Customer Reviews
Birds, stars and diamonds - By: E. A Solinas, 07 Dec 2005 
Catherine Fisher continues the tales of incarnate gods, desert kingdoms & plots that would shame Machievelli. "The Archon" suffers from some awkward, rushed storylines & an unfortunate heroine, but it does have a spellbinding quest story wrapped upin it.
The Archon, a peasant boy named Alexos, has been found, but things haven't improved. The drought continues, General Argelin is still plotting to seize power, & Mirany is still enmeshedin the lies & schemes of the Nine priestesses. So Alexos tells the people that he will bring back prosperity by making a journey to the mystical Well of Songs, to atone for stealing three stars. But he doesn't know that Argelin is blackmailing his pal Seth to kill him.
Meanwhile Mirany is trying to deal with the Oracle's corruption, & the fact that one priestess is secretlyin league with Argelin's enemies. Plots are exposed & Mirany finds herself made into a puppet Speaker. Her only hope is that Alexos survives the journey to the Well of Songs...
In concept, there's very little wrong with a story like this. Fisher piles on the wonder & beautiful prose, including everything from a ragged bird-worshiping civilization to a mountain made of diamond. At the same time, she also exposes the frightening results when a religion tries to use lies for its own benefit.
But despite some tense moments, the schemes & plots never come to life, even when the god makes a convenient cameo to save a little girl. Fisher seems more comfortablein Alexos' desert quest,in which the god-boy has to deal with drunks, savages, fallen stars, & a master thief who thinks he's just a crazy little kid. Pretty wild.
The biggest flaw is the heroine Mirany. While Seth is struggling to protect his family, we're never really told why Mirany cares about any of this. She also seems a trifle wimpy & naive beside the mysterious desert thieves & the enigmatic Alexos, who can be a cheerful boy one minute & an overpowering god the next.
Though the scheming priestesses get tiresome after awhile, the desert quest for the three fallen stars is reason enough to read "The Archon." Not Catherine Fisher's best, but an intriguing read.
outstanding fantasy writing - sequel to The Oracle - By: A. Craig, 10 Feb 2004 
If you haven't read The Oracle, read it first because the complexity & brilliance of The Archon can only be fully appreciated if you understand this is a dramatisation of the tension between religious belief & unbelief. Fisher has imagined a Graeco-Egyptian worldin which the god, or Archon, is regularly incarnated, & served by nine masked priestesses who interpret his will. Underneath their masks, the priestesses seethe with personal & political ambition, & few believein the god anyway. Yet he exists, & it's only through him that rain can be brought to a dry land.
In the first novel, the Archon died, & his replacement - a mad little boy, Alexos - had to be found & brought back to thwart to potting of General Argelin & his lover, the priestess Hermia who is the god's Speaker. Mirany, the lowest priestess, doesn't believein the god either but is made to & with the help of a drunken poet Oblek, a corrupted scribe, Seth, & a criminal lord known only as Jackal, brought him back.
All should therefore be well, but it isn't. The General is still plotting, &in the second novel, Hermia is poisoning anyone who getsin her way, & the land is still parched despite brief rainfall. Long ago, the Archon offended the Rain Goddess, & now Alexos is determined to make his peace with her by finding three lost stars. He leaves Mirany behindin a city under seige, & journeys with Oblek, Seth & Jackal across a desert haunted by strange beasts & powerful dreams. Corruption, betrayal & evil stalk them, & the boy-god's powers may not be sufficient to protect anyone - least of all himself.
The plot has a long fuse, & it's not until page 50 that it really gets going, but the tension & beauty of Fisher's writing is what makes it really remarkable. She conjures up both her desert world & the possibility of the supernatural with such conviction, you can almost taste the dust. A more complex series than The Snow Walker's Son, it's also about the loneliness of power & the need for friendship. She's one of those rare fantasy writers who can really write (she's also a good poet). Not all her novels are equally good, but this series is.
