So I did a birthday post on Talbot Mundy not long ago which generated a side conversation on Twitter about this series. The end result of which was I decided to give it a try.
Based on that conversation and an email exchange with someone who is too smart to be on Twitter (waves at John), my opinion seems to be in the minority on this one.
The general consensus was that these books are slow. I have to agree; they don’t move as quickly as most books of this type would if published today, nor do they have the pace of the story I reviewed for Mundy’s birthday, “For the Salt he Had Eaten”. The style is an older style of adventure story writing where things move at a more sedate pace. But the first volume, Lud of Lunden held my interest all the way to the end.
Lud’s father is being held prisoner by Julius Caesar. Caesar is in Gaul, having conquered that country and is setting his sights on Britain. In order to free his father, Tros is supposedly acting as Caesar’s agent in Britain. What he’s really doing is warning the Britons about Caesar and recruiting men to help him rescue his father.
The plot has a lot intrigue, a some betrayals, and a great deal of character development. There is battle and combat, but I can see how some people would find the book to be slow. I thought things picked up as the story went on. This particular edition ends on a cliffhanger (sort of), and I’ve read the first two chapters of the next volume.
Talbot Mundy
Which brings up something I should address. The Tros stories were originally published as novellas in Adventure magazine. The fantasy element is minimal, mainly prophecies. The book publication history is where things get confusing interesting. Depending on which edition you have, the novellas are broken up and packaged differently. I’ve got the Zebra editions from the mid-1970’s. The ISBD lists three volumes under the Zebra series, but I’ve got the whole set, and there are five. The latter two are listed separately as volumes 5 and 6 of the 2007 edition, but when you click on them, they are the Zebra editions. In the opposite order than the numbers on the covers indicate. The Avon edition from the late 60’s was four volumes, with different titles. The first four volumes of the 2007 volumes also have different titles than those from other publishers.
I’m not going to try to figure things out. The Wikipedia entry isn’t much help. I’m going to keep reading them until I either finish or lose interest.
As I told you, I read these in the mid-’70’s (I remember that Zebra cover and the others-fairly nice art). I had read all the Lancer Conans and Kull and some Bran Mak Morn before reading this series. I bought them expecting an exciting, action-packed read along the lines of REH. Boy, did I struggle with them. I gave up midway through the 3rd book in the Zebra series. I don’t know that I have any great desire to give them a second try these many years later. As I remember, I thought these were even slower and less involving than the De Camp/Carter pastiches.
That is completely understandable. I’ve been taking them a couple of chapters at a time while reading other things.
It seems to me that the two ‘best’ ways to read the Tros saga are either to break where the original Adventure stories broke or to treat the whole thing as one big ‘door stop’ book. I have the last (Gnome Press) hardcover edition (from the late 1950s or early 60s) and it is truly huge. The two sequels, Queen Cleopatra and The Purple Pirate are more ‘normal size. I read the whole thing (including the sequels) in one big gulp back when I was in high school. When I reread it I shall try to take a break where the magazine stories break.
You know when I read Les Miserables I broke it up like you did with Tros: Reading different sections and with stuff in between.
Question for you. Are the sequels stand-alones or sequential? I’ve seen the order of them reversed depending on who the publisher was.
Yeah, they don’t thunder along like Howard, but they did sink their hooks into me.
The sequels are sequential — I think Mundy had intended the existing stories to be the start of an even bigger epic that he never completed. And yes, Zebra did number them incorrectly, which confused me no end the first time I tried to read them. (Well, that and the fact that Zebra was combining books that Avon had published as individual volumes — maybe that’s where the misnumbering originated?)
Ah, Zebra, where would we be without you?
Thanks for clearing that up.
Yes, the sequels are sequential. Queen Cleopatra (1929) and Purple Pirate (1935) occur after Tros of Samothrace with a year or two passing between the events of each book. I have the 1958 Gnome Press hardback of Tros and the Avon paperbacks, so I can’t speak to what Zebra did, but I recommend reading all three books at what ever pace suites you. Of the three, Purple Pirate has the most action; that gap between the second and third books saw Talbot Mundy change his style to fit the times.
Queen Cleopatra has the least action of the three and Tros appears only as a secondary character at the beginning and end of the book; the main focus is on Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. This isn’t to say that Queen Cleopatra is bad, but if you have little interest in Roman and Ptolemaic politics, intrigue and a big dollop of the Theosophy that Mundy was getting into, you can leave it until last.
Mundy, like Harold Lamb, Jack London and Edgar Rice Burroughs, was an influence on Robert E. Howard but never his equal for fast-paced action. Very few writers are.
This is good to know. Thanks.