N. Scott Momaday, a Kiowa from Lawton, Oklahoma, is a well-known name in mainstream literary circles. He has won many awards, like the Pulitzer Prize for the novel, A House Made of Dawn, the Academy of American Poets Prize, and the Premio Literario Internazionale for “Mondello.” Yet, his book, The Ancient Child, is not a normal pick for a science fiction or fantasy story. Rather, publishers and critics usually reserve a book of this caliber for “modern ethnic fiction.” Like most non-fantasy stories, The Ancient Child takes place on earth and in the modern day. The main character is neither sorcerer nor space pirate: he is a man of mixed Kiowa descent, and he is a painter. This man, Locki, or Set as he is often called, goes on a personal journey of discovery into America’s heartland and Momaday’s birthstate, Oklahoma. Here he finds enchantment, his family roots, and the seed that will one day make him become Set, the bear.
Momaday relies heavily on religions and traditions to provide the backbone of this great novel. Locki Setman, for instance, as a name, comes from Nordic, Egyptian, and Kiowa religions. Locki (also spelled Loki, Locke, etc.) is the god of mischief who has been trapped until the Nordic doomsday, the Ragnorak. Set is the ancient Egyptian god of storms and disorder. He, too, plays a trickster role. Then, too, Set is the Bear in Kiowa. The Bear, in many Native American religions, represents introspection.* The origins of these names highlight Momaday’s characterization of Locki Setman. He is a Kiowa trapped in a white man’s world where he is a trickster figure haunting his white step-father and girlfriend. Set is also an introspective character rediscovering his identity. Questions of who and what he is torment him.
Also, Momaday heavily steeps this story in oral traditions, in particular, the story of the boy who transforms into a bear. The story of the ancient child is written in oral form to maintain the tale’s authenticity. Momaday intersperses the oral narrative of the “ancient child” throughout the text to remind readers of the Bear’s presence. Without giving away too much plot, I will say that while Set’s and the Bear’s story lines parallel each other, the two stories also begin to clash. At the same time, Set’s story absorbs the Kiowa’s distinct oral tradition, which makes his journey uniquely Kiowa.
Where this book deviates from most anthropomorphic stories is in the book’s emphasis. This book is about the transformation of a man into a bear werecreature. What happens after the actual transformation remains unsaid: it is inconsequential to the author. Whatever repercussions may assault Set after he succumbs to the bear will not be discovered in this book. That is a tale Momaday leaves untold.
So what is told? The Ancient Child has a powerful, lyrical voice that raises the standards of anthropomorphics. Readers become part of the dreams and visions of Set and the mysterious Kiowa medicine woman, Grey. Grey lives in a mid-1800’s dream-world where she is Billy the Kid’s outlaw companion. The scenes with Henry McCarty (alias Billy the Kid) are sensually astounding; Momaday brings to life an American West full of harsh realms and heart-rending betrayals.
Meanwhile, Set struggles to recapture a life he never knew. He feels trapped in his relative success because his agents and audiences continue to ask him to sacrifice his soul and his paintings for the sake of financial success. Set’s agent persistently reminds him to paint bigger canvases with brighter colors because that is what is in style at the time. Despite his attempts to be true to himself, Set finds his integrity and self-respect compromised. As Set feels more and more disillusioned, and looks towards a fuller life with his Kiowa family, the bear inside him awakens and begins to possess him.
Something that really distinguishes this book from any other anthropomorphic story is the results of the transformation into a werecreature. The bear frees Set from his corrupted, jaded life. Unlike, for example, the typical Hollywood werewolf who begs to be locked up in prison because she/ he fears the horror of the werewolf that they will become and the atrocities they will commit, Set’s transformation does not imprison him, nor is it seen as a handicap in any way. The transformation’s metaphor is that a lost Kiowa man rediscovers his heritage and, along the journey, he learns about who he is and what it means to be a Kiowa. In this story, the metaphorical and physical transformation completes the writer’s theme of self-discovery. Anthropomorphic literature, then, is the extra spice thrown into Momaday’s literary recipe to make the story both authentic and tastey.
This story deserves four-and-a-half moons rising because it is brilliant. Period. Momaday’s writing not only describes the problems of a Kiowa’s dissociation from his family and ultimately his tribe, but Momaday also takes care to nurture the anthropomorphics and not take any aspect of the traditional lycanthrope story for granted. Readers wanting a story that goes above and beyond physical transformations should read this astounding novel and keep it close to heart. Like so many other American ethnic writers’ books, this book becomes so absorbed into an ethnic genre, that many people forget that The Ancient Child is also an unbelievable tale on the horizon of fantasy literature.
*After considerable research I was unable to come up with a more specific description of the role of the bear in Kiowa culture. If you know, please email me here at Dark Moon Rising.
Leopard Lord by Alanna Morland (Ace Books, March 1999)
This is a story to sink your claws into. Morland’s first novel is an exciting twist of the typical lyncanthropic tale. First of all, Morland’s lycanthrope is an ice leopard, in contrast with the typical werewolf. Second, this story has all the trimmings of a great fantasy story: nameless gods, disgusting monsters, sword-and-sorcery battles, enormous castles, and ominous prophecies. Interestingly, this fantasy is also a cross-genre romance. Readers should not let either genre shy them away from Leopard Lord. Morland finds the appropriate balance between fantasy and romance to create a smooth and entertaining story.
One major theme presented contrasts the beauty of the pure against the ugly face of evil. This is a very traditional, conservative, and almost cliché usage found in fantasy adventures. It can be seen in Leopard Lord through the descriptions of anthromorphs. Varian’s beautiful hide is distinguished from the nasty bogharts. These ugly, smelly, and stupid creatures are described as an unsettling cross between a man and a wild boar. Bogharts, naturally, provide the story with its real monsters. Other stories, especially anthropomorphics, similarly use the good and pretty vs. evil and ugly theme. In another book reviewed this month, Night Creature, the hero’s were-form is sleak and silvery as opposed to the ugly, gnarled hands of the evil werewolves. This ancient theme can be seen even in the writings of Ovid and Homer where handsome men fight horrible monsters. Morland captures this theme without bludgeoning the reader with it. The theme exists, but it does not apply to every character: the captain of the guard, for example, is lame. This makes for a very well thought out story.
One of the great issues of this story is slavery. When the story begins, Leopard’s Gard, like all the other kingdoms, allows slavery. When Prince Varian becomes Lord of Leopard Gard, his first action is to free his personal slaves and the slaves of his father. This action bears special significance to Varian’s best friend and body-slave, Corven. However, slavery is metaphorical for the people of Leopard’s Gard as well as a tangible concept for the slaves. Everybody in the book seems to acquire perfect freedom except for Varian who is bound to the dark god and to his cursed were-form. It is in his clash with the dark god that Varian finds his voice and his freedom.
Morland’s novel takes only four stars because, while it uses anthropomorphics in a new way, it does not examine anthromorphics thematically as much as I would like it to. The fact that Lord Varian is a were-ice leopard remains a cold fact and an obstacle for the characters, but Morland alienates the reader from the were-creature. The ice leopard appears rarely and, except of course for the climax, the leopard’s actions remain controlled and unimaginative. The leopard stalks the night, searching for an animal to eat or character to scare, but it does little that is truly frightening or interesting. Also, Morland only offers the reader glimpses of Varian’s mind and thoughts as a leopard. Instead of concentrating on the trials of the ice leopard, however, the author concentrates on the love story aspect of Leopard Lord. This is a typical small imperfection that keeps Leopard Lord from a five star rating, and it is a common difficulty encountered in a novel that mixes two or more genres. So many pages are required to keep the story flowing in both genres that characterization and theme can sift to the bottom of the page.
However, that is not to say that Morland’s novel fails -- far from it. Aside from a few holes and the almost complete disappearance of several characters like Mally and Corven, this book is a wonderful first outing for newcomer Alanna Morland. She entertains with a very fresh and uncanny crossing of the fantasy and romance stories, and I eagerly await a return to Leopard’s Keep for more irresistible adventures.
The Werewolf Chronicles: Night Creature by Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett (Scholastic Inc., 1996)
Three worlds collide in the first of three adventures written by Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett. Philbrick and Harnett bring to life an interesting chapter in werewolf stories: that of the wild child raised by wolves. Of course, the best known stories about humans raised by animals are probably Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli and Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan. Amongst such celebrated peers, Night Creature stands out because this story’s main character actually becomes a wolf.
Or at least a wolf-life monster.
Gruff is the boy’s wolf-given name. He lives in a wolfpack with his mother, Wolfmother, and relatives with names like SnapJaw and Leaper. Gruff’s position in the pack is one of babysitter while the other adult wolves hunt. The other wolves, Gruff tells the reader (since the point of view remains in the first person), do not consider Gruff a good hunter. In fact, Gruff admits that compared to his adopted relatives he is slow, loud, and clumsy. Yet his wolfpack loves him for who he is, and he has loved them since he can remember-Gruff knows his parents abandoned him in the swamps of Fox Hollow, but he does not know why. He only knows his life with the wolves, which is happy, if somewhat troubled.
The adventures begin when one night Gruff becomes what he calls a night creature, a werewolf. His wolf family fears him, so Gruff runs away, only to encounter a pack of evil werewolves. Later in the plot Gruff is reunited with humans, and the interaction between these three different worlds (the human, wolf, and hybrid werewolf worlds) creates the central tension for the story’s conflict.
While Philbrick and Harnett bring good action and suspense to the page, they also bring too many questionables and holes. These problems, which probably should have been picked up by an editor, are what trip up this interesting, if somewhat cliché, story. One problem with this book is the character’s name. Why is he named Gruff, while the other wolves have descriptive names? The narrator admits his name is a vocalization, meant to sound like something a wolf would bark. But if that is how Gruff got his name, then why are the other names dissimilar? Perhaps Snapjaw is Yelp in the wolf dialect and Wolfmother is Grr. Or, perhaps Gruff has an English translation the narrator should bring to the book. Whatever the reason, without explanation this naming conflict makes no sense.
More obviously, the authors confuse the reader while developing the story’s setting. The physical setting is handsomely crafted by the authors; Fox Hollow swamp is treated almost like a character whom Gruff reacts to as a natural environment while at the same time seeking motherly comfort from. However, until the end chapters, the “when” of the novel remains circumspect. Early into the story Gruff discovers children playing with bows and arrows and talking about Indians. The men have loud boomsticks and use dogs to track down creatures in the swamp. Also, the authors refer to the new town as a new human establishment, all of which seems very colonial or at least pre-civil war era. Yet, three fourths of the way through the book Gruff enters a wooden house where a child is listening to Aerosmith, a modern band. At this point in the story I had to set the book down and rethink it, which seriously detracts from the story’s movement. Setting is one of the three elements of a story that needs to be established immediately, not towed around until the end.
While the anthropomorphism of this story is very interesting, this book is a let-down. It is an example of how not to treat magic realism. On a personal level, I would have preferred to see the human element removed entirely from the story. How this boy deals with the swamp, the wolves, and the night creatures is enough to provide the reader with good fiction while expanding the fantasy and horror genres. Unlike classic werewolf stories with cliché “curse of the werewolf” story-lines, Night Creature began with a tale of survival and self-learning. It would have been intriguing to see Gruff learn more about who and what he is (a werewolf) by centralizing the conflict between the wolves and the werewolves. Both wolf and werewolf have unique lives in the swamp, and both societies have different structures. Gruff could learn much from trying to bridge or distinguish the societies, and never would a human need to be introduced to the story. At the same time, the authors would have the chance to challenge belief systems by showing how Gruff thrives in a very inhuman world. The fact that neither author attempts to challenge our beliefs is testament to this story’s failings.
Because this book has so many enigmas of name and setting, I feel the two-and-one-quarter moon sinking is appropriate. Night Creatures is an opaque story at best, a story that fails to provoke readers. With all the problems this book reveals, it is clear why the third book in the trilogy is out of print.