Swords and Dark Magic: Garth Nix's, "A Suitable Present for a Sorcerous Puppet" and Narrative Richness

Today I’m going to continue my extended review of the anthology of Swords and Dark Magic, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders. I'm committed to working my way through this entire anthology, reviewing each story. Here is a link to previous posts in this series: An Extended Review of Swords and Dark Magic

The story I’m focusing on today is “A Suitable Present for a Sorcerous Puppet,” by Australian writer, Garth Nix.

This was my first encounter with Garth Nix, and it was a strange one.

To begin, I don’t think I would classify his story as a sword and sorcery. It was too light-hearted, playful, and comical. Consequently, it was more of a fairy-tale or a kind of parody of sword and sorcery.

Let me be clear: I don’t think comedy or playfulness shouldn't be in sword and sorcery. Of course it should. The Conan stories are tinged with dark comedy. The “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” stories are filled with joking and witty dialog. And yet, in both Howard and Lieber's cases, the comedy and playfulness is always juxtaposed with a dark and dangerous world.

In this Nix story there is a notable conformity, I think, between the humorous and playful tone of the characters and the world/context within which their story unfolds.

I’m wondering if a “dark, dangerous world,” is a necessary component of sword and sorcery.

In spite of its playful nature, I still found the story entertaining. Parts of it were quire amusing: the protagonist is likable enough, a wounded warrior who is otherwise infallible; and his companion, a “sorcerous puppet” named Mister Fitz, was interesting.

It’s most endearing quality for me were the glimpses of the fantasy world that came through. Let me explain by considering a brief passage. Referring to the unorganized nature and other strange idiosyncrasies of a book the protagonist is reading, the narrator states, “these might be symptomatic of the somewhat unusual end of Jerreke, a city-state which had defaulted on its debt so enormously that  its entire population had to be sold into slavery” (181). Here you have a “micro-narrative” that makes the short story what I call “narratively rich,” meaning, the overarching narrative trajectory is pleasantly sidelined to encapsulate additional stories, stories not included for the sake of their narrative functionality but for their own sake, the pleasure they offer.

Another way of referring to this effect is the “Arabian Nights” effect. This is where you fold narratives within narratives, not for the sake of furthering an overarching plot but for the visceral pleasure of storytelling. Nix doesn’t quite do that here. And yet, there is a tendency to do that in this story that makes the world quite rich.

This story is a firm 3 out 5 in my view.