The Eye of Night: A Novel

by Pauline J. Alama

From Pauline J. Alama comes a stirring fantasy tale of three vagabonds in a dying world and their terrifying quest into the heart of darkness...

The Eye Of Night

It is a magical world on the verge of collapse. In the North the Troubles rage. Cities and kings are being annihilated; the very earth is in upheaval, waking even the dead from their graves. All notions of time and space, of day and night, of seasonal change seem fractured beyond repair. But as the chaos moves slowly south, engulfing land after land, three unlikely heroes--an ex-priest, a battered serving girl, and an exquisitely beautiful, refined lady--journey bravely to the dying regions, their only weapon an enchanted stone of enigmatic power and ancient origin.

Jereth, disillusioned with his faith in the Rising God and robbed of his family after a deadly shipwreck, struggles to find meaning in his blighted life, searching the devastated land without direction--until he meets two extraordinary women. Each has her own secrets to keep; both are on a quest to save the world. But they must first save themselves, conquering their demons and rousing their well-disguised strengths. Only then will it be revealed how three penniless, unarmed wanderers can light a darkening world. For one is a prophet, one is a fool, and one’s life is now in their hands.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Romance, Epic Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy

451 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 25, 2002

About the author

My quest fantasy The Eye of Night was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award. I've published numerous short stories in anthologies such as Sword & Sorceress 30, It's Come to Our Attention, Witch High, Trafficking in Magic: Magicking in Traffic and magazines such as www.abyssapexzine.com and Fantasy Scroll.

For a wild, misguided time in my life, I thought I would be an English professor, so I spent some time in Rochester, New York learning medieval literature and how to get around in heaps of snow. After getting a Ph.D. without a J.O.B., I returned to my native New Jersey, where I write grant proposals for nonprofit agencies and obey the whims of my feline overlords.

Other interests include playing guitar and saving the world. Not doing too well on either one, as yet. Must practice more.

Reviews

[Ann Aguirre · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most underrated / unknown fantasy novel of the decade. It is, quite simply, astonishingly beautiful. When was the last time I read an epic fantasy that felt truly epic? When was the last time a book like that reached into my chest, grabbed hold of my heart, and squeezed until I laughed, smiled, wept, and utterly forgot the world? I cannot recall, to be honest.

Rarely, after I read something, I’m left just aching. This is one of those books. I have to write about it; I have to try to articulate what it was that has left me feeling shaken and wholly inadequate. This book is… miraculous. It’s perfect. At one point, I was sobbing so hard, I had to stop and blow my nose, and yet I had a fine, bright kernel of hope in me that the author wouldn’t let it end like that. I believed in her — and oh, she did not let me down. Like the rest of the book, it was flawless, wrung to the last note of pathos and precision and heartbreaking rightness.

The writing is… beyond lovely. And the romance? You will never, ever read anything that touches you more. I am struggling for words that will not give away too much of the beauty because I want all you to experience it, just as I did: hopeful that you will like it, but not expecting the breadth or scope or depth of its wonder. You simply cannot imagine its beauty until you experience it for yourself.

So if you like romantic fantasy of epic scope, with heartbreak and sacrifice and true love, layered with rich mythos, complex world-building, and tender symbolism, then this is the book for you.

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the things that struck me about this book was the way it acknowledges the difficulty of questing. In most other stories, the heroes simply get up and walk across the continent. Alama's characters don't just simply load up their packs with food and weapons and start tromping. In each city they come to, they have to figure out how they're going to get the money to get the supplies to keep going. They're very much on their own, without the support of nobility and easy cash.

The cosmology was whole, believable, and central to the tale. The book feels steeped in faith. Not that it is preachy, hardly, but that the cosmology is far more than a few names of deities and holy places. The characters are believers, in a convincing and sympathetic way, and that is so rare in modern media.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my biggest problems in writing reviews is I sometimes have trouble putting my feelings into words. I like to sit and think on books, and then think some more, until it has been months and then I have nothing to say about them. And while I love reviews that go in depth into the plot and the metaphors and all the like, I did too much of that in school and I don’t want to do that with books I read for my own enjoyment. Just actually trying and kind of failing to figure out said feelings.

I liked this book but I felt like the romance was just sprung into the story and I was like, okay. You have a slightly unreliable narrator about said romance, but the romance does make sense and does work, but I’m still like okay. I guess I just have gotten to the point in my life where romance doesn’t need to even be in the books I read and I will still enjoy them. And then when they are thrown in I just am like, why can’t they just be friends? Is this a requirement for a good book?

I’m not saying that I dislike romance (I’ve read too many romance novels I swear - I used to refuse to review them or add them here because I was ashamed and I not longer am) but I feel like if you have a brilliant story and then over half way suddenly we confess our love and it just isn’t ever hinted at or if it is I missed all the signs and…well maybe I did. I don’t know it just didn’t sit right for me.

So I liked the story and the way it started. I especially liked the fact that I was expecting this gothic novel and that is not what I got.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is going to rate very highly in my annual Year's Best list.

Bookbub's ad for it quoted Booklist as recommending it for fans of George R. R. Martin and of Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion, so I wasn't sure whether I would like it or not; I strongly dislike Martin but love the Chalion novels deeply. Fortunately, it turned out to be more like the latter than the former.

I'm marking it as well-edited, with an asterisk: the ebook has apparently been scanned from a print book, and there are odd artifacts of the scanning process. For example, every time a sentence begins "Yet", there is a space before the "t". Mostly, though, it isn't bad, and there are only three or four typos apart from that. The language use is confident and capable throughout. Some reviewers are describing it as "wordy," but I didn't find it so, and I tend to be impatient with books that don't have much plot per thousand words, or bloated epic fantasies.

It's not just your standard epic fantasy, either. There are some tropes: a quest, an artifact of power, companions helping one another through it all, but the questers aren't your usual young blacksmith's apprentice who's secretly a prince. They're a merchant's son who joined a religious order after he was the sole survivor of a shipwreck that killed his whole family, and then became disillusioned before taking final vows; and a woman of no apparent consequence, small, her face distorted by old wounds, who is significant not because of who she secretly is but because of the choices she makes. They're both around 30.

There are meetings with people who seem kind and generous but aren't, or are only so conditionally, but also with people who actually are kind and generous. There are complex characters left and right, in fact, and certainly the central pair have a lot of depth to them. They aren't just a bunch of archetypes or stock characters.

And there's no delusion about being descended from nobility meaning that you have some kind of special claim on anything. The nobles are a scurvy lot, taken as a whole, and the simple people are much more worthwhile.

There are some heartwrenching decisions made selflessly, there's True Love, there are plot twists, there are realistic hardships on the journey. There's tension about what will happen next and if our heroes will make it through.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, and wish the author had written something else (longer than a short story) so I could immediately read it.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Eye of Night" is written similarly to older fantasy stories, and the verbosity is where it sometimes suffers. There were several times when I skim read or glanced over large paragraphs of descriptions or lore without really losing anything in the story. The characters are what invested me, and kept me reading through the slower moving parts of the story.

Despite the areas that I didn't really enjoy as much, overall I really liked this book. Hwyn, Jereth, and Trenara are really interesting characters, and I like that Hwyn, our main female protagonist, has dwarfism, which adds an interesting layer to the journey she's on in terms of how she is viewed and interacts with others.

[Christy Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love romances where the characters are emotionally crippled or physically disfigured (Ya, call me a romantic), and this story had both.

[Dawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book in a used book store and as soon as I finished it it went straight back. The plot was fairly original, but the characters were unmemorable and the writing style long-winded and boring. The climax was anti-climactic and the end of the book was just drawn out and unnecessary. It wasn't the worst fantasy I've ever read, but it was close.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Ann Agurirre read Pauline Alama’s The Eye of Night earlier this year and loved the book so much she wanted to share the experience. She held a giveaway on her blog, offering five commentators a copy of the book. I was lucky enough to be one of the winners and I have recently finished it. While I don’t think I loved it quite as much as Ann did, I thought this was an excellent fantasy that I would never have read without her giveaway, so I’m very grateful to her.

Seven years ago, Jereth joined the Tarvon order, seeking some kind of peace after the death of his entire family in a shipwreck. Now he has chosen not to take his final vows and is in the town of St Fieren, hoping for a guiding vision from the sacred pool there. Instead he finds Hwyn, a deformed and battered young woman with a beautiful voice and a quest. He finds himself following Hwyn and her companion, Trenara, to the ends of a world that may be ending itself.

This is epic fantasy at its best, where epic means rich and soaring, rather than long and never-ending. I’m really not sure if I can write something that does justice to this book, as there is so much in it, so much I want to comment on and I’m still not sure if all those pieces and ideas whirling around in my head have settled down into something with some kind of coherence. But I’ll give it a go and we’ll see what happens. There are also a few things I’d like to comment on that are spoilers, so when I get to those I’ll put in a link to my spoiler blog and you can decide if you want to go over and take a look at what I’ve said or not.

The book opens beautifully, with a great hook of an opening line:

I little thought, when I begged shelter at Kelgarran Hall one rainy night, that I should take part in its downfall.

In that single sentence we learn a whole host of things; there is a first person narrator telling the story, he or she is in a position of needing to beg for shelter, condition are not ideal and Kelgarran Hall – whatever and wherever that is – is going to fall by the end of the night. Alama’s prose continues to impress throughout the book. It’s well-written, neither sparse nor over-blown and filled with information that is all there for the reader – but the reader might sometimes have to pay attention to find it. As the early passages of the book continue, we learn the basics we need to pick up the story. This is a world in difficulties, suffering “Troubles” in its north that are never completely spelled out, but we come to understand them as the companions travel ever further northward. We learn of the religious system – four gods on a World Wheel that keep the world turning. Again, they are not spelled out for us in detail, but we come to understand them as the book progresses.

We also meet the main characters. There is Jereth, a part of him broken by the death of his family, he has failed to find the peace he sought in the Tarvon order and is now searching for a vision to guide him. He is a man of hidden strengths he himself doesn’t yet know and of a fierce and faithful loyalty that, once given, won’t be swayed. Then there is Trenara, beautiful and graceful, but simple of mind, she is the one to attract immediate attention, but it is Hwyn, damaged and deformed who truly captures Jereth and it is her he follows on her quest to the north. Hwyn is a fierce and brave, made strong by her imperfections and yet with a beautiful heart and voice. Also a character is its own way is the Eye of Night, a strange, egg-like artefact that appears to hold life inside it and that Hywn has undertaken to take northwards so that it can hatch into whatever it holds, be that the saving or the doom of the world.

The story unfolds slowly as Hwyn, Jereth and Trenara make their way north. They are well-met and ill-met by the people they meet along the way. In some places they make friends, in others enemies, but always they continue northward towards some kind of ending. I don’t want to spoil the story by detailing much more than this, but while sometimes, reading a book full of travel, I feel like some of it is just here to fill out the pages. This isn’t the case in The Eye of Night, although sometimes it wasn’t until the end of the book that I began to understand the why of things – or at least that there was a why, even if I didn’t fully understand it.

The book if full of themes and a truly wonderful love story that is never sappy or silly, but beautifully inspiring and perfectly part of the story, always there as an underpinning of actions and events, but never taking over to the detriment of the rest of the whole.

This is a book of many themes – as evidenced by the variety that are mentioned on Ann’s blog by different readers (beware – there be spoilers), but for me it was about balance. It was about light needing dark, day needing night, and endings being required for a new beginning. Early on, Hywn says about the Eye of Night:

“Whatever hatches from this egg,” Hwyn said, ���will be a child of night. It may be terrible; I may be cursed for releasing it. I fear it as a child fears the dark. But I know this much: it cannot be held back. Like the night, it is necessary.

[…:]

Then maybe you can understand,” Hwyn said, “why I’m running headlong into the Troubles; why I have to release the hatchling from the Raven’s Egg, even though I feel it. Why I’ll consent to be a midwife to the Night.

“Childbirth, after all, is a fearful trouble. Women suffer pain in childbirth that would undo strong men. Women often die in childbirth, or labor in vain to bring forth a dead child. But what if some magician had the power to hold back this deadly pain, to keep the troublesome child trapped in the womb? Both mother and child would die, and not alone, but the human race with them. No less with the Troubles in the North. The might cast down from their pride, the dead cast up from their graves: are these the pangs of death, or of birth?”

This need for balance, especially as relates to the ending and beginning of the world, is a recurring idea, which isn’t really surprising considering it makes up a significant part of the plot of the book. What will happen when Hwyn releases whatever is growing in the Eye of Night? Will the world end, or will it be the start of something new? And if it is the beginning of something, what will happen to the old ways and the people who have been living them?

Another major part of the book is its magic. This is something organic, fundamental to people and how they live more than some kind of wielding of spells that is so common to fantasy. And the book is so much the better for it. Hwyn and Jereth both carry some kind of magic and each is vital to the course of their journey and their final fates. Hwyn, desperate for a vision threw herself into the lake shrine of St Fierin and has been a seer ever since, but her sight is vague and sometimes unsure. Jereth has the Gift of Naming; this is a universe where true names are important and Jereth can know the true names of the living and the dead. His is a useful talent as they encounter more ghosts as they travel towards the Troubles, and it will be absolutely necessary to the world’s fate.

The book also contains, woven within it, a beautiful love story. Unlike so many people before, Jereth sees the person inside Hwyn’s damaged shell and finds himself drawn to follow her, sometimes even in spite of himself. At one point he talks about the legend of the firebird:

The Magyans have a legend,” I said, “of a firebird that makes its nest in the heart of a burning mountain. There is only one in all the world, so if you see it once in your life, you can be sure it will not come again. Its plumes, they say, are like the fire at the heart of the world. And some see the firebird and let it pass, holding it in memory, while they live out their lives as before; but maybe afterward everything they see seems dim beside that single fiery vision. Others see it and follow after it; they leave the live they have known and inherit a world of trouble, and hardship, and danger, and wonder, and joy.” I fixed my eyes on Hwyn as I spoke, but I could not tell from her expression what she heard in the story. “Only by journeying into trouble can you find the joy at the heart of the world – if you survive the journey. For some, it is better to stay in the known life. For others, the journey is the only life.”

Hwyn is Jereth’s firebird and he will follow her wherever she takes him, into trouble and hardship and danger, and happily find wonder and joy among them. Their love story develops slowly; the tale of two uncertain people finally finding the courage to be open enough with each other the show the truth of their hearts. Jereth’s declaration to Hwyn – in a dungeon no less – is intense and risky, but worth that risk when Hwyn makes her own declaration in return. And as someone who was never one of the pretty or favoured ones, it’s always nice when the ugly girl gets the boy for her beautiful soul without having to turn into a beauty first.

It’s also nice that the book doesn’t end with the end of the world. Instead, we continue to follow Jereth as he tries to find his way in the new world he and Hwyn have birthed. Some of the loveliest moments are as he discovers the Sea People and begins his new purpose by using his Gift of Naming to call Hwyn back from the sea, the first of the new Sea Born. Yet, for all his own importance in the end of the old world and the developing of the new, Jereth still sees himself as an adjunct to Hwyn and not a hero in his own right. He hurts, he despairs, but always in the end, he picks himself up and he does what needs to be done. What else could be such a fundamental description of a hero? It is easy to read this book and be tricked in the same way he is, to think we are reading the story of Hwyn’s quest, when really, we are reading about two journeys that weave together. Yes, this is the story of Hwyn’s determination to birth the Eye of Night, but it is Jereth’s story too. He is the everyman who finds himself caught up in wonders and doing his share to bring them about.

Sometimes, Jereth’s story tells us, we set ourselves on a path that we think suits us, only to find the path we a truly following is something quite different, even if it takes us to the same places. Jereth leans this as he chooses to follow the Rising God, never understanding his opposite, the Falling God. Yet it turns out, that always, he has been following the calling of the latter, as he says in the very last paragraph of the book, “always falling, never certain, but always in hope” and maybe, in the end, that is what all our lives come down to.

To finish, there are a couple of things I wanted to comment on that contain major spoilers for someone who hasn’t read the book. The last thing I want to do is spoil any of the pleasure of discovering this book page by page for a new reader, so I’ve put my comments over on my spoilers blog. When you’ve finished The Eye of Night, if you want to see what I said, take a look.

The Eye of Night
Pauline J. Alama
9/10

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, eBook Reading Challenge

[Myra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally reviewed June 9, 2011
-
I would rate it 3.5 stars if I could. This book was beautifully written, innocent while hauntingly serious. It is full of emotion and mystery.

The former priest Jareth meets a disfigured woman, Hwyn, who has as her companion the beautiful, elegant, but simple lady Trenara, and carries a powerful stone called the Eye of Night. Seeming to be compelled by the stone, Hwyn intends to take it north, to no particular destination and to no known end. Intrigued by Hwyn and captivated by her voice, Jareth joins them in their long journey.

I have heard some advice to writers that they should let their characters hit 'rock bottom' at some point in the story. In The Eye of Night, the characters never seem to leave rock-bottom. They continue and progress despite injury, hunger, rejection, and find joy in the songs they sing together. It's a depressing tale but has moments of lightness.

You get lost in the telling. This epic could have been shorter without sacrificing much in the way of plot or development, but I liked the different aspects of the world the story explored. The travelers encounter many different kinds of people and communities.

It is imaginative all around. The author has created a whole world and beautiful characters. It is a world that cannot really be explained.

The ending is full of hope and sadness.

Do not expect a high fantasy adventure. It is more like a religious quest and a glimpse of human nature. There is magic, but not spells. There are gods (I loved the pantheon and the descriptions of the gods), but not magical creatures. There is fighting but nothing styled (Jareth has a brave heart but little in the way of training). There is love, not really romance. It's definitely not your typical fantasy, and I recommend reading it if you are open to this kind of story.

This book touched something in me, and I admired the author's style. It will not soon be forgotten.
However, in spite of all that I liked, I did not particularly enjoy the book overall. That is why I decided on 3 rather than 4 stars. I hope you can understand what kind of story this is and I hope you will read it.

[Kathei · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another book that I can no longer remember all the details. Now that I'm listing the books I've read online I have only my card file to refer to when attempting to comment on a book I read in the past.

The Eye of Night was a wonderful book that my file lists as excellent. It was a wonderful fantasy book of heroes and evil: I loved it.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

lovely elegiac poetry

This story bears much more truth than the usual weight of fantasy, it is more a saga or a myth retold than any product of a writer’s mind. It’s history both lovely and sorrowful, like the best of Guy Gavriel Kay’s writing, full of dreams and portents too bright and dark for us to easily bear. Such rare and lovely truth!

[Ton Siemons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely story with the hardships of being on the road woven into it. Some parts could be more concise. It did touch me though, and that's all I require from a book.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 3 out of 5]

A priesthood drop-out, a scarred seer and a beautiful imbecile quest to ensure the hatching of the Eye of Night, even though by doing so they may bring about the destruction of the world.

[Josh · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNFing this.

I do want to say, this is not a bad book by any objective metric. It just isn't for me, at least at the moment.

[Byrd Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

A favorite re-read of mine for when fantasy was written to be epic instead of what passes for fantasy today: a teenage princess in love who saves the world.

Jereth still searches for what will give meaning to his life. His religious order couldn't help him overcome the death of his family and now he is on the road, a starving pilgrim. He stumbles upon Hwyn who is not all that she seems. Crippled and consumed with a mission, Hwyn is determined to travel north, into the area of the world that is being vacated by those who fear the strange paranormal events consuming the area.

This is a quest book where our three companions find a few adventures along the way and discover themselves, as well as friends and enemies along the way.

I think some of the lower starred reviews for this book do have legit reasons. This is not a book full of high adventure and startling events that happen every chapter (though there some exciting scenes). Nor is it a book about religion or Patriarchal-Euro-Christian societies.

It really boils down to a man who loves a damaged woman because he sees the pureness of her being. The past that haunts us and how others can help us heal from it.

About 70% into the book and it starts to drag a bit while the three struggle to get to their destination. Keep going.

My biggest complaint is the ending (and I don't want to give spoilers) but there is a long riff and time jump with Jereth that is not handled well. It makes me wonder if the author had a different ending planned and the publisher wanted her to re-write or pad it? Or maybe the author wanted a "here's what happened to everyone" roundup?

Regardless, the long rambling ending dilutes the power of the story. I still remember reading this book for the first time and could barely push through this section as I was so depressed.

My advice? Keep going to the very end where the ending is satisfying.

Strongly prescient of Lois McMaster Bujolds Five Gods series, The Eye of Night was written by a medieval scholar and the attention to detail shows. Readers who are willing to savor slower works and want heroes and heroines who don't fit into the typical mode will appreciate this gem of a book best.

[Caroline Berg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has everything I love in a good story: characters that truly suffer, fantasy setting with just enough Medieval influences to seem like it was a part of history, magic, gods, an epic quest.

One thing I love about the book is that there are four main deities, all based on the seasons and on the Medieval Wheel of Fortune. This is nothing like the game show. The Wheel of Fortune was the wheel of your life, the seemingly random ups and downs - the belief that good things come to those who deserve it, and happen to those who don't to make them stronger. If you want to read more about the Medieval view of Fortune's Wheel, I highly recommend reading "The Consolation of Philosophy" by Boethius. Yes, that book was written long before Medieval times, but it was extremely influential to Medieval thought.

Now, getting back to this book - the use of actual Medieval philosophy made this book seem so much more real than a great many other Medieval fantasy tales. You know the type - those tales that give lip-service to the Medieval times by having the clothing and the buildings, but not a true idea of what people really thought back then. This book excels at having that thought.

My only issue with the book is the ending. It ends too happy for me (perhaps showing more of my problems than any problems with the book). Everything seems to work out in the end, where I felt a more bittersweet ending would really bring home the message of the story.

[CD · Rating 5 out of 5]

It starts with a prophet, a fool and a priest. While you might think that is the start of a joke, it isn't. I first heard about this book from author Ann Aguirre and she was right on the money with her high praise. Pauline Alama has created a stand alone epic fantasy that is quite enjoyable.

The Troubles have come and people are fleeing the North. All except Jereth, Hwynn, and Lady Trenara. One is a prophet, one a fool and one a former priest. These three have in their possession a mysterious orb that may be a living organism, is definitely powerful, but is the power for good or evil? Is their quest a fool's errand or a quest to save the world?

What made this especially lovely was the blooming romance between the prophet and the priest. It isn't your usual romance, but it does give a nod to those fairy stories where the old crone is asking for water at the well and the kind girl who helps her is rewarded. So often it is tiring and unbelievable to read about the excessively attractive lead characters. Here, the characters are flawed, hurting, and not perfect and their humanness is so compelling that when you near the end it is positively aching to read on. But do read on. You will be rewarded.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I love about this book is the uncertainty it conveys. It's not unusual, in well-written high fantasy, to wonder whether the heroes will succeed in their quest, or whether they will survive even if they succeed. But in the Eye of Night, Pauline Alama takes it a step further and writes a very compelling tale of unlikely heroes on a quest where they don't even know why they're doing what they are doing, or whether they will destroy the world they are trying to save. And yet, you're with them, every step of the way.

Other strengths of this book include compelling primary characters, well realized peripheral characters, and a denouement that keeps the reader reading with interest long after one would expect the story to be finished.

[Debbie]

I will be reading the Kindle version of this book.

[Taelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining but a little predictable.

[Literary Lusts · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just couldn't get into this book even though I'd heard good things about it and it had some interesting elements to it. Just one of those things :P

[Mollie *scoutrmom*]

Interesting premise but not my thing.

[Sky]

Bizarre book with a somewhat Irish folktale feel about it.

[Saleh MoonWalker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Onvan : The Eye of Night - Nevisande : Pauline J. Alama - ISBN : 553584634 - ISBN13 : 9780553584639 - Dar 464 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2002