King of Morning, Queen of Day
Ian McDonald
389 pages
published in 1991

Ian McDonald has not let me down yet with his novels and this is no exception. Unlike the other three novels of his I've read (Sacrifice of Fools, Evolution's Shore and River of Gods) this is fantasy, not science fiction, proving he is capable of doing both. King of Morning, Queen of Day is also an early work and not as polished as the other three are, merely good instead of great, but still worthwhile reading as well as very pleasurable to read. Which is a considerable achievement, siyou.nce the first third of the novel is epistolary, a difficult form to master. A difficult form to master because while writing letters and other correspondence is easy, writing them in a way which makes them interesting for the reader without cheating is much harder.

That said, McDonald does cheat here somewhat, but not in the way I meant. King of Morning, Queen of Day is a fantasy novel, set in Ireland, featuring three generations of women and their fight against what you may call magical evil forces. That's what the backcover blurb says at least, but I've long since learned to distrust them. Now the first part of the book is set in County Sligo in 1913 and features amateur astronomer Edward Garret Desmond and his daughter Emily, who is prone to flight of fancies concerning the occult and the old religion and all that. When the former observes Bell's Comet and notices it sends out regular pulses of light and coming to the conclusion it has to be artificial and hence an alien spacecraft, I thought this may be a novel of first contact, with the aliens standing in for the Faerie Emily so desperately wanted to meet. This turned out not to be the case however: the backcover blurb was right.

A bit of a disappointment, but soon overcome by the story that McDonald did write, which isn't the science fiction masquarading as fantasy that I thought it was, but pure fantasy. The central concept of the book is the idea that the collective human (sub)consciousness, as expressed through myths, can actually make these myths into reality, that there is a sort of mythical geography, the socalled mythlines, running through the world. Ireland is of course lousy with them, to no great surprise. In the right circumstances some people can make contact with these myth lines and recreate reality. Emily, with her longings for the romantic lost Celtic world of Irish myths, is one of them and in the climax of her story she warps reality to such an extent that her descendents are still fighting it, in the second and thrid part of the story.

Was the first part set just before World War I, the second part is set in 1934 and confronts' Emily's daughter with the results of Emily's actions, while the final part is set in the present day around 1991, which is when things come to a head when Enye, the great-granddaughter of Emily has to deal with the creations Emily let loose on Ireland some seventy years before... This last part is rather cyberpunky, with Enye using her pc and katana to exorcise the demons Emily had called up.

King of Morning, Queen of Day is not, to be honest, a very original fantasy; it treats the same territory Robert Holdstock had made his speciality in the eighties. Nor did I find the plot itself to be that interesting. What rescues the novel from being yet another run of the mill Oirish Celtic fantasy is two things: McDonald's strong sense of place and his writing, which is lush and captivating. This may not be the best McDonald novel I've read, but it is certainly not a bad novel, unless you are allergic to any Celtic fantasy...

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Ian McDonald, fantasy, book review