Two
reviews of Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones
London; Gollancz, 1997; £16.99
hc; 383 pages
Deep Secret will be out in paperback in November (Vista, £5.99)
| Reviewed
by David Langford |
![[Deep Secret]](images/deep.jpg)
A theory which frequently emerges in
critical discussion of Diana Wynne Jones's fantasies is that, on the
whole, she probably does it all by witchcraft. Certainly she casts a
spell. At a 1997 British convention, where Diana held court at a
lounge table strewn with implausibly many empty glasses — her
head supported by a neck-brace embellished for complex reasons with
a frieze of naked dancing nymphs drawn by a Fantasy Encyclopedia
contributing editor — I distinctly misremember John Clute
saying: "She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like
the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets
of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their
fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern
merchants; and she has a truly remarkable capacity for beer."
Whereupon the living national treasure remarked that, this being so,
it was Clute's round.
But I digress.
Deep Secret shares a number of very Jonesian characteristics
with A Sudden Wild Magic, also written for adults, and Hexwood
and A Tale of Time City, which are ostensibly for "young
adult" readers. There is a daft and complicated multiverse
presided over by an inner ring of fallible guardians, an entangling
of science and enchantment, a preposterous plot, a large cast list
featuring numerous characters who prove to be wearing masks over
secret identities (see also her Castle in the Air), a hidden
saviour, and outrageous juxtapositions of tragedy, farce, high
melodrama and high fantasy.
All this is told in a deceptively breathless style, as though the
words were just bubbling unchecked from the wells of imagination. A
second reading reveals, soberingly, how many apparent decorative
flourishes and fragments of byplay are efficiently laying groundwork
for revelations to come. It is one of the author's contentions that
adult readers, skimming lazily, miss all sorts of little hints which
are picked up by children....
The story? The initially slightly smug narrator Rupert Venables is
one of the magic-wielding secret guardians known as the Magids.
Though stationed on Earth, he also has a rotten time with the
horrible, oppressive Empire of Koryfos whose worlds lie at the heart
of the multiverse. Meanwhile, closer to home, Earth's senior Magid
has died and (though hanging on as a ghost and specialising in
audible haunting of CD players) must be replaced. The potential
recruits are all fairly appalling, but it seems a sufficient hint of
things to come that the candidate who most appals Rupert - a
frumpish and grumpy young woman called Maree Mallory - soon gets her
own first-person narrative thread. Meanwhile, offstage, the Empire
falls and the hunt is on for the true heirs (all hidden away by a
paranoid Emperor), some of whom may even be centaurs from the more
magic-ridden worlds.
For reasons which seem practically logical as they develop, all the
varied fate-lines converge on a particular nexus close to the hearts
of many readers: a science fiction convention, held in an imaginary
English town whose name doesn't matter, since the ‘Hotel
Babylon' is highly recognisable. Downstairs, it's evidently the
Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, a favourite Eastercon site whose vast
lounge was and is decorated to reflect that of the Titanic.
Upstairs, the disquietingly Escheresque corridors - sometimes one
has to turn through five or seven or more right angles to get from
the lift to one's room, and this number varies - reflect the ghastly
London Docklands venue of other sf events, including the 1997 World
Fantasy Convention. Need I add that the hotel is situated on an
ancient magical node? Or that, to Venables's exasperation, at least
two people besides himself are constantly meddling with this gate
between worlds?
‘Phantasmacon' feels like a real convention, and the few
in-jokes are unobtrusive. Only those in the know will detect, for
example, the lovingly observed depiction of a hemidemisemiconscious
Neil ("I'm not a morning person") Gaiman
confronting or failing to confront breakfast at a Milford UK
conference. The con ambience provides a logical enough background
for derring-do in which wounded centaurs are smuggled to safety,
sigils of ultimate foulness appear scrawled on hotel bedroom doors,
the kitchens get ransacked for magical ingredients, and the placing
of a geas on a black mage in the hotel lobby becomes, inadvertently,
a warmly applauded public performance. Few authors would risk the
large-scale set-piece involving sinister ensemble magic, flashing
swords, rampant manifestations of a horrid Goddess, and Imperial
beam weaponry - all in a crowded convention hall where the Guest of
Honour is struggling to deliver his speech.
But Diana Wynne Jones not only carries all this off splendidly, but
successfully shifts gears into high fantasy for a quest that begins
in a besieged hotel bedroom and leads to remote, perilous realms. To
avert a cruel and otherwise inevitable death, Venables and a few
fellow-Magids invoke one of their order's ‘Deep Secrets',
concerning the road to Babylon.
We all know, in defiance of mere reason, that certain scraps and
shreds of verse touch on Deep Secrets - that, to pick the
most famous examples, Tom O'Bedlam's Song and Coleridge's ‘Kublai
Khan' and a few lines from Keats's ‘Ode to a Nightingale' have
unclear but ineluctable connections with the numinous. Deep
Secret considers a well-known rhyme in the same light:
How many miles to Babylon?
Three score miles and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
If your feet are speedy and light
You can get there by candle-light.
Other versions of the verse, as it's
supposedly known in other worlds, are given - to cumulative effect -
and reveal more about the difficult path, which is also the path of
the old lyke-wake dirge, the corpse-chant. "This ae nighte,
this ae nighte ... Fire and fleet and candle-light ... To
Whinny-muir thou comest at last ..." Suddenly the story is not
comic at all; but it sings.
Some writers would probably kill for the trick of working this
smooth transition from knockabout adventure to full flight - yes,
and back again. How does Diana Wynne Jones do it? Well ... there are
plenty more secrets to be enjoyably discovered in Deep Secret;
this seems a good time to stop and echo that celebrated Algis Budrys
dictum on a Panshin novel: "Read the book. Stop asking silly
questions."
(Reprinted courtesy of the New York Review of
Science Fiction)
A new book by DWJ is one of the highlights
of my reading year. I am never disappointed.
Deep Secret is similar to other DWJ books in only one way:
that it is like no other book! Each one is unique and original. You
simply cannot compare her books to others by saying "It's like
so-and-so's style," or "It's a such-and-such type of book."
You cannot even easily classify Deep Secret. Is it science
fiction or fantasy? Both? Neither? Does it matter?
Earth's youngest magid (a carefully chosen band of trained ‘wizards'
who guard and guide planets in a multi-dimensional universe) finds
himself with two unexpected tasks: to select and train a new magid;
and to sort out the sudden, if welcome, collapse of a tyrannical
interstellar empire whose instability might have disastrous knock-on
effects.
The interweaving of different settings is done with DWJ's usual
skill, and also as usual, the story rockets along merrily with not a
hiccup or a boring stretch to give you a breather.
This is perhaps the most self-indulgent of DWJ's books. Like her
other fantasy for adults, A Sudden Wild Magic, it is partly
set in our world, here either in Bristol, where Diana lives, or at a
fantasy convention. For anyone who has been to such a convention,
this provides instant laughs, but I am not sure how the references
will work with people who have never been, nor ever wanted to. On
the other hand, if the author wants to have a good time writing in
self-referential stuff, that's fine by me.
Do we also find a prediliction for centaurs? Again like A
Sudden Wild Magic, centaurs have got a significant role to play.
I particularly like the way DWJ can bring to mind mythic
resonances, hint at something fantastical you have come across
before, either from the classic human mythologies or from recent
stories, without in any way being plagiaristic. Her centaurs in Deep
Secret are typical: echoing the learned yet savage warriors of
Greek myths while turning the corner into something completely new.
And I found the Babylon section particularly absorbing. The guardian
at the bridge was reminiscent of Tolkien's guardians of the Dark
Tower in The Lord of the Rings, but also of something else,
something older and deeper, and less easily described. It was the
same with the candle-lit path stretching into mystery and the climb
in the hanging gardens themselves. It is almost as if Jones can tap
into some sort of morphic resonance and let her imagination twang
our own genetic memories of myth.
With all this, why then was I left with a feeling of mild
dissatisfaction? Perhaps I am unfair, and expect impossibly high
standards from my favourite authors. I expect a new DWJ to be not
just good (which Deep Secret is), but BRILLIANT, which
sadly, I do not think it is.
But it is difficult to put my finger on exactly what I found less
than perfect about Deep Secret.
My main problem is that I felt that the significance of Rupert's
neighbour Andrew was not fully foreshadowed. While the man kept
popping up and doing strange things, I didn't get any indication of
why or whether he was important (now this could easily be put down
to denseness in the reader). But I found him to be just a little bit
of a deus ex machina. And for once, I found the main
characters lacking in empathy: the complexity of events and settings
tending to overshadow the personalities.
For me, the adventure in Babylon, genuinely numinous, redeemed all
these minor quibbles. This sounds like I am condemning the rest of
it. I'm not. It is fun, light-hearted in parts, intriguing in
others, and different from any other fantasy around. I do
wholeheartedly recommend Deep Secret.
