Exiles At The Well Of Souls (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
Exiles at the Well of Souls by Jack ChalkerIn 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.
Jack L. Chalker's "Exiles at the Well of Souls" is the second book in his seven volume "Well World Saga." It's also the first book of a two book sub-series introducing Mavra Chang. And, even though the rating shows up here as 4 stars out of 5, I'm really rating it at 3-1/2 stars out of 5. Now for a few details: first, the book is pure Chalker and reads very much like the first book in the series. So, if you liked that book, you'll probably like this one. Second, unlike the first book in the series, this book is NOT stand-alone: it requires "Quest for the Well of Souls" to reach completion. But, this two-book sub-series could be read even before "Midnight at the Well of Souls" since the prerequisite knowledge is adequately re-hashed in the books (you'd still be better of reading them in order, though). And finally, I'm dropping the book a half-star because its very "Chalkerness" is also a weakness: if you've read enough Chalker (and I have), you know exactly how this book is going to play out the moment you start reading it. But, still, if you like Chalker and if you liked "Midnight at the Well of Souls," I'd definitely recommend you read this.The books in Jack L. Chalker's "Well World Saga" are:1. Midnight at the Well of Souls (Well World Saga: Volume 1)2. Exiles at the Well of Souls (Well World Saga: Volume 2)3. Quest for the Well of Souls (Well World Saga: Volume 3)4. The Return of Nathan Brazil (The Well of Souls Book 4)5. Twilight at the Well of Souls: The Legacy of Nathan Brazil6. The Sea Is Full of Stars (The Well of Souls)7. Ghost of the Well of Souls
What do You think about Exiles At The Well Of Souls (2003)?
I was very excited to read this, having thoroughly enjoyed the first book in this series. Unfortunately, what I found so intriguing and novel in the first book quickly became tedious and annoying in this one. I'm afraid this is a case of a good concept taken too far. I have 3 more books in this series, and will probably give them a try . . . hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised.
—Don
This is the 2nd book in the series. Jack Chalker has created a very interesting universe here. Lots of directions and lots of potential. But the common theme so far is "human nature". what ever form that takes. Half way through the book I began to realize that there is much to much information and posibiltiies here that it sould take another whole book to wrap this story up satisfactory. Well, by the time I read the last sentence, I knew. I was right! there is another whole book on this part of the story. Well, I am interested enough to read the next one. are you kidding? its just getting good
—Rodolfo
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!)
—Roxanne
