Showing posts with label Souveneir Press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Souveneir Press. Show all posts

Friday, June 11, 2010

Voyager In Bondage: Final Volume of the "Voyager" Trilogy



Voyager in Bondage, by Simon Finch

Souveneir Press, 1981

The final book of Simon Finch's Vesuvio trilogy, Voyager In Bondage was published in 1981. Whereas the second book, Pagan Voyager, had come out just one short year after 1978's Golden Voyager, it took Finch two years to write this final volume. Voyager In Bondage is also very short. Golden Voyager was over 400 pages, with Pagan Voyager coming in at almost 300. Bondage is just over 200 pages long. But still, you can't blame Finch for struggling to come up with material. I mean, early second century CE in pagan Europe, with its manifold religions and larger-than-life characters and scheming Roman aristocrats; what writer could come up with an interesting novel from such meager material?

Coincidentally, Voyager in Bondage, unlike the previous two novels, was not published in the US. Either Finch's agent couldn't secure a deal or no US publisher wanted it. Strange, because according to the UK publisher, Souvenir Press, the Voyager trilogy was "best-selling." Perhaps it's moreso that US readers didn't cotton to the near homoerotic content of Golden Voyager and Pagan Voyager, and preferred historical fiction which didn't feature every character discussing the size of the hero's "phallus."

Bondage takes place twelve years after the previous book in the trilogy, the dire Pagan Voyager (published in the US as The Pagan). Hadrian's now emperor of Rome, and Vesuvio has spent the past decade living in peace on his estate in Campania, raising his son (Aurelius, now 14 years old), and living in contentment with his wife Miranda. In fact, so content is Vesuvio that his son doesn't even realize the brutal travails Vesuvio endured before Aurelius was born; the kid actually looks up to one of Vesuvio's slaves - the wily Orphic Christian Lexor - as a man of adventure.

In the previous two novels Finch proved he was capable of plagiarizing from himself: Pagan Voyager was in many ways just a reworking of Golden Voyager. To whit: in Pagan Voyager Vesuvio was cast into slavery, flung from one new owner to the next, competed in a high-stakes chariot race in an arena, befriended a kindly old Jew who eventually helped him, and finally regained freedom thanks to the help of Roman aristocrats. All just like in Golden Voyager. Bondage continues this trend, ripping off Pagan Voyager. In that novel, Vesuvio's wife was abducted. Here it's his son who's abducted. In that novel, the villains were an evil man and woman who propagated a strange new god named Bendis. Here the villains are an evil man and woman who propagate a strange new god named Christ. In Pagan Voyager Vesuvio allowed himself to be passed around from one master to another, losing all sense of urgency in finding his kidnapped fiancé. Here Vesuvio, despite his son being kidnapped, finds time to visit the Games in Rome, plans to visit Trajan's Bath, and goes on impromptu sight-seeing tours. The parallels continue, and add further proof that Finch was running out of ideas.

Bondage follows the same twisted path as the preceding two books. It's infuriating in a way. Finch sets the groundwork: Vesuvio's happy life shattered by a unappreciative slave who steals Vesuvio's son and demands a massive ransom. Vesuvio and twenty year-old Antony, son of Vesuvio's head slave (and hence a slave himself), set off in pursuit. The reader expects a vengeance-driven romp through Hadrian-era Rome. The reader is disappointed. Because, just as in past novels, Finch chooses instead to indulge in go-nowhere digressions and pointless, page-consuming dialogs between immaterial characters. Not only that, but Vesuvio himself is relegated to a nonentity. I mean, if YOUR son was kidnapped, would YOU find time to visit the bordello of a prostitute friend and plan to relax in the Trajan Baths? That's what Vesuvio does. It would be fine if he was a deadbeat dad, but Finch wants us to believe that Vesuvio's going nuts with rage, trying to get young Aurelius back. It's laughable.

But here's the best part: during the course of this book, Vesuvio is again captured and thrown into the miserable life of a slave. Just like in the previous two novels. Granted, this happens toward the end of the book, but it happens all the same. Arriving in Alexandria at the climax of his lame "search" for Aurelius (which basically constitutes talking to remote-area Roman aristocracy and visiting bordellos), Vesuvio is thrown in prison for half-baked reasons and sent to the arena as a gladiator. You'd think the guy would get the idea and never again leave his estate in Campania.

The finale of Bondage (and the trilogy) sees Finch at last writing what the series has been leading to: outright s&m with a heavy gay subtext. Basically, the Gor novels set in ancient Rome: all leather armor and chain mail and edged weapons and strapping young lads. The penultimate section of this novel is even titled "Leather and Chain," for all those who don't get it. Vesuvio finds himself about to become a retiarri, fighting with net and trident against lions. But then Finch pulls the carpet out from under us once again, denying readers the scene he's spent so many pages setting up. It was at this point I realized something: not once in this entire trilogy did Vesuvio fight anyone. How strange for an epic of historical fiction! No sword fights, no mortal combat, not even a fisticuff or two...no, Vesuvio, over the course of this trilogy, instead spends his time rushing a la Don Quixote from one poorly-plotted and poorly-conceived situation to the next, flung about like a frisbee on a windy beach.

Bondage is the first of the Vesuvio novels to deal with Christianity in any depth. I assume Finch had read the recently-published Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, which was an international bestseller in 1980, around the time Finch was writing this book. Because the Christianity Vesuvio encounters is of the Gnostic bent, with Orphic rituals overlaid. Unfortunately Finch didn't do much research: characters actually refer to their Christianity as "Gnostic" (whereas the designation wasn't coined until the 1800s), and several Christians refer to their "scripture," which as any Robert Price/Earl Doherty reader would know is a misnomer; despite the best efforts of Josh McDowell et al, there is no evidence of extant Christian scripture until well into the second century. But this is a minor problem; luckily, Bondage features no scenes of characters experiencing "salvation" through Christ on the arena floor or other ilk expected of religious-themed historical fiction. Indeed, the Christians come off rather badly in this novel, so I give Finch credit for that.

A strange thing about Bondage is that Finch backs off on the homoerotic context so prevalent in the previous volumes. That's not to say it's entirely gone. This time young Antony gets most of the attention, with prostitutes and young boys trying to get some quality time with his "manhood," which, Antony is sure to remind them, isn't as big as his master Vesuvio's. I'm not making this up. Adding to the strangeness, in Bondage Finch seems to finally realize that ancient Romans cursed fluently, and so spices up the textbook blandness which had bogged down the sex scenes in the first two novels. This does not make these scenes any sexier, unfortunately. Instead it all comes off as Finch's last-ditch attempt to finally make his books steamy and shocking. Failure all around.

As far as the writing itself goes, Finch actually got worse with each volume of the trilogy; the first, Golden Voyager, was easily the best written. Bondage is riddled with bizarre grammar, lackluster scenes, flat characters, and outright mistakes: at one point, Antony tells some friends that he and Vesuvio saw a woman get stoned to death upon their arrival in Alexandria, whereas Antony and Vesuvio saw no such thing in the narrative itself; instead, they learned about the stoning through a conversation, a conversation that didn't even take place in Alexandria. Mistakes like this mar the entire book, little things Finch should have caught with even a cursory edit. In addition, Finch apparently discovered semicolons shortly before writing this novel. He uses them to break up just about every other sentence, even sentences that don't need them.

Finch seems to have published only one more novel: 1985's Slave Island. After this I'm not sure what happened to him. He has no Web presence; an online search yields only sellers with copies of his extant novels, which no one seems to have taken the time to review. It's sad in a way. A casualty of the information age, maybe? Because I imagine this Vesuvio trilogy, trashy and poorly-written as it sometimes is, had its fan in the day. In fact it certainly did, otherwise Souvenir Press wouldn't have reprinted the lot in 1985. So where is Finch today? My bet is he burned out in the novel-writing world. Or, as I opined in my Pagan Voyager review, he took on a pseudonym and delved into a whole `nother sort of male-centric fiction...

Pagan Voyager: Book Two of the "Voyager" Trilogy



Pagan Voyager

Souveneir Press, 1979

Published in the UK in 1979 as Pagan Voyager and in the US as The Pagan (as seen to the left), this is book two of Simon Finch's Vesuvio trilogy, the epic struggles and sexual adventures of one man in the Roman Empire of the early second century CE. We pick up with Vesuvio six years after the first novel, 1978's Golden Voyager (and again we're informed that the year is "110 AD by the Christian calculation" - whereas this form of dating wasn't invented for a few more centuries). Vesuvio's now an established and wealthy member of Roman society, the owner of the land in Campania which was stolen from his family in the previous novel. Vesuvio also owns many slaves (despite his thought at the end of Golden Voyager that he would never own any), giving them easy means of freedom, and treating everyone with respect and kindness. Not yet thirty years old, Vesuvio is still unmarried, though he plans to free the beautiful slave Miranda, with whom he's recently fathered a baby boy. The novel opens with Vesuvio in Rome, arranging to free her - so he can legally marry her.

Of course, this being Vesuvio, things go to Hades quick. Miranda is taken captive by slave traders (much as Vesuvio himself was in Golden Voyager) and our hero plunges into a quest to get her back. Only problem is, Vesuvio proves to be one underwhelming hero (or maybe it's just that Finch is an underwhelming author). Because, well, he doesn't get very far in his quest. Instead, Vesuvio is quickly captured and then sold into slavery, and this novel, just like Golden Voyager, details his plight in servitude. And just as Finch focused on episodic tales of Vesuvio in slavery in Golden Voyager rather than on Vesuvio's betrayal and eventual vengeance, here too he denies readers the epic quest of revenge and reunion which is promised in the opening pages.

One of the major frustrations in Golden Voyager was its lack of a strong villain. Even though Vesuvio was sold into slavery and his family killed, his eventual revenge was given short shrift by Finch, with the humdrum villain appearing for a scant few pages. Pagan Voyager is no different. We meet the villains in the early chapters, and a loathsome pair they are; the reader truly wants to see them get their comeuppance. But Finch drops the ball and mostly forgets about them, instead getting sidetracked with the background stories of the various slaves Vesuvio meets. In other ways too Pagan Voyager is a rewrite of its predecessor; just like that novel, this one features a major and deadly chariot race in which Vesuvio proves his mettle against all competitors.

But the thing is, whereas Golden Voyager was at least fun in its addle-headed way, Pagan Voyager just comes off as dire and pointless. We've already seen Vesuvio cast about the ancient world in various modes of slavery; why do we need to see it again? And here, just like in Golden Voyager, the villains - the ones who ordered Miranda to be kidnapped and who cast Vesuvio into slavery - are dealt with in a perfunctory manner. Indeed, as the climax approaches, with the villains on their way to Vesuvio's present location, Finch instead obliviously wastes time with pages and pages of Vesuvio being groomed and dressed for a party, where he is to serve as a pleasure slave. Imagine if in the film Ransom Mel Gibson's character spent the last ten minutes trying on a few different pairs of clothes and you'll get the idea. Worse yet is that Vesuvio doesn't even play a part in the villains' eventual comeuppance, thereby rendering the whole thing moot.

What's really unfortunate is that Vesuvio goes through his ordeals without question. This was understandable in Golden Voyager. There he was just a kid, snatched from a wealthy family and thrust into the world of slavery. But he suffered through a three-year ordeal in that novel, emerging as a triumphant Roman citizen. So it's really strange that Vesuvio so readily accepts his return to slavery in this novel. He goes from one owner to the next, taking to his chores and scoping out the lay of the land. This man is a high-born Roman with his own villa in southern Italy, whose wife-to-be has been kidnapped! It's all very frustrating, and there's no way such a thing could be depicted onscreen; audiences would be throwing refuse at the ineffectual "hero" of the film.

In my review of Golden Voyager I mentioned - a bit too thoroughly - the homoerotic subtext so apparent in Finch's prose. Pages and pages about Vesuvio's good looks, his superb physique, his large "phallus." Here Finch goes even further. In Golden Voyager Vesuvio made it through the book without engaging in "unnatural sex," ie sex with another man - even though this seemingly was Vesuvio's greatest fear/obsession. But he does not fare so well in Pagan Voyager. Because, not even a few days out into his quest, Vesuvio is captured by pirates who proceed to use and abuse him. I've never seen a main character so debased in a novel. Vesuvio is used as a sexual toy by the decrepit men on the boat, so brutally and thoroughly that he's eventually cast aside as useless. Finch of course goes into hyper-description mode, recounting what the pirates do to Vesuvio.

But here's the thing: Vesuvio never once fights back. He just gives in to his fate, and accepts the men's abuse. It's all very, very disturbing. And when one takes into consideration the amount of detail Finch gives the male characters as compared to the women (he'll spend pages on the various males Vesuvio encounters, each with "rippling muscles" and "deep chests," etc, whereas the women characters are only minimally described), you know for sure something's up. But like in Golden Voyager, despite Vesuvio's constant fear of being taken advantage of by another man (reading Finch, one gets the impression that men had only two worries in the ancient world: 1.) being sold as a slave, and 2.) being sold as a slave and then sodomized), despite the minutiae of detail Finch gives the "burly" and "handsome" men Vesuvio meets, Finch still wants to tell us that gay sex is "unnatural." There's even a lesbian in this book, with another female character unsuccessfully struggling to think of her in "that way" in order to use her for her own ends. So one can easily see Finch was having some issues which he tried to work out in the narrative. Finch's last novel appears to have been 1985's Slave Island, something about 17th Century pirates, but I imagine he eventually began writing gay fiction under a pseudonym. Because let me tell you, folks, he was already pretty much there in Pagan Voyager.

Otherwise Finch is up to his usual tricks: the book is moreso softcore porn than historical fiction. Finch follows the same method throughout: he'll set up a scene with some details gleaned from his knowledge of the ancient world, and then proceed into several pages of minutely-detailed sex scenes. But not a single one of these scenes is arousing. I read stuff in Penthouse Letters as a kid (one of the benefits of having an older brother) that was more scintillating. Also, the s&m elements in Golden Voyager are even stronger in this sequel. For example, within the first three pages Finch gives us a harrowing scene of a brutal whipping, providing the details of each wicked snap of the whip, complete with characters soiling themselves in agony. Characters who, by the way, have absolutely zilch to do with the rest of the novel; indeed, the scene itself has nothing to do with the rest of the novel. But this is just one of the many sadomasochistic pleasures Finch indulges in throughout; Colleen McCullough this ain't.

I'm not sure about the UK edition, but the US version of the novel, The Pagan, is filled with bizarre grammatical errors and misspellings. I'll go ahead and give Finch the benefit of doubt and assume the publisher was at fault. But beyond that, the book really is poorly written, filled with gross coincidences (everyone Vesuvio meets either knows Miranda or the people he's searching for), muddled plotlines, and go-nowhere digressions. Worse yet is that in this novel Finch tries to impress us with his modicum knowledge of Latin, peppering the narrative with occasional words and phrases. Only problem is - and this is a problem I have with much historical fiction - these characters are already speaking Latin. So why must Finch (and other historical fiction authors) give us a few words in that language? The book's already historically-inaccurate in that characters are speaking English; a few "actual" words here and there won't change things.

Pagan Voyager came out one exact year after Golden Voyager, but it wasn't until 1981 that Finch published the final volume of the trilogy, Voyager In Bondage. That one wasn't even published in the US, but thanks to the fantabulous Internet I've gained my copy from an overseas seller, and am now duty-bound to read it. Jupiter give me strength.

Golden Voyager: Book 1 of the strange "Voyager" trilogy...


Golden Voyager, by Simon Finch

Souveneir Press, 1978

Published in 1978, Golden Voyager was Simon Finch's first novel, and also the first in a trilogy concerning main character Vesuvio and his adventures around the Roman Empire during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. The novel is of course an epic, with Vesuvio cast about into a variety of locales and environments that would even have Ben-Hur envious. According to the "About the Author" page, Finch was 32 when he published the novel, and in his spare time travelled the globe giving lectures on ancient slavery. It's a living, I guess. But truth to tell, Finch's knowledge on this subject is put to good use in Golden Voyager, lending a grim note of reality to what is otherwise your typical pulp-fiction male fantasy of purple prose.

The novel opens in 101 CE (strangely, we learn this through Vesuvio's thoughts - that the year is "101 AD according to the Christian calculation," when meanwhile this form of dating wasn't created for several more centuries), with our hero Vesuvio a strapping young lad 18 years of age, a walking mass of muscle, a young man wise beyond his years, his hair a thick mop of blonde (super-rare in Vesuvio's homeland of southern Italy, Finch often reminds us; in fact, Vesuvio's "golden" tresses are what give the novel its title). In other words, the typical lead male character in the typical historical fantasy - super-strong and super-smart, a demigod amongst lesser men. To ram this home even more, we are treated to several scenes where other characters have nothing better to do than sit around and talk about how great Vesuvio is, particularly the size of his "phallus" (more about that later).

Born to a wealthy, aristocratic family, Vesuvio is the firstborn of two sons and thus being groomed for military greatness. In another "huh?" moment, we learn Vesuvio was named thusly after the "recent" eruption of nearby volcano Vesuvius (which covered Pompeii in 79 CE, four years before our hero was born). This would be like naming your daughter "Katrina," in honor of the hurricane which killed so many and destroyed so much. Regardless, Vesuvio is soon to marry his beloved, and has often found himself thinking of her, even when lying with the attractive women amongst the 4,000 slaves his family owns (and trust me, Vesuvio lays with a LOT of women in this book).

Political machinations result in Vesuvio being taken captive by slave traders. Not backing down to the traders on the slave galley, he's thrashed for disobedience and then taken to the captain's quarters (where, even though he's bound and chained and bleeding, Vesuvio still has time to enjoy the oral arts of a female slave...male fantasy at work, people!). Here the reader get a look into the mind of an ancient slave trader, and you realize once again how little life was worth in ancient times. Eventually sold to a pirate captain, Vesuvio spends the next three years working the oars, escaping the Romans and stealing bounty. Here Finch indulges his inner Robert E. Howard, with Vesuvio becoming entangled (so to speak) with the Red Sonja-esque Athana, a beautiful, Hispanic piratess/former gladiatrix who employs Vesuvio as her right-hand man and who discovers that he (of course) is the only man who can satiate her womanly needs.

After a few hundred pages of digressions, with Vesuvio sent from one new master to the next, the plot finally comes together and our hero gains vengeance in Rome. This is a stirring scene, cut whole-cloth from Ben Hur, as Vesuvio challenges his nemesis Gaius Lucretius to a chariot race in the Flavian Ampitheater (rather than the Circus Maximus, where most chariot races were held). The only problem is, despite his being the cause of all of Vesuvio's suffering, Lucretius only appears for about five pages of the novel. Therefore Vesuvio's vengeance comes off as perfunctory; having just met Lucretius (and rather quickly learning that he was responsible for Vesuvio being sold into slavery and having his family being killed), we just as quickly see him get his comeuppance. Imagine if Emperor Commodus only appeared in the final five minutes of the film Gladiator and you'll get the picture. The revenge scene is overshadowed by what comes next: showered with praise after his victory in the Flavian, Vesuvio attends a Fellini-esque party in which Finch heaps on vividly surrealistic, X-rated description; no doubt the best-written sequence of the book.

Unusually for the typical historical novel, Golden Voyager features scenes of characters getting high. Drugs were in fact used in the ancient world, particularly marijuana - see Chris Bennett's Green Gold: The Tree Of Life. Vesuvio's fellow pirate slaves in the second half of the book chew cannabis before their plunderings, and our hero joins in. This is a nice touch, only Finch ruins it. You see, the cannabis turns the pirates into slavering beasts who only want to rape and pillage. It's all straight out of Reefer Madness. Anyone who's anyone knows that dope mellows the senses; despite the terror-mongering of the Christian Right, it does NOT turn you into a maniac. I'd assumed that sort of mentality had disappeared long before 1978, and it's even stranger when you consider Finch was in his 20s in the Psychedelic Sixties! So I assume he was one of those horn-rimmed glasses/buzzcut hair types, one of those guys you'll see in the Let It Be documentary, asking the cops to shut down the Beatles' impromptu rooftop performance.

The reader catches a glimpse of life in the Roman Empire, with mentions of the manifold gods and goddesses, even the di rigueur mention of "the Nazarene." But the tale is more focused on Vesuvio's adventures, resulting in something more akin to Conan or any other pulp fiction set in ancient times. What I'm saying is, this is just a straight-up revenge tale with action, intrigue, and sex to spare, which just happens to be set in the era of Trajan's rule. In many ways it's no different than the average Conan or King Kull novel, save for the fact that it's set in an actual, historical era, and also due to the copious and detailed sex scenes. But even these are reserved; Finch writes pages and pages of descriptive sex, but uses mostly medical-textbook terms for the bodyparts involved, and not a single profanity is uttered in the book (strange, when one realizes how absolutely profane Latin could be). So even though it attempts to be a "raw blockbuster of sensual adventure," as the cover blurb declares, the novel could easily have been published a few decades earlier and not have caused much of a stir.

Which brings us to the heart of the issue. A fun thing about pulp fiction is how much can be read into it - for example, see Norman Spinrad (under the guise "Homer Whipple") giving himself a Freudian reading in the superb The Iron Dream. You see, Finch goes on at great length about Vesuvio's good looks, his superhuman physique, and - especially - his "phallus." Get used to that word; you'll be seeing it a lot in Golden Voyager. Vesuvio's equipment is the focus of conversation for a panoply of characters, both men and women - the men envious, the women enraptured. Yet, as Finch constantly reminds us (or himself?), Vesuvio does not engage in "unnatural sex," ie relations with other men. Even though his fellow male slaves do so (and Finch of course gives us a few scenes graphically attesting to this), Vesuvio stays off to the side, mulling over man's seeming desire for self-punishment. It's all very funny and even an untrained reader could divine layers of subtext in the prose.

A third of the way into the book Finch tosses the subtext out the window. Sold as a "pleasure slave" to a Mesopotamian king, Vesuvio is taken by caravan to the palace. Along the way he is informed he will have to pleasure the king himself, and so must force himself to think of another man in "that way." With his new master demanding that he "practice" on a fellow male slave, guards posted outside ready to kill him if he disobeys, and Vesuvio forcing himself to realize that if he doesn't do it he will die (also telling himself that "Good men have practiced sodomy"), you just want to open that closet door for Finch and let him out. But the King dies, and Vesuvio never has to go through with it; though this scene gives us more priceless dialog concerning his "manhood." I want to say Vesuvio's endowment acts as a symbol of something, or that Finch is poking fun at the purple prose typical of the historical revenge epic. But I can't; the novel itself just doesn't justify it.

Golden Voyager was followed by Pagan Voyager in 1979 (published in the US under the title The Pagan), and the trilogy concluded with 1981's Voyager In Bondage. There are several editions of Golden Voyager. My copy is the US paperback, complete with a lurid, airbrushed cover of golden-haired Vesuvio surrounded by a bevy of nude women. The artist read the book, at least. The UK Pan Books edition sports a detail from Frank Frazetta's painting The Rogue Roman, which itself was the cover for Lance Horner's 1965 novel of the same title - a novel, by the way, with many similarities to Golden Voyager.