This book shouldn’t work. And sometimes it doesn’t. It has issues with bloat and pacing and the plot on occasion meanders, though this latter is mainly due to the picaresque nature of the tale itself, so is perhaps not really a fault. I’m generally not a fan of the picaresque, but this novel has so many great scenes, a handful of great characters, and enough vibrant atmosphere that it has managed to find a place of deep affection in my heart at the same time that it doesn’t quite work for me._The Malacia Tapestry_ holds a central place for me in a genre I think ought to be called “urban fantasy” since that’s really what it is: fantasy primarily concerned with the urban landscape and its unique issues and characteristics (other examples would include Thunderer, Perdido Street Station, and Jeff VanderMeers’ “Ambergris” books). Unfortunately that label has already been manhandled away and seems to apply to fantasy books in a modern setting which usually have to do with hip, magical private eyes having sex with vampires and werewolves. Anyway….Aldiss’ tome is set in a parallel universe where it appears that (view spoiler)[humans have evolved from dinosaurs, which they still keep as pets (hide spoiler)]
This is a well-crafted picaresque novel in a wonderful fantasy setting. It follows the adventures of Perian de Chirolo, a well-born but poverty-stricken underemployed actor, in and around Malacia, a city doomed, or blessed, to never change in any substantial way. As we follow Perian around the city we learn that what at first appears to be a typical Renaissance trading city is in truth much older and much stranger; Malacia is full of winged humans, lizard-people, ape-men, and things very much like dinosaurs which Aldiss calls "the Ancestral Beasts". Perian falls in love, finds novel work, makes passes at anything in skirts with varying degrees of success, betrays, is betrayed, becomes famous, is present at the first use of biological warfare, is nearly killed fighting an Ancestral Beast in front of his beloved, speculates on the nature of Art and Time, and in general is a merry guide to the wonders of the city.
What do You think about The Malacia Tapestry (1990)?
Aldiss’s baroque Italianate fantasia, ‘The Malacia Tapestry’, overflows with invention and strangeness. It creates a unique world based on Renaissance culture and politics, minus the Catholic Church, incorporating magic and the supernatural, fantastical creatures and even an appearance by the Gods themselves. The actor-hero, the wonderfully named Perian de Chirolo, begins as a rogue and parasite, like a character from Machiavelli’s ‘Mandragola’, but finds himself drawn into higher and darker adventures.Unfortunately Aldiss, while a writer profligate with ideas, is no great stylist. His prose often struggles to convey the richness of the material - although he works hard at it, and the cumulative effect is by no means unimpressive. Comparisons that inevitably arise to other writers of the fantastic – Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock – are rarely to Aldiss’s advantage. Compared to them he seems a bit prosaic. In particular his attempts at eroticism come off as clumsy.In his long and prolific career Aldiss has essayed many styles. This book was his only attempt at fantasy, and while it isn’t entirely successful it remains a rather wonderful curiosity, and I am glad that he wrote it.
—Neale
