A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Poul Anderson--Review

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

by Poul Anderson

Gray Planet Commentary

• Starships! Planets!
• Alien Spies! Romance!

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 80/100
• Literature Index: 35/100
• Magic Factor: 85/100
• Sense of Wonder Index: 90/100

After seeing the nominations for the 2019 Nebula Awards for novels (which were dominated by fantasy books), I sought some “real” science fiction, a book with a classic science fiction sense of wonder. I thought of Poul Anderson, and then of A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. First published as a serial in Worlds of If magazine in 1974, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows was (according to Goodreads) Anderson’s seventh book in the Flandry series, and the fourth full-length novel.

I was 25 years old in 1974, just beginning my career as a psychotherapist in a community mental health clinic in rural Oregon. I was a voracious reader, consuming an average of a book every day, mostly science fiction. I was also beginning what would become a five year-long quest to be a professional science fiction writer.

I first read A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows as a serial in Worlds of If. The cover portrait of Aycharaych, Flandry’s nemesis, a Merseian agent, intrigued me immediately. The sense of wonder that Anderson invoked with his setting and descriptions made me savor each word of each sentence as I carefully turned the digest-sized pages of the magazine. When the Signet paperback came out in 1975 with Gene Szafran’s cover art depicting the beautiful and innocently seductive Kossara Vymezal, the heroine and Flandry’s love interest, I had to have it as well. I read the book again, and it was cemented in my memory as Poul Anderson’s best novel.

This is a classic Flandry story. Flandry is often compared to James Bond, but Flandry predates Bond by a few years, having first appeared in 1951. This book, in the Flandry corpus, brings to mind the Bond novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, published in 1963.

Someone is fomenting rebellion on a remote Empire planet and Agent Flandry is dispatched to find out who and why and to bring this small piece of the Empire back into the fold. Flandry has information fed to him by his twenty-seven-year-old son, Dominic Hazeltine, on board the Hooligan, Flandry’s starship.

Flandry discusses Dennitza with the Emperor and is sent off to investigate. Before leaving, he purchases Kossara Vymezal, a young Dennitzan woman who was captured by Empire agents on Diomedes and charged with treason for rebellious activity and sentenced to a lifetime of slavery. Flandry treats her well in return for her acting as a double agent in his attempts to find out what is going on with Dennitza and Merseia.

In Flandry’s universe, interstellar travel takes weeks. During transit, both Flandry and Chives, his alien butler/partner/bodyguard, have conversations with Kossara, during which we learn the background of her life on Dennitza and what happened on Diomedes. Flandry also becomes attracted to her (although they are chaste) and Kossara often ruminates about him. Flandry suggests, and Kossara agrees, to be mind probed so Flandry can get more detail about what happened on Diomedes. This probing is handled in the novel through flashbacks from Kossara’s point of view. Using the information gathered from the mind probe, Flandry cements his control of Kossara for his own purposes, even though he internally is conflicted about using her in this manner.

On Diomedes, Kossara realizes that she was duped by her supposed allies and that Flandry is right–Dennitza is being manipulated by outside forces to rebel against the Empire. She and Flandry head to Dennitza to put things right. Along the way, they decide to marry after all is resolved. But the novel ends tragically in surprising ways that teach us more about Flandry’s character as he reacts to the events that unfold.

Anderson is very good at developing his plot and basing events on the historical and cultural conditions in the universe he has created. He provides extensive depth for his characters, their worlds, and the conflicts they face. Even though there is a lot of exposition, it flows well and much of the exposition serves to create the otherworldly sense of wonder that drove much of my reading when I was younger and still thrills me today. Anderson’s unorthodox style also enhances this feeling. Reading Anderson, one feels this is no common writer, but someone special, who speaks only of extraordinary things. An example:

“Day broke windless and freezing cold. The sun stood in a rainbow ring and ice crackled along the shores of Lake Stoyan. Zorkagrad lay silent under bitter blue, as if killed. From time to time thunders drifted across its roofs, arrivals and departures of spacecraft. They gleamed meteoric. Sometimes, too, airships whistled by, armored vehicles rumbled, boots slammed on pavement. About noon, one such vessel and one such march brought Bodin Miyatovich home.”

And another:

“Glory brimmed the dark, stars in glittering flocks and Milky Way shoals, faerie-remote glimmer of nebulae and a few sister galaxies”

This unique style, vintage Anderson, is extant in a plethora of images and descriptions, where he appears to give agency to objects around us:

Closer by, the Elena flowed eastward, oceanward; barges plodded and boats danced upon it. Here in the middle of the Kazan, she could not see the crater walls which those streams clove.

and

“Waterborne shipping crowded docks and bay.”

In these examples, Anderson gives life-like motivations and agency to inanimate objects. This is partly an active tense technique. For example, this last sentence might more normally be written: “The docks were crowded with shipping.”

It is also interesting to note, given today’s fascination with the Russian disruption of our media, the following paragraph:

“… discussions about how to “resolve mutual difficulties” and assure the Imperium that the Roidhunate has never had any desire to interfere in domestic affairs of the Empire—when everybody knows how gleefully Merseian agents have swarmed through every one of our camps, trying their eternally damnedest to keep our family fight going.”

Forty-five years ago, in an interstellar science fiction novel, Anderson is describing foreign influencers who instigate dissension by inciting existing social conflicts.

Re-reading books I have read long ago (in this case, 45 years ago) is always interesting. Sometimes they are as good or better than I remember, at other times they seem old and clunky or I find them uninteresting and impossible to read. A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows may not have generated quite the magic it did when I was 25 years old, but the sense of wonder is still there and I am still entranced by Anderson’s style.

I highly recommend this book.