The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge

Although I like owning physical copies of books, I'm not all averse to reading books in electronic format, which is one of the reasons I bought an ipad. Now, one series of books that I've been interested in for some time, is Stephen Donaldson's Gap Cycle and when I discovered that there was an ebook version that collected the first two books in the series available at an affordable price, I decided to jump on it. Having now read both books; The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge respectively, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on them.

The setting for The Gap Cycle should be familiar to anyone who has read or watched any Science-Fiction and/or Space Opera: Mankind has colonized space, encountered at least one alien race and so forth. As the first book opens, we're introduced to our three main characters; the repulsive and villainous space-pirate Angus Thermopyle, his beautiful and helpless captive, Morn Hyland and finally the dashing Nick Succorso, another space-pirate and Angus' rival. A classic setup for a story, wouldn't you say? Naturally, it doesn't take long until Nick has rescued Morn from Angus' clutches and is riding of into deep space with her, while the villain gets his just desserts. All's well that end's well.
The end? No, this is not the end, this is just the beginning.

One of the most interesting things about the Gap Cycle is the way Stephenson takes three characters, all who fits into a specific archetype; hero, villain and victim respectively and gradually have them switch roles. Take Angus for example; when we first meet him, he simply comes across as representing all of humanity's worst, most awful traits. In short, he's as pure a villain as you can meet in fiction. However, as the story progresses, we get more insight into Angus' character and the events in his life which shaped into becoming the monster he is when The Real Story begins. Turns out that Angus' chief motivation is fear. Simply put, Angus spent most of his childhood being a victim of abuse and his fear of ending up in that situation again, is so great that he will do anything to prevent it from happening - including victimizing others. Of course, due to the way Donaldson structures his story, Angus eventually ends up in the victim's role again and I have to say that some of the treatment he undergoes at the hand of the corrupt and seemingly all-powerful United Mining Companies Police, made me feel genuinely bad for a character for whom I at first had felt nothing but loathing.

I've talked a lot about Angus in this review and mostly that's because I found him to be the most fascinating out of the three main characters. That said, Nick Succorso and Morn Hyland are certainly no 2-dimensional cardboard-cutouts either. Morn, for example, may start out as a simple damsel-in-distress, but soon reveals herself to be far braver and more resourceful than she may have seemed like at a first glance. As for Nick, well, it turns out that he underneath his charismatic swashbuckler persona, he possesses a cruel and vindictive streak a mile wide.

Amusingly, although the first book is titled The Real Story, it's not until Forbidden Knowledge that one gets the feeling that the real story of The Gap Cycle has begun in earnest, with the first book serving as a prologue of sorts. Forbidden Knowledge adds more characters to the mix, such as the members of Nick's crew and the alien-race called the Amnion among others.

In his afterword to the first book, Donaldson mentions that The Gap Cycle is loosely based on The Ring Cycle. I've never seen Wagner's opera, but I am familiar with the story and it's quite interesting to see which of Donaldson's characters corresponds to the ones in the opera. For example; the character of Warden Dios with his cybernetic eye is clearly meant to reference Wotan/Odin, who gave up one of his eyes in exchange for knowledge.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed both The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge and will definitely read the other books in this series. Reading them has also made me eager check out more of Donaldson's work. I do remember trying to read the first book in his The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series as a kid, but couldn't get into it. I think it's time I gave it another shot.