which Vanye is separated from Morgaine and has to fend for himself among enemies, not knowing if she is still alive or will pause to come back for him, with a concomitant increase in dramatic tension. Vanye’s uncertainties are one of the chief strategies Cherryh employs to keep the reader in a parallel state of uncertainty.

[edit] Cover artwork

All original cover artwork for the novels in the series was done by Michael Whelan. Reprints and UK editions have different cover artwork, for example an armoured portrait of Morgaine by John Higgins for the 1989 Methuen Mandarin omnibus edition of The Chronicles of Morgaine.
 

[edit] Graphic novel artwork

[edit] References

• Cherryh, C. J. Gate of Ivrel, DAW Books, 1976.
• Cherryh, C. J. Well of Shiuan, DAW Books, 1978.
• Cherryh, C. J. Fires of Azeroth, DAW Books, 1979.
• Cherryh, C. J. Exile's Gate, DAW Books, 1988.
• Cherryh, C. J. The Morgaine Saga (omnibus), DAW Books, 2000. (Published as The Book of Morgaine in the UK and later as The Chronicles of Morgaine, which was also the title used in NZ)
• Fancher, Jane. C. J. Cherryh's Gate of Ivrel No. 1, Fancheristics, 1985.
• Fancher, Jane. Gate ov Ivrel: Claiming Rights, The Donning Company, 1986.
• Fancher, Jane. Gate ov Ivrel: Fever Dreams, The Donning Company, 1987.
• Greenberg, Dan. Witchfires of Leth: A Crossroads Adventure in the World of C J Cherryh's Morgaine, Tor Books, 1987.

[edit] External links

• Information on the graphic novel adaptation of Gate of Ivrel on C. J. Cherryh's official Web site
• Jane Fancher's discussion of the graphic novel adaptation on www.sff.net