227 pages
Published 1979
Read from June 10 to June 12
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
I first tried to read this book at some point during my big book drought, sometime in 2017 or 2018. Watchtower was an important milestone in queer fantasy, according to this listicle I’d read: it was the first fantasy novel (or at least one of the first) with positively portrayed queer characters, and hints of a queer-normative culture. Lynn herself is openly lesbian. But the terse, clipped prose Lynn uses, all short sentences, didn’t click with me then. The introduction of a “swarthy” warlord from the south, while fully in keeping with fantasy conventions of the time, didn’t endear me to the story, either. I abandoned it before page 30, along with so many other books that I failed to finish in those days. (It was a wasted period of my life in a lot of ways.)
Spoilers ahead.
Watchtower is the tale of Ryke, sworn swordsman of the late defeated Athor, in Tornor Keep. Ryke agrees to serve the conquering Col Istor in order to preserve the life of Errel, Athor’s son. Col is a pragmatic conqueror but has a cruel sense of humor: he makes Errel perform as a jester through the long winter in the Keep. Ryke and Errel fall in with Norres and Sorren, a pair of messengers who prove to be martial arts lesbians in disguise. The two of them help Ryke and the prince escape and bring them to their hidden valley: Vanima, a commune where it’s always summer and an exiled idealist named Van teaches everyone aikido. Ryke is set in his feudal masculine ways; he resents and envies the joy Sorren and Norres share, and finds himself restless and uncomfortable in the martial arts utopia, longing for war, for wine, for a firm ending.
Lynn queer-codes Ryke’s relationship with Errel with such skill and subtlety that I’m not convinced every straight reader would pick up on it even now, let alone in 1979. (At one point Errel fletches arrows with locks of Ryke’s hair. I mean, come on.) Ryke’s growing dissatisfaction comes from his inability to overcome his feudal upbringing. He sees people living freely around him, but can’t get past his own prejudices to accept the possibilities of a different life, to open himself to his obvious feelings for Errel.
Lynn’s laconic prose becomes oddly atmospheric at times, freighted with sensory detail. The characterizations of the main quartet are vivid, with Ryke a prickly and skeptical viewpoint in the center. I didn’t quite buy it when Errel and Ryke return to the north with a troupe of martial arts “dancers” and a plan to defeat Col Istor; the narrative never gives Van and his aikido hippies any good reason to ride north to aid in Col’s overthrow, beyond some vague talk of why Van was exiled in the first place. The fact is, this was a ’70s fantasy novel, and joining forces to defeat the interloper is just the expected outcome. I would have much preferred Ryke staying in Vanima, learning and evolving and letting go of all that feudal garbage. Alas, Ryke instead rides to war, to discover the shittiness of his militant culture the hard way. It’s an ugly ending, but tales of lords and battle deserve nothing else.
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