Exiles at the Well of Souls

Saga of the Well World #2

by Jack L. Chalker

Antor Trellig, head of a ruthless interstellar syndicate, had seized a super computer with godlike powers, which could make him omnipotent. The Council offered master criminal Mavra Chang any reward if she stopped Trellig - and horrible, lingering death if she failed. But neither Trellig nor Mavra had taken the Well World into consideration. Built by the ancient Markovians, the Well World controlled the design of the cosmos. When the opponents were drawn across space to the mysterious planet, they found themselves in new alien bodies, and in the middle of a battle where strange races fought desperately, with the control of all the Universe as the prize.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Adventure, Audiobook, Speculative Fiction

335 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1978

About the author

Besides being a science fiction author, Jack Laurence Chalker was a Baltimore City Schools history teacher in Maryland for a time, a member of the Washington Science Fiction Association, and was involved in the founding of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Some of his books said that he was born in Norfolk, Virginia although he later claimed that was a mistake.

He attended all but one of the World Science Fiction Conventions from 1965 until 2004. He published an amateur SF journal, Mirage, from 1960 to 1971 (a Hugo nominee in 1963 for Best Fanzine).

Chalker was married in 1978 and had two sons.

His stated hobbies included esoteric audio, travel, and working on science-fiction convention committees. He had a great interest in ferryboats, and, at his wife's suggestion, their marriage was performed on the Roaring Bull Ferry.

Chalker's awards included the Daedalus Award (1983), The Gold Medal of the West Coast Review of Books (1984), Skylark Award (1985), Hamilton-Brackett Memorial Award (1979), as well as others of varying prestige. He was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award twice and for the Hugo Award twice. He was posthumously awarded the Phoenix Award by the Southern Fandom Confederation on April 9, 2005.

On September 18, 2003, during Hurricane Isabel, Chalker passed out and was rushed to the hospital with a diagnosis of a heart attack. He was later released, but was severely weakened. On December 6, 2004, he was again rushed to hospital with breathing problems and disorientation, and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a collapsed lung. Chalker was hospitalized in critical condition, then upgraded to stable on December 9, though he didn't regain consciousness until December 15. After several more weeks in deteriorating condition and in a persistent vegetative state, with several transfers to different hospitals, he died on February 11, 2005 of kidney failure and sepsis in Bon Secours of Baltimore, Maryland.

Chalker is perhaps best known for his Well World series of novels, the first of which is Midnight at the Well of Souls (Well World, #1).

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exiles takes place quite awhile after the first installment and has a definite 'place holder' feel about it. Nonetheless, the somewhat cliff hanger ending induces a need to continue the series! Exiles has a brand new cast of characters, albeit a few holdovers from the first in the series. We learned (and this will include spoilers if you have not read Midnight at the Well of Souls) that the Markovians were at one time the masters of the universe so to speak and had obtained a virtual utopia, being able to transform the inherent energy of the cosmos into matter at a thought thanks to their massive quasi-organic supercomputers.

Relics of the Markovians had been found by humanity, but nothing more. In Midnight..., a motley crew of humans were 'transposed' into the Well World, which we later learned was where the Markovians created new species in trial, closed mini-worlds (over a thousand) to later seed the galaxy with new life. It seems the Markovians became bored so to speak; they had material plenty, but felt something was missing from life. Hence, they decided to 'start over' with the Well World, and eventually, all the Markovians were transformed into the new species and seeded the galaxy.
The Well World, however, is still going strong after millions of years and the species still there have flourished under the rather ridged rules of the system.

This starts off with the human 'Com worlds', the loose federation of humanity with over 300 planets. Most of the planets are 'utopias' of a sort, where humanity is engineered/cloned/bred what have you into docile 'slaves' that accept life is perfect, with a handful of 'rulers' at the top living indulgent, extravagant lifestyles (Chalker's not-so subtle dig at socialist societies). A human scientist, with the aid of an AI named Obie, discovered the Markovian 'equation' to transform energy into matter and is coerced into making one of the more greedy oligarchs a massive machine that can transform planets. The oligarch, Antor Trelig, tries to demonstrate the weapon from some of the other Com leaders, but Obie manages to turn it on itself; the result is the planetoid is 'transported' to the Well World.

Long story short, a few ships on the planetoid escape and crash land on Well World, which induces a mad rush to reclaim the ships. For the first time ever, their may be a means to either escape Well World or dominate it via space. This sets off a few coalitions of greedy leaders to try to collect the ships, leading to a nasty war...

Our main protagonist, however, is Mavra Chang, an expert thief hired by a Com senator, to disrupt Trelig's plans. Somehow, she is a key to the Well World (she is one of only a handful of pilots, but it goes beyond that). So, Chalker treats us once again to some strange body substitutions, intriguing aliens and strange worlds that constitute Well World with all kinds of political machinations. Yet, as mentioned, this is really a place holder as it barely reaches a conclusion. 3.5 stars, rounding up for nostalgia sake!!

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of the Well World saga is essentially a creation myth: billions of years ago, a highly advanced race called the Markovians created a planet-sized computer that could alter reality, and divided the surface into hundreds of equally-sized regions, each containing a completely different environment and dominant species. These species run the gamut from arachnids to reptilians to mammals to things far more bizarre. From these experiments they seeded the universe with life. The Well World remains operational even far into our future, when these stories take place.

In this book, the first of a two-part story arc, a human scientist has succeeded in duplicating the Markovians' technology, albeit on a smaller scale. When he's forced to build and operate a larger version of his creation for a ruthless crime lord, everyone in the area is transported to the Well World. And when one of their space shuttles crashes on it, nearly everyone wants a piece. So begin the "Wars of the Well."

Word for word, Chalker isn't the best writer. His prose can be clunky and repetitious, and if you are averse to info-dumps, don't even bother. These books are also not for those who demand hard science. Even though technology is responsible for the many wonders within, it may as well be magic. What I like about this series is the creativity and just plain weirdness on display. Decent old-school science-fantasy fun.

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ***love*** Jack Chalker. He's my SF guilty pleasure, and this is a series of his I hadn't started yet! It was totally weird and a lot of fun to read. Not my favorite of his, but Jack never lets me down. Although I discovered that this is not actually the first in the series--it's the first of the duology about the epic war, but it's not the first book. Well, luckily, betterworldbooks.com is having a bargain bin sale with used books 3 for $10, so the solution to this problem will be shipping to me shortly. (Also luckily, F is too busy working on honeymoon pictures right now to read my book reviews and see that I ordered more books!)

[Bob · Rating 1 out of 5]

OK, I read this when I was a teen, and was reading it again. Got 15% in and it is just horrible. Chalker is a wonderfully imaginative writer, and I'm no expert on literary style, but this book is just so horribly written. I simply can't continue it. Every page contains at least one sentence so clumsy that even I recognize it as an abomination. GAAAAAAAAAH!

[Suz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another series that really got good as it went on. I really enjoyed it, but it was a slow build.

Bulk input day.

[Jim Razinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

[2024] Project 2025 is scary so I turn to the comfort series. This time I’m not going to let a couple of writing faux pas pass: “close proximity” (used twice), and “rate of speed” (once) are redundant.

[update 2018 reread] Some people have comfort food...I have comfort books. Or series, as the case may be. This is a comfort series. Everyone should have an Obie in their life.

[2012] Still epic after all these years...

[Trike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving on to #2 in the Well World saga, where everything gets epic-er. It’s been 1,100 years since anyone tried to wage war on the Well World, and that was a failure, ultimately, because it was a war of conquest. You can’t have supply lines that cross areas where technology doesn’t work and the air in some places is poisonous to 90% of your multispecies army, half of whom think the other half is delicious.

But now two spaceships have crashed on the planet and a war to retrieve those craft is inevitable.

Back in the day I don’t think I reread this one nearly as much as I did MatWoS, as I didn’t recall quite as much detail, but the overall plot was still all there. A couple bits I thought came in the third book, so now I’m doubting my memory as to the overall timeline. Once again, the sheer scale of the story is impressive, and I still really want to see this thing brought to life.

It’s interesting to me how I never gave a second thought to the fact that the protagonist is a Chinese woman and one of the antagonists is a lapsed Muslim. Nowadays there would be cries of both racism and political correctness, but back in 1978 it wasn’t a big deal at all.

Looking back, we really had a lot more diversity in our entertainment in the 70s. All of us watched shows about black families like Good Times, What’s Happening and The Jeffersons, the latter of which had an interracial couple. I’m sure the racists hated that stuff back then but we didn’t hear about it all the time. And those shows were hits, watched by millions of people.

So having an antihero like Mavra Chang kick ass and take names wasn’t unusual in the slightest. It’s hard to think of a character who has more toughness and guts than Chang. Her backstory, which Chalker relates in two paragraphs, is brutal and would fill two books on its own. An orphan, beggar, thief, and prostitute who becomes a starship pilot and captain, eventually turning herself into the most dangerous woman in the human part of the galaxy is just the warm-up for what the Well World has in store for her. That’s how epic her story is. Even the part where her former john becomes her husband and partner in crime who engages in a Pygmalion/My Fair Lady transformation of the coarse and streetwise Mavra is something she just casually mentions.

Obie the computer is still my second favorite character after Chang, but I was surprised by how little he’s in this book. He has a larger role in the later books, I think, but don’t quote me on that. I am looking forward to the appearance of Gypsy. Although I most identify with Nathan Brazil, Gypsy is the character I always wanted to be.

On to #3.

[Sol · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jack L. Chalker's Fetish Log, Stardate 223X:

Chapter 01: A woman is given a tail via reality-warping super computer, then later turned into a centaur, then back into a woman (but hotter than she started). Only those doing the warping are aware that anything has changed. A fat 14 year old girl is mind controlled to fall in love with an adult man.

Chapter 02: 14 year old girl is drugged into becoming extremely obese. Two siblings are described as having had their sexes changed as a form of torture.

Chapter 04: Secret agent woman infiltrates a compound naked. 14 year old girl is transformed into a cow-taur. A man is transformed into a woman and back again.

Chapter 09: A hermaphrodite and two men are transformed into a man and two women, respectively.

Chapter 12: Man-turned-woman is nearly raped.

Chapter 16: Man who has been rendered slightly mentally disabled by neurodegenerative disease has sex with 14 year old girl who has been rendered mentally disabled by same disease.

Chapter 21: Man-turned-woman turns into male minotaur, who have a 1:100 male:female sex ratio, females have lower intelligence, perform all manual labour, are owned in slave-harems by males, and males are biologically dependent on minotaur milk to maintain good health.

Chapter 27: Secret agent woman is transformed into an Animorphs cover midpoint.

Chapter 38: Secret agent woman is mind controlled into accepting being an Animorphs cover midpoint (numerous other instances of mind control omitted for brevity).

===

Best Baen cover ever? Tastefully sexy, well-rendered, actually depicts something in the book as described.

Marginally more enjoyable than the first, largely because A) I know what Chalker's game is and B) the bulk of the book is the pre-adventure sequence, since this is not in fact a standalone book, and the story continues into the next. The adventure this round is war-themed, so the feeling is subtly different from the previous entry. This leg of the story is resolved again by god-like being infodump. I'm half tempted to read the next one just to find out if he can manage to do that a third time in a row.



These guys appear in ONE SINGLE CHAPTER, and do nothing. Thanks for nothing Barlowe.

[Nathan Tipton · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's part of a two party series but they incorporated so many races on the well world that it made it difficult to follow at some points of the book. There's more lulls in the book than excitement. Maybe after I read the third book I'll feel different but until then I'm at a 3

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The cover that Goodreads shows is really embarrassing. It suggests S&M or something worse. It is a very tame novel in terms of sexual content and the violence is minimal, so I think the cover is misleading.

This novel is really part one of a larger story and ends kind of abruptly just after hinting at the set-up for the next novel.

I wonder if Mr. Chalker wanted to sell this as one big novel and the editor stood-up to him and said no and made him break it into two. The world needs more editors like that today. So many authors want to write door-stoppers and editors just let them regardless of the fact of whether or not they have enough of a story to do so.

Chalker's writing is actually good enough to carry a large novel, just not everyone has the mental stamina to read one.

This is a return to the Well World from "Midnight at the Well of Souls" but with all new characters. Marva Chang, the lead hero, like Julie Wu from "Midnight" is an small Asian woman. Unlike Wu she is a take charge kind of gal right from the beginning, sort of a pirate captain mercenary.

If you have a fascination with combining humans with animals as many of the ancient cultures did with their mythology this is really the novel for you. The Well World is actually a giant computer. It houses a large number of habitats for all different races, most of which are animal human hybrids.

One thing that bothers me is that Chalker uses the term bi-sexual for describing hermaphrodites, as some the characters and races are hermaphroditic. Perhaps the terms were interchangeable in the 1970's but I do no think they are today.

The plot involves an evil ruler who has a super-computer that links up with "The Well of Souls" and gives him the potential power to take over the universe. Maw haw haw haw!

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first book frankly shows a little more promise esthetically than the later volumes, but its denouement is saggy and ultimately dull. "Exiles" and "Quest" on the other hand are actually enjoyable entertainments. And after them, I should have stopped reading these books.

[Robert Defrank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take the intrigue of Game of Thrones, add the insane shape-changing elements of Ovid's Metamorphasis, condense it into a single action-packed volume and you've got the next entry into the Well of Souls series.

This book picks up some years after the last volume and introduces us to a new protagonist: Mavra Chang, deadly, competent covert operative for hire as she travels the stars. She's given a job: free a scientist's daughter, who is being held hostage by an evil politician/syndicate crime lord to force her father to assist in creating a machine that can reshape reality.

As readers of the first book can anticipate: the players are soon drawn into the hidden Well World, a secret planet, created by a long-vanished supreme race of aliens. The Well World's guiding artificial intelligence is capable of shaping the universe into whatever one desires, and the entry of these new, marooned space travelers promise the means of controlling it.

The newcomers are 'processed', given new bodies to match some of the thousands of sentient races that call the Well World home, each race living in a hexagonal biome with radically different environments, and sometimes radically different laws of physics.

War breaks out, complete with shifting alliances and depths of treachery in a book that ends leaving us wanting more.

[Michael Lareaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somebody said "I bet you can't write a book that features frogs and blue goat-people who shoot electricity and ride winged horses battling against minotaurs and giant butterflies over control of a spaceship."

And Jack Chalker said, "Hold my beer."

This is one very strange trip, but well worth the journey. Jack Chalker's Well Word is a beautifully envisioned microcosm of hundreds of different worlds, all trapped together on a single planet. The story, as outlandish as I made it appear at the beginning, is grounded in real emotions - loyalty and betrayal, the desperate need for power and control. Jack Chalker's easy style makes even the strangest combinations of characters feel plausible. The story is tightly plotted and moves at a good pace. The entire story isn't resolved in the novel, but the main point of conflict - the spaceship - is dealt with by the end, but not before the protagonist pays a steep price for her tenacity and loyalty.

This SF classic is weird, even compared to Philip Jose Farmer, but it's a good kind of weird. Two thumbs up for this novel.

[Stewart Ireland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book holds a special place in my heart. I first read it as a teen in the 80's and was blown away by the sheer imagination and originality of the story. I would go on to read the entire series but this book was my introduction to the Well World and I have always considered it one of the most impactful books I've ever read for giving me my love of Science Fiction.

Given that, I was actually slightly apprehensive to re-read it now, nearly 40 years later. Would my more discerning tastes now find it to be dated and ruin my youthful memories of the story, or would it hold up?

I'm pleased to see it holds up very well! All the things that made me love this book the first time round are still there - the amazing different species of the Well World, the villianous characters you just have to despise, and of course Mavra Chang, one of the most awesome characters in all of Sci-Fi!

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

This second entry in the Well of Souls series was let down somewhat by being rather more muddled than the first book. There were way, way too many races, hexes, and characters constantly being mentioned that it was almost impossible to keep track. There was one scene where one character was explaining a battle plan and they name-dropped like a dozen different races in a couple of paragraphs. The plot was so-so, a race between competing factions for a MacGuffin with a very unsatisfying rug-pull at the end.

Hoping that the following books turn things around, and that the first wasn't just a fluke.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this maybe 30-35 years ago. It was enjoyable then and is now. It's very much a sci-fi book with very liberal fantasy elements thrown in.

One curiosity is that in today's age I can see something that I couldn't have seen back then. Certain people talk of the universe being a fabrication of some sort - a matrix, kind of like the movie - where nothing is actually real. The Well World is almost tailor made for that type of thinking and so gives me a very different perspective from the first time I read the book.

[AJS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent continuation though does end in those abrupt (continued in next book) type structure which I don't enjoy as much. As always, phenomenal world-building, with multiple new races, interesting socio-political structures and the like. But even more than previous Well books, so many new societies that it was a harder read if you put it down for a while, and will also become a small challenge as you continue the series to its conclusion. Lots of new entities!

[J'aime Wells]

Dang, if you had a 1978 cover with a blue satyr riding a green pegasus, why would you ever change that??
I was happy to revisit Well World and especially that walrus-snakeman Serge Ortega is back (as a minor character). The sheer number of different aliens bogged me down a bit in this one, and I kept having to refer to the encyclopedia entries in the back to keep them all straight.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm very affectionate about Chalker. Grew up reading his stuff. So rereading his Well World books and am enjoying the series. However, a big caveat in that I don't know how much I would like this series if I hadn't read them when I was in junior high many a moon ago. But overall a fun book - fun bad guys, big plans to destroy the universe, fun characters. Not a masterpiece but fun.

[Russ Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exiles at the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker
In this second book of the Well of Souls series, Chalker introduces the main character for the remainder of the series.

***SYNOPSIS***
Mavra Chang is a resourceful, driven smuggler, with a complicated past who is hired by a political leader to rescue a scientist and his daughter from the clutches of Antor Trelig, the head of the powerful syndicate dealing in the drug called 'sponge'. The scientist, Dr Zinder, and his daughter Nikki, are captives on a planetoid near Trelig's homeworld where Zinder is building a weapon to end all weapons. Mavra discovers that the weapon is a self-aware computer named Obie with the technological capability to alter the universe's energy field to essentially change reality. If you read the first book in the series, Midnight at the Well of Souls, you'll recognize that this is the same technology that enabled the ancient Markovians to recreate the universe as they wished.

Mavra's "secret-agent" abilities are considerable, and when Obie finds out she is there to rescue the Zinders, his de facto father and sister, he alters her body, giving her super-human strength, stamina, night-vision, and even retractable poison needles in her fingernails. Heh. And she almost makes it. She rescues Nikki, and with the aid of a renegade guard named Renard, she piles them into a shuttle and blasts away from the planetoid. Unfortunately at just that moment, and before she can get far enough away, Obie engages the reality field during a scheduled test and it instantly transports the planetoid and everything in its near vicinity halfway across the universe to an orbit around the Well World.

Trelig's guards on the planetoid, all sponge-addicts, quickly realize that without their sponge supply they will soon be dead and decide to murder Trelig and his associates. Trelig, Zinder, and Zinder's assistant Ben Yulin make it to another shuttle and leave the planetoid, hoping to make a landing on the Well World.

The rest of the story involves the crash landing of both shuttles on the Well World, and the subsequent war to retrieve the engine module of the shuttle that lands in the southern hemisphere (the engine module is the one piece of technology that the Well World will not allow to be built, so with it, the denizens of the Well World could build a spacecraft to leave the planet).

Most of the characters go through the well gates and end up as various creatures. Trelig, aptly, wakes up as a giant frog. Yulin becomes a minotaur. Renard becomes a satyr-like creature with the ability to deliver electrical shocks. Mavra herself is stopped from going through the gate - that old six-armed snake-man Serge Ortega is still around from the first book and keeps her in custody as the only one who can pilot the space craft once it is repaired. The remaining shuttle occupants, Dr Zinder and Nikki, disappear after going through the gate and their fate is a mystery(until the next book, that is.

The plot of the story continues through shaky alliances and battles as two armies converge on the crash site of the engine module, high in snow-covered mountains. Chalker's imagination is in full swing, with ax-swinging minotaurs, goat-headed men flying winged horses, gargantuan fanged cyclopses, floating smears of intelligent paint, tiny stingered pixies, giant deaths-head butterflies, suicidal bumblebees, screaming pterodactyls, giant toads, talking sphinxes, magic-wielding panthers, philosophical abominable snowmen, and (my favorite) small shape-changing wads of dough.

This would be a great book except for one appalling mistake. For some reason, Chalker has Mavra morphed (by those magic-wielding panthers) into a pitiful half-mule creature with no hands. And she stays that way. Not sure why he had to do that, but he took a story with great momentum and a likable character and dropped it on the literary floor. The story falls apart for me at that point and doesn't pick up again until well into the next book.

Chalker's gender-confusion issues pepper the story. The guards on Obie's planetoid, thanks to sponge-addiction, are either androgynous effetes or testosterone-laden gorillas. Even Trelig (prior to his conversion to a giant frog) is a hermaphrodite.

You also have to look past the guilt-ridden liberal sensibilities instilled into the book (this was written in 1978). The tired old litany of 'what bad people humans are' repeats - the native humans on the well-world apparently were such resource-wasting warlike scaliwags that they started a war with some peaceful giant beavers and got their just desserts: they were gassed into a state of primitive intelligence and are now well-cared for by the benevolent beavers.

The absence of heroes and villains continues into this book from the first. All characters are mere pawns, swept this way or that by forces beyond their control. There is of course, no romance (which would be tricky in Chalker's sexually-perplexed universe), and character motivations are weak and uninspired. It's not a book to read for the story, but rather to experience the fun of the amazing variety of creatures.

At least the giant cockroaches didn't show up in this book.

[H Volk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Own the original printing and found it to be an excellent book well worth the rereading. However if I was looking for a new author to read,the cover art of the version shown would not have intrigued me enough to give this book a chance unlike the original one.

[Carl Palmateer · Rating 4 out of 5]

War comes to the Well of Souls as man stumbles onto the secrets of the universe. The races on the Well look to take advantage of the error. Always an amazing place Chalker opens up more mysteries for us.




I had the audible edition which is not listed by GoodReads.

[Buck Wilde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ehhh. Same problems as the first one, but much more noticeable, and without the buffer of Nathan Brazil.

[Patrik Sahlstrøm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book, even better than the first one in the series, and Chalker is now officially one of my all-time favorite SF authors. Somebody needs to turn this setting into a game ;-)

[chris daugherty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story

Loved this book. A good read. A classic science fiction story. Easy story to enjoy. I love this book. Great.

[Duane I. Kleven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my sixth or seventh time through the series. Great read every time.

[Robert Bartlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting series of books. Mavra Chang is a well rounded heroine, with abilities to help her survive in the universe.

[John Sorensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wildly creative and a lot of fun. The world building is amazing and complex.

[Alexis Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid continuation of a brilliant series.

[C.M. Moore]

Marvra Chang is awesome!