Tales of Nevèrÿon by Samuel R. Delany

Of course, it was only a matter of [a small amount of] time until I returned to the oeuvre of Samuel R. Delany, and so, yes, here we are.

This post kicks off a planned Winter reading of his four volume fantasy slash – Delany’s preferred term – “sword-and-sorcery” series, Return to Nevèrÿon (published between 1979 and 1987).

The first volume (and the third and the fourth) contain[s] several short(ish) works, all of which are described as “tales”, while the second volume holds a singular, 550 page “tale”/novel.

Volume 1, this one, claims to contain five short stories (running from ~30 pages to ~100), plus a fictionalised appendix and introduction (added following the publication of the whole series) about a potential historical source text for Delany’s series. What there is here, though, feels like something that, as it builds, diverts from any sense of a complete text and feels far more part of a singular work rather than five examples of singular works.

Does that make sense? Maybe not.

What I mean is that the five “tales” build together into a whole and each is more successful when reflecting on it as part of a set than when reflecting on it as a singular work. Driftglass, my friends, this ain’t…

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1. The Tale of Grogik

The first tale is about a young man who is captured into slavery in his teens and then released from slavery when a travelling horny noblewoman decides she wants to have dirty sex with a filthy mine slave while in the region and the first one she is brought is too filthy.

The tale runs through their relationship, the ex-slave’s time at court and single interaction with the fantasy land’s “Child-Empress” (who is definitely not a child by the text’s end (decades pass) and doesn’t seem to be at this initial moment either), before he is given a military career and formal confirmation of his unenslaved status. The tale ends.

2. The Tale of Old Venn

Next we are on an island off the coast of the mainland, and a young woman (Norema) is being educated by the wise woman of the village, who tells tales of the time she spent living in a matriarchal society in the mountains…

This one is all about mythologies within mythologies and tales with tales, recounting the myths that were recounted to the teacher (the titular Old Venn) when younger… this one is very Le Guin-esque. I warmed to the volume significantly as I went through this.

3. The Tale of Small Sarg

The third one is about a young slave (Sarg) who used to be a prince, who is bought by the now free and rich former slave from the first tale (Grogik) and they fuck.

It’s the shortest piece in the book (not really any longer than the fictionalised Appendix), but delves into the themes of eroticism and power and class that rise around the narrative elsewhere. Yes please.

4. The Tale of Potters and Dragons

The fourth tale introduces more new characters, including Raven, a woman from another (different) matriarchal society from even further outside of the imperial core than Norema, who tells the creation myth of her people (women were created in god’s image and then, post a “The Fall” type event, one of them is reduced to the state of ‘man ([apostrophe]man), with his breastfeeding and gestating abilities taken away and thus turning him into a pointless, useless, being), and a business-loving middle-aged merchant who has hired the young woman from the second tale (Norema) to go and do some business for her.

This tale is a huge amount of fun – playful, sinister, exciting – and builds towards two new friends journeying in search of the Child-Empress’ biggest rival only to find out that he may simply not exist…

5. The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers

And then the fifth tale (I may as well do them all) returns us to the guys from the third tale who now, both a few years older, spend their time taking it in turn to pose as escaped slaves in order to break into slaveholding castles, after which the two of them (often after a little torture) break out, release all the slaves held on the premises and kill anyone in their way.

The castle during which these escapades are dramatised is owned by another former lover of the horny noblewoman from the first tale, who may have known who it was breaking out slaves. This thread, though, is left ambiguously, and the tale ends with the two slave-freeing lovers discussing kink with some fellow travellers they meet on the road, who are Raven and Norema.

End, bar twenty pages about the literary history of a fictional ancient document.

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I enjoyed Tales of Nevèrÿon a lot, to be honest, evidenced by the way my pace of reading increased as I got deeper into the text…

As characters and societal structures are pulled together in the later tales, as causal contextual details become plot points, as political machinations shift from background to foreground and as the ideas that Delany is interested in playing with here move out of in-text conversational debates and begin to form narrative, I found it an increasingly satisfying read.

This is full of ideas, yes, and full of articulate exploration of them, yes, and though the book may be front loaded with discussion of the themes (rather than exploration of them), the text does move away from feeling like allegory into something more cathartically satisfying.

Delany is exploring sexuality and class, as well as sex and gender and kink and politics and myth making, and he’s also looking at historicisation, about the creation of shared truths, about the exploitation of ignorance, and also at the ways in which both money and literacy centralise power, even as they (falsely) claim to offer an escape from it…

By the end, all of the five tales have coalesced into a single narrative, though one that ultimately doesn’t offer any kind of conclusion or ending. And that’s fine – this is an opening, world-building, salvo, and I’m very excited to be spending another 1500 pages or so in Nevèrÿon over the coming weeks (I brought all four with me to Canada).

Thank you, Chip.

See you again soon!