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Helma: Tros Book II

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Helma (Tros Book II)

by Talbot Mundy

**Spoilers for the first book here**

The sequel to the epic historical fantasy TROS! OF! SAMOTHRACE! (Emphasis added, but, I think, implied.) is a good book: except it has completely the wrong title.

One nice thing is that this one picks up directly after the first one leaves off; like only minutes have gone by since last we left Tros, sailing back to England from Gaul, having managed to get his father away from Caesar’s legions. He arrives back near Lunden (Don’t judge me, that’s how they spell it) with his men ferociously mutinous because several of them were killed by Romans, and yet they came away with no plunder at all, and therefore no glory, which is the only reason they went on the voyage in the first place. Now they arrive back home, and find that Norsemen have come to raid England, and they see their opportunity to fight for glory and plunder. Tros has a hell of a time trying to fight them and keep them in line; he is only moderately successful, and finally his ship joins the combat against the Viking raiders. Tros, being Tros – or, pardon me, I mean TROS! OF! SAMOTHRACE! – wins his battle, and in the process, wins possession of a troop of Viking warriors when he defeats their leader in single combat. He also takes one of their longships as his own new vessel, the tub he sailed to Gaul having given up the ghost in the fight.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because, you see, the sister of that Viking war leader is – Helma. Over time, the Vikings come to serve Tros willingly, and he puts them in charge of building his new ship, his dream ship; Helma, he marries.

I feel I can spoil this because – there’s no point to it. At all. The romance is awkward and barely present at all in this story; Helma is a decent character, but really she’s a means to an end: the Northmen can’t speak Tros’s language, and Helma is the go-between for Tros and her brother. I suppose we are to see her as the perfect loyal woman, but there’s a much better example in this story: Fflur.

The main plot of this one has little to do with Caesar, though he is the snake in the grass behind most of the intrigue, the prime mover of the betrayals and infighting that fill this book. Caesar has sent agents to corrupt and break apart the British tribesmen, and they are, sadly, very effective; this book made me dislike several of the British tribesmen I got to like in the first book, as well as Conops, Tros’s main lackey, who disapproves of Tros’s marriage to the blonde Valkyrie. The worst casualty here is Caswallon, the king of the British tribe that Tros is allied with; he is a hero in the first book, and nearly Tros’s equal in importance and coolness, but in this book, he’s just a pain in the ass. His wife, Fflur, still rocks, and that’s why I don’t think Helma was necessary; she doesn’t add anything to the story that Fflur hadn’t already brought, other than she is married to Tros, instead of Caswallon.

Overall, the action in this one was still great, but the intrigues and the plot and the character development weren’t as interesting. I really want Tros to finish his ship and just sail the hell away from Caesar and all of this; I know Caesar is going to conquer Britain (Because that’s what happened, and Mundy was trying to stick to history with the Romans), and so I want Tros to try to circumnavigate the world, the goal he expresses in this book. I didn’t see the point of Helma, really didn’t see why Mundy named the book for her; this makes me both eager to read the third book, and also leery – as it is named for another new female character. Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we?

Tros! Of! Samothrace!

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Tros Of Samothrace

By Talbot Mundy

 

Bought this one (several years ago) for the title. And the author’s name. Of course I did.

I also bought it because it had this wonderful pulp adventure cover image (even though, as my artist wife has pointed out, the anatomy is off; nobody’s torso actually bends like that), and because the story seemed pretty pirate-y. The hero, the almighty Tros of Samothrace, is a sailor by nature and inclination; the story is partly about his pursuit of the perfect ship, which he speaks of building more than once; and it also tells the tale of Tros sailing with a British crew and thwarting the invasion of England by Julius Caesar himself, which I thought would be interesting.

It was. This is the second time I’ve read this, because after the first time (And I genuinely can’t remember if I reviewed this book then, but since I can’t find the review to confirm it, I figured I might as well give it a write-up) I went back to Powell’s City of Books (Just about the only thing I miss after moving away from Oregon) and bought all four sequels; I wanted to read them again now, and so I re-read Tros so I could remember the story and characters before I read Helma, the second book. Which I have now read, and enjoyed, and will review in a few days.

This book held up well to a re-reading; better than most pulp adventure books. Part of that is because the character really is delightful; Tros, apart from his epic name (which I absolutely love and can’t resist saying with maximum emphasis every chance I get — “Tros! Of! Samothrace!”), has a great blend of brooding violence and anger, mixed with a life-loving, laughing vitality; he goes straight from cursing at a storm to laughing at the wind as it blows rain into his face, and it makes it a hell of a lot of fun to read his story. Another part of the quality of this book is the historical aspect: Mundy wrote a book that very well could describe what it was really like to face off against Julius Caesar. The descriptions of the character – who does appear in the book, holding conversations with Tros as well as meeting him in battle on land and at sea – seem pretty well in line with what I know about the man himself; Mundy doesn’t change history or Caesar in inserting Tros into his story. Caesar is still the unbeatable general who has at this point conquered all of Gaul; Tros only manages to get the better of him by taking advantage of Caesar’s weak points, and he frequently has to work hard to evade getting steamrollered by Caesar at his strongest. Mundy does it very well. The historical setting, the Anglo-British tribesmen whom Tros allies with, and the druid/mystic religion that Tros shares with the people of Britain, are all quite interesting and well done.

But really, this is a pulp adventure novel like Conan or Allan Quatermain; Tros is a good pulp hero, Caesar makes a fantastic villain, and the adventure is mighty fun to read. Definitely recommend.