Novarian series
Encyclopedia
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
stories by L. Sprague de Camp
L. Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...
, published between 1968 and 1989. The series contains some of de Camp's most innovative works of fantasy, featuring explorations of various political systems, an inversion of the "rags to royalty" pattern characteristic of much heroic fantasy, a satiric look at the foibles of humanity through the eyes of a demon, and a consistently wry and ironic take on conventions of the genre that plays out by taking them to their logical (or illogical) conclusions. Another singular feature of the series is its frequent use of folk tales
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
integrated into the plot to painlessly convey something of the background and history of the invented world. This device obviates the need for lengthy appendices, as in The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
.
The world
The world Novaria is part of is a parallel worldParallel universe (fiction)
A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...
to Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, a plane of existence related to ours in that ours constitutes its afterlife
Afterlife
The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...
. This unique conceit makes it a sort of reverse-Bangsian fantasy
Bangsian fantasy
Bangsian fantasy is a fantasy genre which concerns the use of famous literary or historical individuals and their interactions in the afterlife. It is named for John Kendrick Bangs who often wrote it.-Definition:According to E. F...
, or rather makes our world its Bangsian fantasy. Mankind shares this world with other intelligent beings, like the serpent people of Beraoti, the beast-men of Komilakh, and the silvans of the mountain forests. The fauna is largely that of Earth's Ice Age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
, while the vegetation is similar to that of present-day Earth.
In Novaria's world, the supernatural element is dominant. Magic works, though in a strictly logical fashion that often leaves its practitioners dissatisfied. Gods are real and strongly influence mortal affairs, communicating with their worshipers through dreams. Demons can, and often are, summoned from other planes of existence, which Novarians number in relation to their own (which to them is the Prime Plane).
The western continents
The two western continents where most of the series' events take place span the world's climatic zones from the arctic to the tropics. They are bounded by the Western Ocean to the west and the Eastern Ocean to the east.The northernmost of these continents is largely desolate, consisting primarily of the steppe country of Shven, inhabited by nomads patterned after the Mongols
Mongols
Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...
, with the pirate
Piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...
isles of Algarth off its western coast and the land of Hroth to the north. It is joined to the southern continent at the southwest end by the broad isthmus of Novaria, but otherwise separated from it by the Mediterranean-like inland seas known as the Inner Sea and the Sea of Sikhon.
The more civilized southern continent contains, from west to east, the empire of Penembei, the desert of Fedirun, home to Beduin-like nomads, the tropical realm of Mulvan, and the jungles of Komilakh, inhabited by beast men; other lands, notably Beraoti, lie further south of these. The principal powers are Penembei and Mulvan. Penembei is modeled on Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
ian Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
, Ptolemaic
Ptolemaic dynasty
The Ptolemaic dynasty, was a Macedonian Greek royal family which ruled the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt during the Hellenistic period. Their rule lasted for 275 years, from 305 BC to 30 BC...
Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, and the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
; authority there is shared between a King and a High Priestess, with considerable influence also exercised by two mutually-antagonistic sporting-political factions in the capital of Iraz, similar to those that tore Byzantium
Byzantium
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
apart in the Nika riots
Nika riots
The Nika riots , or Nika revolt, took place over the course of a week in Constantinople in AD 532. It was the most violent riot that Constantinople had ever seen to that point, with nearly half the city being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed.-Background:The ancient Roman...
. Mulvan is a caste-bound empire combining features of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and Persia. In Novaria there are small bands of wandering Mulvanians, who act as entertainers and fortune-tellers and who are plainly modeled on Gypsies.
More distant lands
East of the western continents across the Eastern Ocean are the archipelagos known as the Peppercorns, Salimor, and Gwoling. The Salimor islands comprise a monarchy mingling elements of JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. Beyond the islands is an eastern continent that contains the great empire of Kuromon, based on China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, and another nomad-inhabited steppe belt
Steppe belt
A steppe belt is a contiguous phytogeographic region of predominantly grassland , which has common characteristics in soil, climate, vegetation and fauna.A forest-steppe belt is a region of forest steppe....
. West of the western continents across the Western Ocean is the country of the cannibal Paaluan sea raiders, whose appearance resmbles that of Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...
; as the Paaluans are also stated (in The Honorable Barbarian
The Honorable Barbarian
The Honorable Barbarian is a fantasy novel written by L. Sprague de Camp, the fifth and final book of his Novarian series. It is a sequel both to the "Reluctant King" trilogy and to the Novarian sequence's only short story, "The Emperor's Fan"...
) to be a threat in the Eastern Ocean, there is evidently a navigable sea passage around either the main Novarian continent or the eastern continent, or both.
Novaria
Novaria itself, as noted above, is a broad isthmus joining the two continental masses to the north and the south. (De Camp oddly yet consistently refers to it as a peninsula, though it is plainly an isthmus in both his maps and descriptions.) Novaria is separated from the northern continent by the high Ellorna Mountains and from the southern by the great Logram Mountains. On its other sides it drains into the Western Ocean and the Inner Sea, which communicates with the Eastern Ocean via the smaller Sea of Sikhon.Culturally Novaria bears resemblances to the eras of both Classical Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and late Medieval Europe
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
(Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in particular), especially in conveying the vivid life of a cluster of city states sharing a common language and culture, though widely different in political regime and often at war with each other.
The twelve city-states Novaria is split into are ruled under a wide variety of competing governmental systems, some of them unique. Several of these are visited and their contemporary situations shown during the progress of the stories; the general history of the region is recounted from a Kortolian perspective by Jorian, the series's main protagonist, in a number of folktales he relates in the course of his adventures. The Twelve Cities and their governments (as far as these were revealed) are as follows:
- Aussar - a despotate
- Boaktis - a dictatorship
- Govannion - ruled by a "hereditary usurper"
- Ir - a plutocracy ruled by a syndicate of the wealthy
- Kortoli - a hereditary monarchy with no nobles but the royal family
- Metouro - ruled by a secret society, originally formed to overthrow a tyrant
- Othomae - a grand duchy with civil and military power split by the eldest legitimate and illegitimate sons of the previous ruler
- Solymbria - an archonate, with the Archon selected by random drawing
- Tarxia - a theocracy dedicated to a toad god deemed a minor deity in the rest of Novaria
- Vindium - a republic of the classical variety
- Xylar - a monarchy with kings chosen by lot and beheaded every five years
- Zolon - an island thalassocracyThalassocracyThe term thalassocracy refers to a state with primarily maritime realms—an empire at sea, such as Athens or the Phoenician network of merchant cities...
ruled by a High Admiral.
The stories
The series incidentally explores various pros and cons of different modes of governance as the action moves through Novaria and various other countries. Most of the stories have satirical themes – e.g., of academic conferences (the magicians' conclave, which ends The Goblin Tower); of Monotheistic religion (the toad-god Grogolor, a minor deity in other places but the supreme god of the universe in theocratic Tarxia); of modern poetry (Jorian's tale of a king in his native Kortoli refusing to grant an award to a poem composed of randomly chosen words).The core of the Novarian series is the "Reluctant King" trilogy, consisting of The Goblin Tower
The Goblin Tower
The Goblin Tower is a fantasy novel by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, the first book of both his Novarian series and the "Reluctant King" trilogy featuring King Jorian of Xylar. It was first published as a paperback by Pyramid Books in 1968 and later reprinted by Del Rey Books. The first...
(1968), The Clocks of Iraz
The Clocks of Iraz
The Clocks of Iraz is a fantasy novel by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, the second book of both his Novarian series and the "Reluctant King" trilogy featuring King Jorian of Xylar. It was first published as a paperback by Pyramid Books in 1971 and later reprinted by Del Rey Books...
(1971) and The Unbeheaded King
The Unbeheaded King
The Unbeheaded King is a fantasy novel by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, the fourth book of his Novarian series and the third in the "Reluctant King" trilogy featuring King Jorian of Xylar. It was first published as a hardcover by Ballantine Books in 1983 and later reprinted in paperback by...
(1983), all collected as The Reluctant King
The Reluctant King
The Reluctant King is the overall title of a trilogy of fantasy novels written by L. Sprague de Camp as part of his Novarian series, as well as the 1983 omnibus collection gathering the books together into one volume...
(1985). The trilogy is the story of Jorian, a native of Kortoli chosen by a gruesome lottery to be king of Xylar (he caught the head of the previous king as it was thrown into a crowd). As the date for his own beheading approaches, he plots to escape Xylar and its fatal crown, following which his plan is to recover his true love and settle down in obscurity into his ideal life as a simple craftsman. Enroute to this goal he travels through much of the known world, rescues a consignment of maidens destined for the executioner's block, romances a serpent princess and steals a chest of ancient spells, matches wits with gods, escapes being sacrificed by beast men and being sold by nomads, abets a revolution in a priest-ruled city, becomes enmeshed in the sorcerous politics of a magicians' guild, repairs the clocks in a famous lighthouse tower, saves a besieged city from four enemy hosts at once, braves a perilous flight in a demon-powered bathtub, negotiates with an unreliable magician, spirits a woman from the city that has sworn to kill him, and exorcises the ghost of a cursed baron. Early on there is also a short excursion into our world, in which Jorian is frightened by a passing giant truck, has a mutually uncomprehending encounter with a police officer in a patrol car, and is very glad to get back to the familiar dangers of his own world.
Two other tales are set earlier in Novaria's history; "The Emperor's Fan
The Emperor's Fan
"The Emperor's Fan" is a fantasy story written by L. Sprague de Camp, the fourth of his Novarian series. It was first published in Astounding: The John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, edited by Harry Harrison, in 1973...
," which illustrates the perils of a magical artifact, and The Fallible Fiend
The Fallible Fiend
The Fallible Fiend is a fantasy novel written by L. Sprague de Camp, the third book of his Novarian series. It was first published as a two-part serial in the magazine Fantastic for December 1972 and February 1973, and subsequently expanded and revised for book publication. In its original form it...
, a satire told the point of view of the demon Zdim, who is condemned to service in the perplexing world of humans. A final story, The Honorable Barbarian
The Honorable Barbarian
The Honorable Barbarian is a fantasy novel written by L. Sprague de Camp, the fifth and final book of his Novarian series. It is a sequel both to the "Reluctant King" trilogy and to the Novarian sequence's only short story, "The Emperor's Fan"...
, is a sequel to the Jorian sequence, relating the adventures of his younger brother Kerin in the far east.
According to de Camp's friend and fellow writer Darrell Schweitzer
Darrell Schweitzer
Darrell Charles Schweitzer is an American writer, editor, and essayist in the field of speculative fiction. Much of his focus has been on dark fantasy and horror, although he does also work in science fiction and fantasy...
, De Camp wrote one additional Novarian novel, which has "a quasi-Polynesian setting." It was reportedly de Camp's last novel, represented a noticeable falling-off in quality from his better work, and was considered unpublishable. Its working title was The Sedulous Sprite. It could well be a satirical tale with a non-human protagonist like The Fallible Fiend
The Fallible Fiend
The Fallible Fiend is a fantasy novel written by L. Sprague de Camp, the third book of his Novarian series. It was first published as a two-part serial in the magazine Fantastic for December 1972 and February 1973, and subsequently expanded and revised for book publication. In its original form it...
, as its title suggests it might focus on Belinka, a duty-obsessed fairy and major supporting character from The Honorable Barbarian
The Honorable Barbarian
The Honorable Barbarian is a fantasy novel written by L. Sprague de Camp, the fifth and final book of his Novarian series. It is a sequel both to the "Reluctant King" trilogy and to the Novarian sequence's only short story, "The Emperor's Fan"...
.
The stories
- The Goblin TowerThe Goblin TowerThe Goblin Tower is a fantasy novel by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, the first book of both his Novarian series and the "Reluctant King" trilogy featuring King Jorian of Xylar. It was first published as a paperback by Pyramid Books in 1968 and later reprinted by Del Rey Books. The first...
(1968), ISBN 0-345-32812-4 - The Clocks of IrazThe Clocks of IrazThe Clocks of Iraz is a fantasy novel by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, the second book of both his Novarian series and the "Reluctant King" trilogy featuring King Jorian of Xylar. It was first published as a paperback by Pyramid Books in 1971 and later reprinted by Del Rey Books...
(1971) - "The Emperor's FanThe Emperor's Fan"The Emperor's Fan" is a fantasy story written by L. Sprague de Camp, the fourth of his Novarian series. It was first published in Astounding: The John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, edited by Harry Harrison, in 1973...
" (1973) - The Fallible FiendThe Fallible FiendThe Fallible Fiend is a fantasy novel written by L. Sprague de Camp, the third book of his Novarian series. It was first published as a two-part serial in the magazine Fantastic for December 1972 and February 1973, and subsequently expanded and revised for book publication. In its original form it...
(1973) - The Unbeheaded KingThe Unbeheaded KingThe Unbeheaded King is a fantasy novel by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, the fourth book of his Novarian series and the third in the "Reluctant King" trilogy featuring King Jorian of Xylar. It was first published as a hardcover by Ballantine Books in 1983 and later reprinted in paperback by...
(1983), ISBN 0-345-30773-9 - The Honorable BarbarianThe Honorable BarbarianThe Honorable Barbarian is a fantasy novel written by L. Sprague de Camp, the fifth and final book of his Novarian series. It is a sequel both to the "Reluctant King" trilogy and to the Novarian sequence's only short story, "The Emperor's Fan"...
(1989), ISBN 0-345-36091-5 - The Sedulous Sprite (unpublished)
Collected editions
- The Reluctant KingThe Reluctant KingThe Reluctant King is the overall title of a trilogy of fantasy novels written by L. Sprague de Camp as part of his Novarian series, as well as the 1983 omnibus collection gathering the books together into one volume...
(1985) (includes The Goblin Tower, The Clocks of Iraz and The Unbeheaded King)