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    In the Lion's Mouth: A Novel
    In the Lion's Mouth: A Novel
    In the Lion's Mouth: A Novel
    Ebook291 pages5 hours

    In the Lion's Mouth: A Novel

    By Michael Flynn

    3.5/5

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    It's a big Spiral Arm, and the scarred man, Donavan buigh, has gone missing in it, upsetting the harper Mearana's plans for a reconciliation between her parents. Bridget ban, a Hound of the League, doubts that reconciliation is possible or desirable; but nonetheless has dispatched agents to investigate the disappearance.

    The powerful Ravn Olafsdottr, a Shadow of the Names, slips into Clanthompson Hall to tell mother and daughter of the fate of Donovan buigh. In the Long Game between the Confederation of Central Worlds and the United League of the Periphery, Hound and Shadow are mortal enemies; yet a truce descends between them so that the Shadow may tell her tale. There is a struggle in the Lion's Mouth, the bureau that oversees the Shadows—a clandestine civil war of sabotage and assassination between those who would overthrow Those of Name and the loyalists who support them. And Donovan, one-time Confederal agent, has been recalled to take a key part, willingly or no.



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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 17, 2012
    ISBN9781429923552
    In the Lion's Mouth: A Novel
    Author

    Michael Flynn

    Michael Flynn lives in Easton, Pennsylvania. He is the winner of the Robert A. Heinlein award, and a Hugo Nominee for Eifelheim. He is the author of the Firestar series of novels, and is an Analog magazine alumnus whose fiction now appears regularly in all the major SF magazines.

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    Reviews for In the Lion's Mouth

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Michael Flynn's entertaining 'Spiral Arm' series continues with a 3rd volume 'In the Lion's Mouth', where the tale of a convoluted battle between factions of Confederal Shadows and Those of Name is played out across the Rift, related as a chant by one Ravn Olafsdottr to the Red Hound Bridget Ban and her daughter. More is learned of the fate of Donavan buigh, once a hero, now shattered.
    • 3/5
      January Dancer and Up Jim River were interesting explorations in a confusing universe where the Terran Empire seems to have fallen and the worlds of that empire are entering a dark age. Donavan the a character running through both books appears again as the central figure now.In the prior books the stone ie January Dancer or the quest to find the last treasure ship from Earth and find the Harpers mother Bridget Ban were key motivations for the actions in the books. Now the quest centers around finding Donavan and the mystery of why his mind was shattered into 9, possibly 10 personalities.In doing so we enter a shadow war war between 2 gangs / spy agencies of the 2 competing loci of power in this universe. All this killing and savagery happens while the local population of the various worlds turn a blind eye. The plot lines kept me reading, the various literary genres were a pain to deal with. If you are not familiar with epic poetry and celtic accents you will have trouble with this book. This aspect of it reduced my enjoyment and rating of the book.
    • 4/5
      The feel of this novel and its two predecessors, January Dancer and Up Jim River is unique. It combines a sort of 'space opera' approach with dialogue and description from what seems like classic mythic literature, where yarns are spun about heroes and villains, and spaceships, even when in quantum space, seem to function more like sail boats.There are no aliens, just humans from a miscellany of colonised planets with histories so long that they are mostly myth. Scientists like Newton and Einstein are quoted like prophets. The only thing that the ragbag of human cultures agree on is that no one much likes Terrans.There are two major powers: The United League of the Periphery, and the Confederacy of Central Worlds. The Confederacy is the remnant of Earth and its original colonies while the League is composed of the planets far out on the spiral arm of the galaxy. Both are engaged in a struggle using secret-service agencies, employing agents known as Hounds, Shadows or Those of Name. In this novel, Donovan, an ex-agent for both sides, who contains multiple personalities, is expected home for a family rendezvous with his daugther Mearana and Bridget his lover. But he does not arrive.He has been kidnapped by Ravn one, one of "Those of Name", whose organisation seems to be sliding into chaos.Once tasked with Donovan's elimination at the first sign of disloyalty, Ravn has returned at some risk to her to make known to Donovan's fate with his daughter and former lover,a Hound. Much of this novel is set on the ship bringing Donovan back : there is danger even in this confined environ. So two threads, one taking place in a short period of time and going forward where Ravn is cautiously listened to by Mearana, Bridget and her ready to shoot on sight minions, and the other that has already taken place and involves Donovan and his unintended return to Commonwealth space where civil war is brewing and some of the rebel Shadows seem to need him for their own reasons....
    • 4/5
      Michael F. Flynn's In the Lion's Mouth is a space opera of the new variety, which is to say that it takes a genre that once stood for oversimplified adventure, sometimes of the Campbellian mode and redolent of the pulps, and infuses it with political intrigue and sociological awareness. The planets that make up the novel's empire have ceased to be spaces only of conquest, adventure, and wonder, and become contained worlds connected by a common but divergent history. This is not to suggest that Flynn's novel has abandoned the tropes of the adventure story, but that it brings a rigorous examination of the conditions of the empire in which that adventure occurs. In the Lion's Mouth is compelling not because of its adventure elements, but because it is at once an exploration of the inner workings of its network of worlds and an almost satirical play on the conventions of the old, pulpy space opera.In the Lion’s Mouth alternates between two stages of Ravn Olafsdottr’s journeys through the labyrinth of the Lion’s Mouth, the bureau that oversees an exceedingly efficient class of assassins known as the Shadows, which has begun splintering into competing factions. The frame narrative concerns her attempts to convince a rival organization, the Hounds, to put their cards on the table of the civil war raging within the Lion’s Mouth. This narrative also forms a clever stage upon which Ravn can demonstrate her manipulative talents as she relates another tale through flashback. That second strand concerns an intimate of the one Hounds: husband and father Donovan buigh. Donovan, a former Shadow who had his mind split into multiple personalities by an as-yet-unknown agent, was, we learn, kidnapped by Ravn to fulfill, willingly or otherwise, a purpose in the war. As the frame narrative cuts into Donovan’s story, we also learn that Ravn is up to much more than truce and explanation. Rather, she’s up to something vaguely sinister.Flynn uses this structure to tell two unique tales of intrigue, both deeply political and both productive of an edge-of-your-seat reading experience that always has a surprise in store – even on the last page. The frame narrative, far from being merely a stage for Flynn’s "story time," has a hidden agenda of its own, which Ravn and the Hounds eventually unearth. As Ravn remarks, in the heavy accent of Confederal, before embarking on the first piece of Donovan’s story: "This will be a tell to tangle your strings, oon my word; but I will give it to you in my oon way and reveal things in their oon time. Life is art, and must be artfully told, in noble deeds and fleshed in colors bold" (28). Here one might find Flynn’s satirical play on space opera, forming an astonishing tale of Donovan’s and the Shadows’ extraordinary feats in the Lion’s Mouth through Ravn’s (admitted) flawed retelling of the events:"Tell me," [Bridget, the Hound] says, "how you can know the thoughts of Donovan buigh, when I doubt even he knows them so well?"The Confederal [Ravn] smiles. "You must grant me two things. The first is many weeks of conversation between us, in which he may have revealed his mind to me.""That would be quite a revelation as I understand things. And second?""And second, you must grant me some poetic license." (53-54)Should we take Ravn’s words as gospel, as Donovan’s daughter believes we should ("I think she tells the truth. The Donovan she describes is a man I recognize. If she has embellished his thoughts, she has not done so falsely" (55)), even if she fills in the gaps with her own "poetic" imaginings? Or are the embellishments meant to distract us from the signs that something is amiss? For Ravn, it seems, the myth is a means to an end, not the property of a particular body politic to retell the story of history. In other words, the tropes of traditional space opera – the empire, the grand adventures, the loose attachments to actual mythological forms – are exposed by Ravn for their farcical nature: they are little more than devices of empire, broadly speaking. And for Ravn, that means it’s a device than can be retooled for different purposes, even to work against the established structures of power.In a way, In the Lion’s Mouth as new space opera is a response to Darko Suvin’s assertion that space opera is sub-literature – a literary form which has more in common with the elements of myth and fairy tales than with the literature of cognitive estrangement, inside of which he places science fiction. Flynn, whether intending to or not, sets the stage for an internally rigorous re-imagining of the space opera (though certainly he is not alone in this endeavor). This rigor is evident in a number of elements, but for the sake of space, I will only briefly discuss two: language and the world.While dialects are not new to science fiction, Flynn puts language to a particular use: manipulation. Ravn’s centrality in the narrative, as already mentioned, provides an ambiguous reading of events, but so too does her language. The consistency with which Flynn elaborates on Ravn’s accent is eventually made questionable by her intentional slippages: “It is a rhetorical trick, this abrupt dropping of the hooting accent, but no less effective for that. It freights her pronouncement with greater significance” (26). If it isn’t clear by the 26th page that Ravn is a questionable figure, then the numerous slippages of language to follow and her dubious alliances should do the trick. As much as the text is a performance, so too are the characters who are playing in it. But Flynn never fully reveals the game.Within Flynn’s future space, language rests on a solid foundation. From the opening pages, we are shown the degree to which Flynn has built his world: a map roughly showing the layout of worlds provides the scope of things to come. While many of these worlds are not part of the narrative, the ones that are provide the illusion of completeness. One illuminating scene in this regard draws upon the clichéd history of the bar as a staging area for men (or women) of ill repute. The chapter opens with two sections which tell us the history of Yuts’ga (the world where the various pieces of the Shadow puzzle have begun to assemble). The first of these explains the ancient history of Yuts’ga – where it got its name, who settled there, and what those settlers found when they set up shop (208-209). The second narrows the historical scope to Cambertown (209-210), and finally, in the next section, to the Mountain Dragon Inn, where we are introduced to Domino Tight, one of the many Shadows elaborated upon in Ravn’s tale (210-212). It is here that Flynn gives us a breakdown of the complex inner workings of the Shadows-in-action: who the Shadows command (their “flocks”), how they operate, and so on (213-226). While this is not the only scene that shows us the Shadows-at-work (one of the other interesting scenes is an official duel between two Shadows), it is a scene which illuminates the rigor with which Flynn has created his world. These are fully realized elements which exist within the familiar spaces of the adventure, but also seem to bring something new to the mix. But In the Lion’s Mouth is not just an exploration of the internal machinations of empire; it is also an adventure which twists the old into something with the appearance of the new. Flynn manipulates the old, reductive network of worlds made loosely into belongings of empire or spaces to be explored and conquered by its agents into one with the pieces tenuously placed on the board while its interiors pull themselves apart.In the Lion’s Mouth, however, does suffer from a sense of overdevelopment. Seasoned readers of Flynn’s universe will likely recognize many of the features which seemed alien to me. While the novel can be read, as the publicist suggested, independently of the rest of the series, I would suggest starting from the beginning. Where the beginning begins depends on whether you believe his Firestar cycle (Firestar, Rogue Star, Lodestar, and Falling Stars) should be read before The Spiral Arm series (The January Dancer, Up Jim River, and In the Lion’s Mouth) – this is apparently a center of mild debate. Then again, Flynn apparently has a tendency to tie “worlds” together.In any case, so much of In the Lion’s Mouth gave me the impression that no matter how closely I read, I would always be missing out on something, like an "in" joke. There is an extensive universe attached to this novel, one which Flynn only touches with the tips of his writer’s toes. I don’t want to suggest that Flynn’s novel is unreadable, however; the truth is that even with the alienation, the novel never ceases to entertain. But I can’t help feeling that the full reading experience for In the Lion’s Mouth demands familiarity with the rest of Flynn’s universe.And yet, despite that need for familiarity and the lofty praise of Flynn’s neo space opera, the ultimate measure of a novel’s value is in its ability to entertain. In the Lion’s Mouth never falters on that front. At once a political thriller and a high-tech war story, Flynn’s novel does nearly everything right. The experience is immersive, the plotting relentless in its forward motion, its secrets desirable, and its action – and attending developments – enormously exciting. If this is the new space opera, insofar as such a thing exists, then science fiction is definitely on the right track.
    • 3/5
      In the Lion's Mouth by Michael Flynn. It's the third in the January Dancer series but for the most part it can also read as a stand alone novel. I have not read the first two novels in the series so I went into this book completely blind about the story line and characters. I think if I did read the first two books I would have been better prepared for In the Lion's Mouth. However I did manage to keep up with what was going on.Donavan buigh is a hard character to explain. He's not one man but rather a infusion of several different people. At first I thought he was schizophrenic because he heard voices in his head but it turns out these voices are actually people joined together with him due to a scientific procedure. He also is having memory problems as well. Remember this is science fiction so things can get a little crazy. Donavan is being taken against his will by the Shadow, Ravn Olasfdottr. She's also the narrator of this tale. Ravn is one of those characters you can't tell which side she's playing for. The story line in this book is very fast paced. It's also very interesting and entertaining. Overall this is a good story. If you like science fiction and space operas then check this book out. I would recommend maybe starting at the beginning of the series to get the whole picture but if you wanted to start in the middle then you wouldn't be too lost.

    Book preview

    In the Lion's Mouth - Michael Flynn

    I. RIFTWARD: THE FIRST COUNTERARGUMENT

    Swift we sped, your Donovan and I,

    Toward the Rift that rends the stars

    Apart, we plied the boulevards that bind them.

    Sooner far than I had sought for

    Woke he from those slumbers so awarded

    That he should wake when waking no more mattered.

    Wroth he was at being thus abducted

    And for some time the issue lay in doubt

    Between us. E’en I must sleep,

    And in that sleep lie open to his guile.

    But hold!

    I shall place distance ’tween my tale

    And me, and speak of Ravn as I do of others;

    And thus relate as would a goddess grand

    Who sits benign atop the world and, glancing down,

    Sees all things in her ken with even eye.

    And so … It begins.

    The scarred man awoke muzzy-headed in a dark, close room, confused at where he was, and tangled in wires and tubes. The last clear thing in the jumbled closets of his mind was his buying of a ticket to Dangchao Waypoint, and for a fuddled moment he wondered if he might be within that very ship, already on his way.

    But if so, he was grossly cheated, for he had purchased third-class fare on a Hadley liner and, of the many things his present accommodations were not, a third-class cabin on a Hadley liner was one. The room was barely large enough to contain the thin, hard bunk on which he lay and, when that bunk had been stowed into the wall, the room grew paradoxically smaller: a pace and a half one way; two and a half the other. It was the half pace that galled.

    It was a room for keeping prisoners.

    Fool, said the Fudir, once he had removed the catheters and intravenous feeding tubes that spiderlike had webbed him in his cot. We’ve been shanghaied.

    How long were we asleep? Donovan asked.

    *   *   *

    There is this one thing that you must know about the scarred man; or rather, nine things. It is not his hooked chin, nor his sour humors, nor even the scars that interlace his scalp and leave his preternaturally whitened hair in tufts. It is that he is a man of parts, and those parts are the pieces of his mind, shattered like a mirror and rearranged to others’ whims. It is in the nature of the intellect to reflect upon things; and so a mirror is the proper metaphor, but the scarred man’s reflections are more kaleidoscopic than

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