Jango

Jango is the second volume of The Noble Warriors Trilogy. Seeker (short for Seeker after Truth) is the young hero of the first book, which saw him recruited as a novice to the Noble Warriors, an order of chivalry somewhere between knights and monks. They are a paradoxical group, essentially pacifist yet equipped with formidable military prowess. The Noble Warriors, dedicated to their god and to justice, live a reclusive existence in their fortress on the island of Anacreia. In this second book Seeker, and his friends the Wildman and the girl Morning Star, are for various reasons expelled or self-exiled from the order of the Noble Warriors and their island sanctum. Seeker has proved to be gifted with astonishing psycho-combative powers which the Warriors will not tolerate, and is rejected. In spite of this, his solitary adventures fulfil a ritual of training and initiation as if he were still an insider. Meanwhile the Warriors are themselves under attack from several directions. Seeker, acting alone, proves himself their loyal and indispensable rescuer in the costly and limited victory with which the book ends. There is plenty of unfinished business for volume three.

This is essentially an adventure story, admirably constructed and told at a rollicking pace. Much of the book, if not derivative, is at any rate recognizable from comparable stories. For instance, the tree-dwellers of the Glimmen forest have much in common with Tolkien’s Shire, and the malignant, aged savanters are a re-drawn version of familiar parasitic evils. Originality is hard to come by in the well-trodden field of quasi-medieval fantasy. But the book raises serious questions concerning the use and abuse of power, in the course of a gripping, page-turning, fast-and-furious narrative. Teenagers will perhaps enjoy it most, but it will be deservedly popular with many younger readers and many adults too.