Pulp Fantasy Library: Artifact of Evil

Despite its many deficiencies, I'm rather fond of Gary Gygax's first novel of Gord the Rogue, Saga of Old City, which I described, in my review, as "What if Oliver Twist had been written by Fritz Leiber?" I meant that description most sincerely, as it seems indisputable that Leiber and his stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser loomed large in Gygax's mind as he made his own forays into the world fantasy literature. Nevertheless, as I also said in my earlier post, there's – to my mind anyway – an unfortunate escalation in the subsequent Gord novels, both in terms of the character's personal power and importance and the overall stakes of his adventures. Whereas Saga of Old City is a picaresque, the novels that followed, starting with 1986's Artifact of Evil, began a march toward overblown, epic fantasy.

Artifact of Evil takes its title from the novel's MacGuffin, an object of power consisting of three parts, one for each of the evil alignments (Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic), that, when joined, can free Tharizdun from his prison and initiate a cosmic war in which the dread god might prove triumphant. Knowledge of this artifact is first acquired when Gord becomes involved in the siege of a fortress in a wild region known as the Pomarj. During the battle, he captures a red-robed man who, he later learns, was a high-level member of the Scarlet Brotherhood, a villainous monastic order devoted to Tharizdun. From him, Gord and his comrades discover the Brotherhood's plot to locate all three pieces of the eponymous artifact (they already possess one at the start of the novel). Naturally, they vow to stop them.

Taken purely as an adjunct to Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk setting, Artifact of Evil has a quirky appeal. Indeed, when I first read it long ago, its main attraction to me was seeing Gygax present his campaign setting in greater detail and I can't deny that, on that level at least, the book retains some appeal. We learn a great deal about the history and politics – both mundane and otherworldly – of the setting and I won't deny that, as a long-time fan of Greyhawk, I smile every time I read a name I recognized from previously published materials or could connect the events of the novel to something hinted at in an adventure module. 

That said, Artifact of Evil is a mess as a novel, even by the rather low standards of RPG-derived fiction. Whatever charm Gord had as a character in Saga of Old City quickly evaporates, as he is lost in a huge cast of characters and a whirlwind series of travels, combats, and deus ex machina escapes, often by means of magic or magical items. More vexing for me, I think, is the way that Gord, originally portrayed as simply an orphan child who grew up to become one of the City of Greyhawk's greatest thieves after an apprenticeship on its mean streets, becomes an almost mythological hero, squaring off against demon lords and demigods. Indeed, the book makes clear that Gord commands the attention of at least one powerful being (Rexfelis the Cat Lord – though, to be fair, this was hinted at strongly previously). Gord is thus not really in the same league as the Gray Mouser or even Conan: he is, in fact, much more important within his setting.

In the end, Artifact of Evil is a book only a diehard Greyhawk fan could love and that's a shame. I truly felt that Gord's first novel appearance was a foundation on which Gygax could have built an interesting story of low fantasy hijinks in and around the City of Greyhawk (and better developed his skills as a writer of fiction). Instead, it reads like a rather overwrought collection of game session reports from a campaign with an overly generous referee. I wish it were otherwise.