by J. Steven York

Ace Books, 2005

Reviewed by Ryan Harvey

The Story

Anok Wati has positioned himself as an acolyte in the Cult of Set so he can plan his revenge for the death of his father and serve his role as the servant of the Lost God of Stygia, Parath, in the war against the god Set. Anok remains wary of the Mark of Set on his body that grants him great power, since he knows the damage it can cause when he gives in to its power. Ramsa Aál, the Priest of the Acolytes, sends Anok to the wild city of Kheshatta for his further training. Anok takes his Kushite friend Teferi on the caravan trip to the city, and also encounters the beautiful Cimmerian warrior woman Fallon along the way. When they arrive in Kheshatta, Anok seeks out the scholar Sabé to help him learn to control his magic in his fight against the cult. Anok begins to learn of the importance of the Scale of Set that he keeps around his neck and the great game of the gods in which he has found himself. The young sorcerer soon travels down a deadly path that will bring him face-to-face with the most powerful magic-wielder in Stygia: Thoth-Amon, Lord of the Black Ring.

Comments

As you probably gleaned from the above teaser description, Thoth-Amon appears in this novel. And he’s exactly the wicked, conceited, and ruthless nasty you hope him to be. That alone should recommend the second volume in the “Anok, Heretic of Stygia” trilogy to fans of Robert E. Howard.

Heretic of Set has many more pleasures: magical duels, ancient booby-trapped tombs, bandit attacks, weird slimy monsters, and heapings of black sorcery. Author J. Steven York keeps the plot varied from the first volume, Scion of the Serpent, so it feels that the narrative moves forward instead of padding out the middle in order to artificially expand the story into a trilogy (a flaw of many modern fantasy trilogies). The first novel takes place almost entirely in the Stygian city of Khemi, but here Anok’s saga spreads out to the more dangerous and unpredictable city of Kheshatta.

York starts the story in a good place: the small cast has thinned down from the previous novel, but enough ideas and unfinished plot-strands linger to get events moving immediately. By its very nature as a second chapter the novel can start quicker, so that even though York doesn’t pile on action and suspense at the beginning, the plots moves along briskly. At this point readers have a greater investment in Anok’s story. He started out as a boy seeking revenge, but at this time his life he has grown far more complicated because of the corrupting power of the Mark of Set that threatens to consume him. York crafts a “temptation from the dark side” struggle within Anok that he plays out throughout the book without losing sight of it despite many distractions. Even if the action falters in places—a few too many one-on-one duels appear in an unbroken procession—Anok’s character and internal battles keep the plot moving ahead.

As in Scion of the Serpent, the action and suspense work best when they keep away from swashbuckling fighting, with which York seems a bit uneasy as a writer. A humdrum “swords-against-bandits” fight stays unmemorable until the intrusion of dark magic, and York wisely chooses to keep with the dark magic after that. One of the better “duel” scenes involves a surreal and cerebral mental battlefield that works both as a piece of fantasy action and as a character moment. But the heart of the novel, and the scene that most Howard fans will anticipate with drooling sword-and-sorcery glee, is Anok’s encounter with Thoth-Amon. The famous Stygia wizard’s appearance marks the first time an actual character from one of Howard’s Conan stories has stepped physically onto the stage of the “Hyborian Adventures,” and York does an admirable job with the tough task of handling one of the legendary baddies of the genre. Although the Thoth-Amon sequence doesn’t arrive at the climax of Heretic of Set, it might as well, for it’s what readers anticipate most and the section they will remember best afterwards.

Thematically, the novel has a great deal to say on the subject of how magic operates in the Hyborian Age, and Robert E. Howard would likely approve of how York handles the topic. Unlike heroic and epic fantasy, where magic has a ying and yang aspect and serves both heroes and villains in different capacities, Howard’s sword-and-sorcery approach places a bleak and dangerous accent on the magical arts. Conan has a superstitious mistrust of sorcerers, and for good reason: magic almost always serves dark purposes, and even supposedly “good” magic-wielders stand at a remove from other humans and can cause great harm. York keeps to this idea of the contamination of magic, as Anok’s mentor Sabé elucidates when he tells his pupil that he “must know by now that sorcery corrupts the user, brings him madness, and often escapes the wielder’s control. The trick is to use magic without doing more harm to yourself than your enemies.” The use of magic in Heretic of Set comes down to a dangerous choice: corruption or madness. The priests of Set have chosen corruption and rejoice in it. Will Anok seize the power and its poison, or will he blast his mind fighting against it? The tension over this question boils beneath the conflicts of the last half of the novel.

Unfortunately, for all its strengths, a taint of corruption seeps through in places of Heretic of Set, and it takes the shape of the female lead. Fallon, the Cimmerian warrior-woman introduced in the last book and the source for some of its steamier scenes, creates some difficulties. In Scion of the Serpent Fallon was a fringe character who pushed a few plot points and offered some sexual titillation. Now she steps up as a major character and fills the female protagonist niche…but she still acts like a fringe character and gets little important to do other than offer another sword to pair with Teferi’s in the fight scenes. Her erotic role has also vanished; unlike its predecessor, Heretic of Set is a much more chaste novel. Hopefully Fallon will have a crucial role to play in the last installment of the trilogy, because she desperately needs one.

One more corruption stains this fine novel: sinister and foul typos! Thoth-Amon must have touched the typesetters and proofreaders at Ace Books with temporary madness, for the errors crawl across the page like Stygian scarabs! Ah, the soul-freezing horror of it! Father Set, save me! Whoa…got carried away there. The typos are annoying, however.

But anyway…bring on Venom of Luxur, I say!