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CanVention 22 and the Aurora Awards
If It's Tuesday,
this must be TOR
Feature Interview:
Ken Macleod
Feature Review:
Cosmonaut Keep by Ken Macleod
BBook Reviews:
The Alchemists Door
by Lisa Goldstein
Alternate Generals
II
ed by Harry Turtledove
Argonaut
by Stanley Schmidt
Fire
Logic by Laurie J. Marks
The
Iron Grail by John Woodstock
The Sacred Pool by L. Warren Douglas
The Sky So Big And Black by John Barnes
Spaceland by Rudy Rucker
Straw Men by Michael
Marshall Smith
Sisters of the Raven by Barbara Hambly
To Trade The Stars
by Julie
E. Czerneda
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Ellen Datlow and
Terri Windling
Graphic Novel:
Murder Mysteries. Original short
story and radio play by Neil Gaiman. Graphic story script and art by P.
Craig Russell
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Restoration
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Simone
|
 Alchemist's
Door, The by Lisa Goldstein
Forge Hardcover: ISBN 0765301504
August 2002
Review by Victoria McManus
356 pages List price $23.95
Purchase this book at
Amazon.com
Lisa Goldstein is perhaps best known for her 1982 novel The Red
Magician, for which she won the American Book Award. In The
Alchemist's Door, Goldstein once again essays a tale structured around
the mythology of Eastern European Jews, this time in 16th century Prague.
Historical fact provides a skeleton which she dresses in layer after layer
of fantastical garb. She has English alchemist John Dee team up,
like a crossover superhero comic, with Rabbi Judah Loew. Their goal
is to protect Prague from demons and the Jewish Quarter from Mad Emperor
Rudolf and, ultimately, to save the world. Their method
involves alchemical research and the creation of a golem, an intelligent
manlike creature constructed from mud and given life through words of
power.
In deceptively simple prose, Goldstein tells the parallel stories of a
Christian and a Jew. Her point is strengthened by the two men's
similarities more than their surface differences of language and religion.
Both are family men, both are lovers of knowledge, and both accomplish
more than they can comfortably handle. This theme becomes more
visible as the book goes on, until it is finally stated outright near the
end, revealing Golstein's carefully built and complex structure like
whisking a curtain from a statue; two men with vast cultural differences
united as if they were the legendary perfect opposites that would
supposedly yield the Philosopher's Stone. Goldstein's use of Prague
serves to underline the idea of cultural crossroads yielding great
strength.
And throughout, there are the women. The book is ostensibly about
two men, but without the women their story would have been very different.
Dee's wife, Jane, warns him against his traitor assistant, Kelley, long
before Dee has any suspicion, and she repeatedly serves as support for him
in extremely trying circumstances. Loew's wife, Pearl, voices her
misgivings about the golem long before Loew can admit anything of the
kind. Magdalena, who becomes more significant with each appearance,
challenges the ideas and assumptions of not just Loew and Dee but of their
entire belief structure. An underlying theme shows the consequences
of denying knowledge to women in this time period: Magdalena must
find her magic education in bits and pieces, always hiding her true self
to be safe from men in the physical world; villain Elizabeth Bathory uses
her necromancy to stay young, gaining power in both the magical and
physical worlds. Neither Magdalena nor Elizabeth have children,
perhaps contrasting them with Jane and Pearl, but not devaluing either
choice.
A third set of comparisons relating to family may be made between Izak,
who is unable to marry because of his illegitimate birth, and Yossel, the
golem, who asks when he will be able to pray and marry like the rest of
the people in the Jewish Quarter. Izak, whose father is a mystery
for most of the book, is sketched fairly simply, and is more acted upon
than acting. His counterpart Yossel is perhaps the most intriguing
character in the novel. Yossel was built from river mud by Dee and
Loew. The golem calls Loew his creator as God is man's creator, and
obeys Loew more unwillingly and ironically as the story goes on; however,
he does continue to obey, for the most part. Like an android that
has developed Artificial Intelligence in a science fiction story, Yossel
ponders his responsbility to and duty towards his creator, and the choices
available to him. Yossel asks the questions that all humans must
ask, and like us, he does not, cannot, receive complete answers.
Aficionados of historical fantasy or simply of strong prose will love
this fast-moving and entertaining novel. |
