17 June, 2002
The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985, 183 pp (MMPB))
The Search of Mavin Manyshaped (1985, 168 pp (MMPB))
Sheri S. Tepper
The adventures of shapeshifter Mavin Manyshaped form the second of three connected trilogies set in the world of the True Game.
Song is the first book in the Mavin series. The basic plot is pretty standard: a young person flees from a horrible home life, has adventures, falls in love, and becomes acquainted with her own talents and abilities. The details of the story are what make it interesting, though. The home from which Mavin runs away is exceedingly vile, but also kind of cool, as seen from this scene, where a visiting shapeshifter shows off his skills:
...they heard a drumming noise and looked out through the p'natti to see a vast brown ball, leather hard, with arms at either edge, cedgeling itself to make a thunder roar. They set up a hail which Mavin heard, hid as she was under the edge of the keep roof in a gutter, and the drum ceased pounding upon itself to make a trial run at the p'natti. It assaulted the launching ramps, rolling upward at increasing speed, propelling itself by hand pushes along its circumference, to take projectile form as it left the ramp, then a winged form which snagged the top of a slything pillar with a hooked talon only to change again into a fluid serpent which slythed down to pillar before launching upward once more in a flurry of bright veils which floated upon the sky, the veils forming a brilliant parachute against the blue. Even Mavin gasped, and the granders made drum chests for themselves, beating with their arms, an answering thunder of applause. So the falling parachute, making itself into a neat bundle as it dropped, became a shifter man on the ground between them, the parachute veils gathering in and disappearing into general hard shape.Mavin is the only female child in a clan of shapeshifters. The clan has seen better days, there are only two women of childbearing age left-- Mavin and her elder sister. The sister is habitually abused by the men of the clan, and Mavin knows that the same is in store for her, as soon as it's known that she's manifested the Shifting ability (and is thus "of age" and fair game). But, she is a plucky lass, and is determined to escape. She persuades her sister to take off, and then arranges for her own departure, taking her little brother Mertyn along with her. Unfortunately, young Mertyn comes down with a plague, and Mavin must go on a quest to find a cure.
In a twist that defies the usual course of this sort of plot, Mavin meets the love of her life, Himaggery the Wizard, but she does not go off with him at the end of the book. She is too fond of her newfound freedom and independence, and she doesn't want to be tied down by love. She promises to meet him in the city of Pfarb Durin in twenty years, if they do not see each other before them, and they go their separate ways.
The second book in this series is The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped, and it tells how Mavin seeks out and finds her lost sister. Unfortunately, I do not own a copy, so I proceeded directly to the third book, The Search of Mavin Manyshaped. It takes place twenty years after Song, and it begins with Mavin coming to Pfarb Durim to meet Himaggery, for indeed she hasn't seen him since she made that promise. She still has feelings for him though, so she's fairly devasted when he's not at the place they'd chosen for a rendezvous, and he doesn't show up. Finally, Mavin receives a message from a mutual friend, relaying a letter Himaggery wrote eight years earlier, before he left on a quest to uncover something mysterious and Wizardly. It's known that he's not dead, because this is a world of magic, and people can tell that sort of thing.
Mavin may be utterly commitment-phobic, but she always goes the distance to help her loved ones when they're in trouble. So, she sets out to find out what happenned to Himaggery, and rescue him if she can. The adventure in this one is not as interesting to me as those of the previous two books, but that is only because the central mystery of Search is explored in much greater detail in the Jinian trilogy, which was published after this one, but which I have read many, many times. So, I knew more about what was going on than any of the characters do at any point in this book. (That being said, the Lake of Faces subplot is wonderfully creepy, and is the equal of any of the other books in the series.)
The interesting aspect of this book is Mavin's character, and her conflicted feelings about Himaggery. Since this is an adventure novel, not a romance novel, it's okay that the romance isn't "good." For the most part, it follows Kate's rules (with a notable exception), so perhaps I shouldn't say that the romance isn't good, it's simply unsuccessful. There's no doubt that they love each other, but they're both too self-centered to make the sort of compromises which are necessary to build a good relationship. In the end, Himaggery displays some unbelievable boneheadedness of the "I'm so involved with my own concerns that I don't even notice yours" variety, and Mavin reacts childishly by leaving him again, without even explaining why. Worse, she never tells him that she's pregnant with his child, simply because she's peeved at him. But, good flaws are what makes a character interesting, and Mavin's overwhelming drive for independence is such a flaw.