Essay by D. D. "Doc" Shade   —   June 04, 2002

A Boy And His Unicorn Are Hard Parted

Take one part Earth Abides, add a dash of Alas, Babylon and throw in a good measure of David Brin's The Postman and then add an equal part of C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia and you have the world of Steven R Boyett's Ariel (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). Perhaps we should also add just a pinch of Harlan Ellison's A Boy And His Dog to capture some of the charm between Pete and Ariel, a boy and his Unicorn.

What to do call such a world? I call it a post-apocalyptic contemporary fantasy. I'm not sure this would be an appropriate sub-genre because Clute and Grant ⁽¹⁾ call the book a straight fantasy. Well, here's how they actually explain it,

"Ariel is a fantasy set -- unusually -- in a version of our world which experienced a 'crosshatch' incursion from faerie before the tale began, generating a Balkanized landscape similar to that more often found in a post-holocaustic science fiction."

Clute and Grant ⁽²⁾ further explain that many fantasy novels take place in more than one world and the two worlds remain separate from each other throughout the duration of the novel(s). I immediately thought of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson and how Thomas Covenant moved back and forth between our world and the "Land." In a crosshatch world the demarcation line is unclear. The example given was the Borderland series created by Terri Windling and of course Jack of Kinrowan by Charles de Lint. A superior novella example would be Sidewise In Time by Will F. Jenkins.

We are plunged into this world when Pete is about 25-years-old and has been traveling with Ariel, the only Unicorn in this crazy world, for about five years. Through the use of flashbacks we learn that the 'change' or 'crosshatch' occurred at precisely 4:30 one afternoon while Pete was in High School and from that moment on machines of any kind (including guns) and electricity no longer functioned. At the same time there appeared in the world mythical creatures of every kind and magic, of course. The lack of firearms forced a return to hand-to-hand combat, mostly martial arts, and swordplay. Although Peter and his friend Malachi use Samurai swords, there are rapiers and broadswords a plenty. The presence of magic led to conflicts of will. Some of you "Star Trek: The Original Show" fans out there might remember the episode entitled Day of the Dove -- a similar problem with technology except on a starship.

One might think that it would be the ultimate experience to have a Unicorn as a familiar, the term used for the relationship or bond between humans and a mythical beast in this novel. However, as we all know so well, there is always a price to be paid for powerful magic. The price attached to association with Ariel, a Unicorn being the purest and most powerful mythical beast, is high. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, Pete was a virgin when he met Ariel and was thus able to touch her and become her companion as she cannot tolerate impurity even though later in the book she often swears like a sailor. Purity of thought or heart would seem to be more appropriate because one can fail at avoiding sexual encounters and still prevail through purity of intent (as in Wizard Of The Pigeons by Megan Lindholm). But Ariel seems only concerned with whether or not her companions have known other people, in the Biblical sense. As long as Pete keeps his hands and other body parts clean, he can have this fabulous creature as his companion. It is interesting and sad to note that on one occasion Pete throws his arms around Ariel and exclaims, "I wish you were a woman."

Pete and Ariel wander aimlessly about, surviving as best they can (Ariel has a penchant for Peppermints which are difficult to find) and keeping out of trouble in the early part of the book. In Atlanta they meet Malachi Lee who teaches Pete everything there is to know about fighting with a Samurai sword. This is also where we meet the Necromancer's strong arm, and not just because he flies around on a Griffin, he's a pretty tough character in his own right. He demands Ariel or her horn for the Necromancer. Malachi, Pete, and Ariel fight to live another day. The next day Pete and Ariel learn that Malachi Lee is going to New York to face the Necromancer himself. Malachi will not let Pete and Ariel go with him but they follow after a few days. It is in New York City that the major action of this story takes place.

Herein lies my main disappointment with the book. After I have been convinced that Ariel is truly something special, the symbol of all nature as Native Americans might put it, she begins to speak like a gutter urchin. This would be somewhat acceptable if it were the result from hanging around Pete but Pete is no gutter urchin by any standard. He comes from an intelligent family, is well educated, was on the high school debate team, is extremely well read, and only lapses into vulgarity every now and then. Ariel's swearing is, to me, a contradiction of all that she represents.

Perhaps I should mention that Pete is a pretty resourceful guy and was doing all right on his own before Ariel came into his life. He had armed himself with a blowgun, a crossbow, and a huge hunting knife. He makes his own darts for the blowgun out of bicycle spokes and beads, barbs his crossbow bolts with fishhooks, and is lightening quick with his knife. In one way Pete reminds me a lot of Isherwood Williams in Earth Abides. He loves to read. Whenever he needs to know something about survival, he finds a library and lives there for several days until he has exhausted the topic. Then he'll spend a few more days reading purely for enjoyment. Like the Postman in David Brin's novel, Pete is also pretty good at foraging for supplies (finding Peppermints) and quoting appropriate lines out of the many books he's read. One almost expects him to leap onto a table and do some impromptu Shakespeare for something to eat.

I do not intend to imply that Ariel is a rip off of other books. Even if I did, Boyett could take the criticism. He does an admirable job of making the book readable. Boyett has practiced martial arts since 1974, primarily Tae Kwon Do and Aikido which qualifies him to explain the training Malachi puts Pete through in such detail. I'm sure he has also been hang gliding many times as this too is explained nicely in layman terms. At no time do the technicalities of these skills or any others slow down the reading or make the book boring. Rather, they go a long way towards making the book believable.

Ariel is more than just a book about fighting, however. It is also a story of love and the sacrifices love sometimes demands. It's a story of doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. It's the story of people who are willing to sacrifice their own lives to make the world a safer place for others. Ariel is about love.

It is also a humorous book to read. Boyett has a dry sense of humor that was not wasted on this reader. My favorite funny (for want of a better word) in the book comes when Pete is in the middle of a 'live or die' hang glide dive onto the observation deck of the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building (sorry, I can't tell you what he was doing there) when he notices a sticker on his hang glider that reads, "Warning! Hang gliding is a dangerous activity and can result in serious injury or death even when engaged in under ideal circumstances." I had to stop reading for a moment to catch my breath and the book is full of rich moments like this.

Although I have given Ariel four stars and consider it a good read and a book worth recommending, it was somewhat formulaic in the post-apocalyptic setting of the world. People pretty much acted like people do in post-apocalyptic books. When the smoke clears, or the ash and fallout, there are basically two kinds of people left alive. Beetles and Ants. The Beetles go around leaving a mess behind them while the Ants try to reorganize and tidy up the place. After a while the Beetles discover that it's easier to enslave the Ants than to work themselves and small feudal societies spring up. Then a few of the Ants discover they are more than drones and they begin to organize a resistance. Did I get it right?

What makes Ariel worth reading is not the easy familiarity of the post-apocalyptic aspects of the world (for those of us who dig that). It's not the fact that mythical creatures have returned and can become bonded to people giving them strengths they did not have before. It's not even the classic struggle between ultimate good and ultimate evil that is played out to a somewhat unexpected ending. What makes Ariel such a good book to read is the depth that Boyett is able to bring to the relationships between characters. Primarily between Ariel and Pete and also between Pete and others that he meets on the journey.

I am the kind of reader who looks for truth in speculative fiction, as I believe that to be one of the reasons people write speculative fiction. I found quite a bit of truth in Ariel. For example, what it means to be a hero. A young boy named George had been traveling with Pete and Ariel for a while. His father had sent him out to kill a dragon and come home a hero. The boy was perhaps twelve and his broadsword drug in the grass. There was a dragon rumored in the region and lucky day, it found them. And although George had bravely faced the dragon only to be swatted out of the way like an insect, the dragon ended up dying with a little help from Pete but mostly through its own stupidity. Here is a bit of what Pete had to say after George's exclamation that he could never go home because he didn't kill the dragon.

"Look, nobody becomes a hero by setting out to do it. Circumstances make heroes. Some people just end up in the right place at the right time and they do something they think is perfectly natural for them to do, and suddenly they're heroes. You did all you could do--I saw you in front of that thing with your sword out. Heroism isn't necessarily doing something. Sometimes it's the willingness to do it, when the occasion is right" ⁽³⁾

To me this counsel is not unlike that given by J. D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye. He states that the mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live honorably for one.

I heartily recommend this book, as it has been lost too long. Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the author is that he wrote the novel when he was 19 and it was published when he was 22. Most of the sources I looked at also recommended reading Boyett's The Architect of Sleep. More biographical information as well as information on Boyett's latest writing can be found at this URL -- http://www.steveboy.com/ -- the official web site of Steven R. Boyett. Perhaps the good news is that Scorpius Digital Publishing has reissued Ariel as an ebook. There is a link to Scorpius on the Boyett page.

Sincerely, Doc

¹ The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, Copyright 1997, St. Martin's Press, p. 131

² ibid.

³ Boyett, Steven R. (1983). Ariel. New York: Ace Fantasy Books. p. 140

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