When the Changewinds Blow

Changewinds #1

by Jack L. Chalker

Charley Sharkin, swept into the parallel world of Akahler by a Changewind, becomes a pawn in a wizard's scheme of dark conquest using the power of the Changewinds themselves

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Magic

293 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1987

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

[Aelvana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Charley worries about her best friend Sam, who has been acting rather strangely. But it's not half as weird as what happens when Charley goads Sam into renouncing her nightmare, pulling both of them into it. Stranded on a strange world, with a horned enemy after Sam, and with Charley magically altered to look like Sam to serve as bait, the girls do their best to figure out what's going on and get themselves home.

I picked up this book on a whim, because the cover was cute and the back sounded interesting and hey, it was fifty cents. At first it was really hard to tell the book was even fantasy, as it starts off in Charley's point of view, very solidly in the real world. When they finally got thrown to the other world, for a brief moment things started looking up. And then I found out that the brief stint in the beginning, once the first and ONLY changewind is over, is practically the only fantasy . . . the book does not merit a reread.

I'm going to ask a really stupid question here: why is it that a guy, thrown into a strange new world, will always find some means of legitimately employing himself or otherwise steal and scrimp to stay alive, but whenever a girl is thrown over, it turns into a story about prostitution? This is a book about sex, not fantasy. It starts out with Charley talking about her first sexual encounter, proceeds to get Charley and Sam (both girls with guy's nicknames, if you were confused) in bed together in the real world, and after throwing them into the fantasy world Sam becomes Charley's pimp. And Charley volunteers for this "service" and even enjoys it quite a bit. And did I mention that in the course of setting her best friend up as a prostitute (and even later bringing other girls into the gig), Sam ends up sleeping with and later marrying another woman? That's not to say there's very many graphic parts here, or I never would've dragged myself through it in the hopes it would get better. But it is, at its core, promoting a number of disturbing relationships. I had thought the love potion deal was a bit amusing at first, because Sam was horrified at having another woman in love with her.

Really, that sums up the plot a lot better than the cover or the back of the book. For a book supposedly about changewinds, I was really surprised only one ever happened where the reader could see, and even that one was a secondhand experience because none of the characters were actually there. I may read the next two books because I did buy all three (at least the covers are pretty), but I'm not expecting much out of them. Not Recommended.

[Lindsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I checked out when after the butch lesbian teenaged girl rescued the femme teenaged girl from the brink of sexual slavery, the femme teenaged girl made insisted that having magical whore adventures was the only way their story could progress. This book basically took an interesting fantasy hook and drowned it in old man spunk wanking over pre-adult young women.

[Mel B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to give this three stars but have it two for the ham handed way Chalker treats female characters. We're teen girls! We don't talk real good. I ain't kiddin. I'm a woman now!

Story is good, mostly, if you try not to think about how much Chalker must've hated women.

I read these as a kid and liked them better. Each time as an adult, I think never again. Insulting to women. Hi, I'm a real horny girl and now I like being a painted courtesan! Hi, I have a deep voice and now I'm a lesbian.

Also, there are some major inconsistencies between back stories. So she's smart then not smart. They're both smart and then one never was. One is smart but doesn't want to go to college.

Then I'm the second book same girl who said she was never that smart and never wanted to go to college but maybe go to secretarial school, now says she always knew she wanted to get her MBA. Wtf, Chalker? Did you think people would never read these back to back or even chapter by chapter?

Rant over. You may surmise that I'm now reading the second book, so I can't apparently stop myself despite my anger at these books.

[Liana]

What the heck did I just read? Lesbian sex? Prostitution? Main character more or less raping a guy just to see what it's like to DO THAT with a man?

NO. NONONONONONO.

I QUIT.

[Malum · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whew boy, I'm probably on some government watchlist for reading this.

So, first of all, I'm not sure who this book was written for. The cover makes it look like the kind of generic fantasy novel that kids in my school lunchrooms were reading in the 80s and 90s, and yet it is filled with sex, violence, cursing, and rape, among other things.

Also, the plot concerns two teenage girls but Chalker doesn't just write as if he has never met a teenage girl, he writes as if he has never met anyone ever. I have never been a teenage girl but have raised a couple and I can tell you that not only did they not talk or act anything remotely like the characters in this book, I don't know if I have ever met a human that has. For example: when magically whisked away to an alien world where you are in imminent danger would you A) freak the hell out or B) get turned on and rub one out. Chalker thinks that B is the right choice here.

It's a shame because if it had been written a little more tactfully, I can imagine this would have went down as a classic of lgbt/trans literature.

I can only say that I hope Chalker was as ashamed of writing this as I was in reading it.

[Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this as a teenager and I recall liking it and finishing the trilogy.
Decided to re-read.

Painful, that's the only way I can describe the reading experience.
Cartoon characters for bad guys.
Exposition for pages on crap that does not make sense.
Chapter after chapter talking about sexual experience and teen age girls from the girls perspective, written by an old man made me cringe and question if he's ever talked to a girl.

Some will like this book but I found it amateurish.

[Beth Haymaker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another guilty childhood read. I *cringe* to think what kind of polymorphous perverse ideas I picked up reading this as a pre-teen. Too scared to crack the cover these many years since..

[Metalfist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ik weet eigenlijk niet meer goed hoe ik ooit bij Jack L. Chalker ben aangekomen, maar een tijd geleden was ik nog eens door mijn science-fiction voorraad aan het gaan en kwam ik opeens de Changewinds trilogie tegen. Het rekeningetje van De Slegte (een tweedehands boekenwinkel) stak er nog in en blijkbaar heb ik dit zo’n kleine 10 jaar geleden gekocht in een 3 kopen, 2 betalen actie. Ik vond dat alleszins slim van mezelf, want daardoor had ik ineens de volledige trilogie. Het was echter wel hopen dat ik effectief zin ging hebben in het volledige verhaal.

Want ik had dus nog nooit iets van Chalker gelezen en ik ben er nog niet helemaal uit wat ik er nu eigenlijk van vind. Het concept van Changewinds is iets wat perfect in mijn straatje past en When the Changewinds Blow leest ook gewoon lekker vlot, maar hier en daar gaat Chalker toch de mist in. Het vreemde is dat hij de grootschalige fantasywereld wel geloofwaardig weet te maken, maar heel die dynamiek tussen Charley & Sam is bij vlagen vrij belabberd. Tel daar dan ook nog eens bij dat het plot bij vlagen nogal dubieus is met een stel tienermeisjes die in de prostitutie terecht komen (en dan vooral de manier waarop Chalker het beschrijft) en je kan wel snappen waarom ik de wenkbrauwen frons. Toch zit er ook wel veel fun in When the Changewinds Blow met onder andere het amulet waar een demon in blijkt te zitten en hij stipt een aantal interessante thema’s aan. Misschien niet altijd even goed, maar toch… Ik ben alleszins wel benieuwd wat Riders of the Winds gaat brengen.

En dat is op zich wel een goed teken. Ik ben momenteel nog niet van plan om nog meer van Chalker te gaan aanschaffen, daarvoor moet ik toch eerst de trilogie vervolledigen, maar het voelt alleszins nog niet als een miskoop zoals ik indertijd met Jack Vance had. Wordt vervolgd dus!

[Lora Milton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where do I start with this...

I read Chalker's Four Lords of the Diamond many years ago and it was brilliant. This... not so much. I can't even use the excuse of an inept early novel because this was written in the late 1980s while Lords was early 1980s and several other series also precede this one.

I'm giving it two stars instead of one because the writing itself is still good quality. The problem is characters and plot, not to mention an unfinished ending that requires buying the next book to continue the story. I always feel conned by those.

The premise is something supernatural is following Sam and her best friend Charley eventually has to admit it's real rather than Sam having a mental breakdown. In the course of the adventure getting started, we're subjected to Chalker's lesbian wank fantasies and proof that he has no idea how periods work. He would have done better to just pretend women don't have them.

We get swept into an alternate world and I have to admit, there were some interesting ideas expressed in the world building, as long as you don't mind misogyny and female characters written by someone who has no idea whatsoever how the female mind works.

Triggers include women who like being prostitutes, child rape, other rape and a little bit of blood and murder.

I had heard this was one of his best series and kept reading a book I would have DNF'd early on if it had been written by an unknown author. Despite my growing panic at 90%, it does finally explain why Sam is a target, just before leaving us in a difficult situation and saying to buy the next book.

Save yourself the torment. Just skip this one.

[Snake_telegraph · Rating 1 out of 5]

You know it's gonna be good when the blurb on the back doesn't even get the names of the characters in the right order.

Despite the promising premise, reading this is dipping into this author's very personal spank bank. The sexualization of these girls is bizarre and distracting and worst of all takes up a large portion of this book where very little happens. Theoretically this could work in a fun sexy fantasy romp, but the amount of mental manipulation and sexual threats is obviously just his fetish. However, it's so blandly written and non-descriptive if you are looking for that material I'd recommend actual pornography!

As for the story, it's excessively padded and feels unplanned beyond where the author wanted to put his beloved genderbending scenes. There is practically no fantasy content aside from potions to make one of the main girls way more hotterer. (I would argue a misogynistic society is not particularly fantastical.) Characters show up to be evil and quickly dispatched. Honestly I'd challenge people to even care about the main characters! They are completely undeveloped. It has the worst kind of non conclusion; I don't want to call it a cliffhanger because that implies excitement. Wet fart is more apt.

At least it's easy to get through, if you were planning on a hate read, because it is fascinatingly strange. Still would not recommend it to anyone.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read dozens of Chalker novels and while he always needs a better editor, he seldom disappoints entirely. WTCB is the start of a fantasy trilogy and has two leads, both teenage girls. Without going into great detail (and spoilers), they are transported to a parallel universe and find themselves mired in a fairly nasty patriarchy and make due the best they can. Given that this is a Chalker novel, expect some body transformations and such. One of the girls becomes a high class call girl and the other, due to a love potion, starts living with another women. I read other reviews that slam Chalker for this treatment of female teen sexuality (and for some good reasons), but Chalker never took himself that seriously and never claimed to write 'for the ages'; what he promised was an entertaining read. He makes me chuckle.

Like other of his novels, this evolves into a quest, with the three women (the girls and the women lover) setting out to find the wizard that called them to this universe in the first place. Things happen along the way and it ends with a cliff hanger. Fun stuff!

[James]

A fantasy novel in which Charley is haunted by thunder and plagued by strange dark dreams of a world beyond time and space. But she knows they are more than dreams, for her friend Sam shares her visions. This book is by the author of "The Rings of the Master" series.

[Phoebe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can’t decide whether to give this one star or two.. Chalker either has an extreme dislike of women/teenage girls or has had 0 experience with both. Bizarre, to say the very least, but I am curious to know what happens in the next book.

[Bill Meehan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story which kept me turning the pages and will go on the second one soon. Bunch of things though kind of had me shaking my head and saying to the author, "C'mon man, why'd ya hafta go there?", in terms of their sexuality and attitudes towards sex.

[Mjhancock · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled on a score for this one, between my respect for doing something different, and a general sense of good taste. I came down on a 3, but I'd accept someone else's 2.5 or 2 very readily. The last time I read Chalker was in my undergraduate studies, when I went through something of a binge, reading up on the Wonderland Gambit, the Quintara Marathon, and the some of the Wellworld books. I'm pretty sure I never got to the Changewinds series, so I thought now might be a good time to attempt them. The plot:Sam Buell is a pretty ordinary seventeen year old girl, with no really close friends but her best friend Charley Sharkin. Sam starts having nightmares and being chased by strange storms, to the point where she runs away from home to get away from them. Charley tries to help her, but the two are swept away into a fantasy world where the sexes are much more strictly regulated, potions and demons can brainwash people into sex slaves, and the unpredictable changewinds can turn all of reality inside out. Trying to navigate in this strange new universe while at the same time coming to terms with their own selves, the two attempt to find safety from the factions that would control them. So much so fantasy, really.

You might have noticed the odd element out in that description: sex slaves. Chalker has a preoccupation with looking into how our identity is shaped by bodies, and his stories often feature characters whose bodies and genders change frequently. That, in fact, is generally his selling point, using fantasy and science fiction as a means of interrogating concepts we take for granted. Where it all gets iffy is that, in the case of this book, it means protagonists who accidentally make another character fall helplessly in love with them. Or a protagonist who tries on sex slave as a profession and finds out she enjoys it. Or a protagonist who slips a guy a magic roofie so she can find out what sex with men is like. And there's a lot of rape that gets glossed over in the last act. Now, in theory, any one of those isn't an insurmountable thing to deal with in a plot; my problem is that, after some perfunctory waffling at the beginning, the characters aren't really interested in considering those consequences. And after a while, you have to admit you're following the sexcapades of a pair of nubile seventeen year olds. The book also has more run-of-the-mill problems: the plot is very, very slow to get going, and the characterization of the two girls seems to change inconsistently (which, admittedly, is not helped by the constant shifts in personality caused by the world itself, nor by an early development where Charley is made to look like Sam). At the same time, I do appreciate what the book does well, and it is fascinating to see how a coherent fantasy world based on chaos can come together. I *might* read more of this series, but I do so fully aware that it's got some very questionable gender politics, to the point where it may turn off many modern readers.

[Jason · Rating 1 out of 5]

The concept sounded good; mystical storms that cause people and things to transform into odd creatures. What was gotten after 38 pages of reading was a story of two teenage girls and their sexuality; in 38 pages, we learn about how Female Protagonist A lost her virginity, Female Protagonist B runs away from dreams and hides out in a mall with a multiple page scene of her stripping down and going around the mall naked as well as exploring cross-dressing as a boy, and then finally drunken lesbian experimentation culminating in Female Protagonist B getting deflowered, with Protagonist A saying "oops, sorry, long fingernails". Yikes. No, I am not making this up.
Meanwhile, the fantasy element appears in a handful of those 38 pages, mostly hints and dreams. And Where are the Magic Storms? Nowhere to be found.
Most of the sexual aspects of what I read would have been tolerable if presented in a more mature fashion, and if it were spread out through the book, mixed in more evenly with the fantasy that the book is supposed to be about. It isn't, and I decided not to read any further.

[Anat]

I read it a long time ago, but I remember I thought it was interesting at first. Later on the book started being less interesting, or I understood it is not as I hoped. It was too long, and when I happily reached the end, I realized it has more volumes, which I gave up on trying.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two teenage girls are abducted to a horribly sexist and racist universe to further the goals of a powerful mage. The only independent women exist in the sex trade. Like most of Chalker's books, this has bodyshifting and mind control. A decent if slightly dated read.

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only remember the concept of the winds that change things to new forms. Everything about the plot and characters is lost in the mists of time.

[Bryan457 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this series. I read several, hoping it would get better.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author like to play with different reality's not unlike Gaiman.
Chalker writes on a formula, and in that formula he likes to make his heroins stranded and naked.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

the beginning of a trilogy that is amazing in its scope and breath, something that keeps coming back to you through out your life, and what it means to life.

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grade C+. Book Cw1.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

10

[Michael Peeples · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun story worthy of reading. Some bad writing in spots but easy to overlook all things considered. Just what you would expect.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Struggled through about 1/4 of this and gave up...could not get into it at all.