Saga of Old City - By Gary Gygax
A Review.
Gary Gygax has, obviously, had a large impact on all of us in terms of our hobby of choice. Indeed even if you turn your nose up at Dungeons & Dragons in
any of it's forms, you still have to acknowledge the irrefutable fact that it was Gygax, Kaye and Arneson who brought the entire realm of tabletop role-playing into being.
That said, like all of us, Gary Gygax has branched out in to other things. Not all of those other projects are products for the RPG industry, either. Enter the Greyhawk novels...
The first book in the series, Saga of Old City, thrusts the reader into the World of Greyhawk. Unlike the first effort at this (Andre Norton's so-so novel entitled
Quag Keep), Saga of Old City begins in a conventional manner. We meet the downtrodden gangrel-youth Gord, a nearly-feral child scrabbling out an existence worse than the most
unprivileged of us could imagine. Gord's life is one of very hard knocks, no kindness, and even less pity. When his only "caregiver" dies, he is left to fend for himself in whatever manner he can - and in the City of Greyhawk for an uneducated but nimble youth, that means thievery.
This then is the beginning of Gord's saga - for that is a more apt and accurate title for the book - and his adventures not only in the City of Greyhawk but all across the Flaness. We're brought along Gord's hard journey in a series of somewhat disjointed chapters; first Gord is a young
beggar-thief, then very nearly a prince by his own hand, then a cutpurse and burglar on the run, then a trusted forest warden, all in the space of just a single novel.
The style and pacing are almost identical to a book of disconnected short stories rather than a continually flowing novel, and it seems from chapter to chapter that years have gone by between turns of the page. Although Gygax does rely on detailed character reflection and exposition to fill in these gaps, it still left me feeling as though I'd missed something important somewhere.
Other times, in a single paragraph, days, weeks or even a whole season can pass - not that this in and of itself is a bad thing. If nothing of great import happens, then it doesn't happen and does not need to be padded out in some Fanthorpian addiction to filling up paper instead of writing a good book. Consequently such passages of time are not as abrupt or jarring as the leaps from event to event that seem to occur.
The prose style is as familiar as a well-thumbed copy of the Dungeon Master's
Guide - although it is amusing to read Gygax's dialogue and monologues for his characters (when it's supposed to be amusing). Dialogue such as it is, is infrequent and the author lets the story tell itself, which is welcome from time to time. Some of the language seems
unnecessarily "modern", (particularly the insults thrown around) which is a bit distracting, but the majority of it is in Gygax's own inimitable occasionally purple prose.
All in all, in terms of story, Saga of Old City is a page turner in the same vein as Robert E. Howard or Lin Carter. Gord's drive and desire to always at least do something
interesting keeps him moving from romance to swordfight and events in between, although this sometimes leaves supporting characters in the dust (which is by and large the nature of young Gord's personality).
Despite that, the payoff near the end of the novel is quite worth the trip. Without spoiling it, it's a true dungeon-crawl in the classic sense of the word. The
afterward for the novel is quite interesting if you're an Advanced D & D gamer, because here Gygax takes the time to explain the game mechanics of how and why certain events occur, and what a given magic item might do within the realms of a gaming session, so we can view Gord's Greyhawk from our side as well as his.
There are many other books within the series, I may review them later. For the time being,
Saga of Old City gets 2 & 3/4 stars. Not a bad novel - good light pulp reading if you're looking for standard sword and sorcery.