The Lord of Middle Air

by Michael Scott Rohan

From the wilds of the Borders to the enchanting and terrifying lands of Faerie...

When young Walter encounters his kinsman Michael Scot, his life is changed for ever. Even in the turbulent Borderlands of thirteenth century Scotland, Scot has a fearsome reputation as a master of forbidden arts, trafficking with the demons of middle air.

Now he has returned from years of exile with the Pope's pardon and the favour of the Emperor, yet strange events still follow him.

When Walter's father is ambushed and killed and his own life is threatened by a powerful and dangerous necromancer, Scot appears to offer aid... but there is a terrifying price to be paid.

Genres: Fantasy

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Michael Scott Rohan (born 1951 in Edinburgh) was a Scottish fantasy and science fiction author and writer on opera.

He had a number of short stories published before his first books, the science fiction novel Run to the Stars and the non-fiction First Byte. He then collaborated with Allan J. Scott on the nonfiction The Hammer and The Cross (an account of Christianity arriving in Viking lands, not to be confused with Harry Harrison's similarly themed novel trilogy of the same name) and the fantasy novels The Ice King and A Spell of Empire.

Rohan is best known for the Ice Age-set trilogy The Winter of the World. He also wrote the Spiral novels, in which our world is the Hub, or Core, of a spiral of mythic and legendary versions of familiar cities, countries and continents.

In the "Author's Note" to The Lord of Middle Air, Rohan asserts that he and Walter Scott have a common ancestor in Michael Scot, who is a character in the novel.

[copied and adapted from en.wikipedia.org]

Reviews

[Brendon Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first started reading this I thought it was not going to be for me as the prose of historical Scottish language made me concentrate on what I was reading having to go back over parts numerous times. As the story developed I started to become engaged and ended up loving it. Lots of black magic, heroric battles and fantasy lands and characters had me staying up late to see what happened next.

[Edoardo Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

For this review, I really need to coin a couple of those wonderful German compound words that don't exist in English but that we cheerfully appropriate, in the language's magpie fashion, to express ideas that need a word to express them. So we've already got Weltanschauung and Schadenfreude and many other useful words, so what I need to coin for this review is a German compound word meaning 'the sudden joy of discovering a new author whom you will enjoy for many years to come' (Google translate suggests FreudeeinesneuenSchrifstellers) followed by a word conveying 'the despair when you discover your newly discoverd author actually died two years ago' (this seems a bit long even for German compound words, so we'll just have to go with the long-winded English description of the feeling I experienced when I looked up Michael Scott Rohan only to discover that he had actually died in August 2018).

I loved this book. Set in the Scottish borders during the 13th century, Rohan displays a mastery of the use of Scotch dialects that is evidence of uncommon skill as a writer. The style is rich, dense, complex in style but relatively straightforward in plot: a young man encounters his returning relative, Michael Scot, a renowned scholar and possibly a mage, returning to his home in the borders after many years travelling the world. With Scot come wonders, but fear too: of sorcery, heresy and the unknown in general. But the hero of the book, young Walter Scot, follows the trails laid out by his relative to realms he had not dreamed of, only to return and reclaim his lands and his title. The story is straightforward, but the language and the telling makes the tale, of the borderlands between the human world and Faerie, thoroughly convincing. The story was a joy to me and, finishing it, I immediately looked up Michael Scott Rohan: it's not every day that one encounters a writer who seems entirely in sympathy with your sensibilities. So imagine how upset I was when I discovered that he had died, after a long illness, and a life that should have been full of many, many books for me to read in future had been cruelly cut short by illness, so that there was only a handful of books for me to read by Rohan in future.

May he see his worlds.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Len · Rating 3 out of 5]

While reading this novel I couldn't help feel that, if the violence had been toned down a little and the one brief scene of naked sexuality omitted, then it could have been an exciting teenage fantasy adventure for boys. Everything was there: rebellious young son, overbearing father, inexperienced romantic attractions, evil villain, stalwart battle scenes, and a stern but sometimes benevolent wizard to provide order and guidance. Add to that a trip to the land of Faerie, time distortion, and a happy if gruesome ending. When it came to the final assault on The Hermitage, the stronghold of Lord de Soulis, I half expected a sword-fight between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone to erupt with flying furniture and decapitated candles. I enjoyed it. However, I wish that it could have been aimed firmly at either adults or young adults.

[Nenangs · Rating 2 out of 5]

I put too much hope in this book.
I don't know why, but I just can't "plunge" myself to the story.
Well, maybe something worth noting was that the author actually a descendant of walter scot, the protagonist in the story.
I imagine that it might be cool to have an ancestor worth telling like him. or not.

[Trish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad fantasy. Set in the Scottish borders and based around the legends of Michael Scott and William Soulis, twisted a bit to set them in the same time period in the Middle Ages.