The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter by John Myers Myers

The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter Reviews

• 
  Theo Logos

  Marketed as the sequel to Myers' great underground classic, Silverlock, The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter is no such beast. It does bear a family resemblance to that former work, as a particularly fierce house cat might to a tiger. Both books are romps through the entirety of literary history, but it is there that the similarities end. Whereas Silverlock was a feast of literary creations, The Moon's Daughter introduces us to the creators, or makers, as Myers would have it. But the most important difference between them is that while Silverlock functions on several levels, with a story that can stand alone as a fantasy adventure even to those who miss the most obvious of its literary, historical, and mythological references, MFED has no story worth speaking of, and if you are not amused and charmed by Myers' literary game playing, there is no reason to read it.
  
  George Puttenham is the book's hapless hero, a bored professor of Economic Geography, who is swept out of his dull routine by the godess Venus (the fire-eating dame of the title, AKA Ininni, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Astarte, etc.), and assigned the task of making a survey of the Road — a highway that is none other than the continuum of all of literary history. On that Road, he travels from ancient Sumer to Homeric Troy, from deep in the Goof Stream of the Ocean to the star Aldbaran and the planet Mercury. Along the way he encounters most of the great writers and poets of history, (also cut loose from their respective times), mostly in bars, where they all get blotto and sling about ribald tales. Some of these encounters, such as the fist fight between Walt Whitman and William Wordsworth over which of them has a bigger ego (they reached a compromise — agreeing that William had the ranking ego, but that Walt's was based on flimsier grounds, and therefore a purer vanity) are pure gold, but unless you have a couple of PhDs in literature and comparative mythology, you are unlikely to appreciate all of the many such encounters equally.
  
  Nor is it only the required wide knowledge of literature and mythology that limit this book's accessibility. Myers wrote the book using an exaggerated 1930s street slang, like Sam Spade with a heavy brogue. It is somewhat easier to decipher than Burgess' A Clockwork Orange or Joyce's Finnegans Wake, but not by much, and unless you bring a real commitment to completing it, you are likely to give up before you get the hang of the lingo.
  
  I have read the majority of John Myers Myers' books, and am a huge fan, and as such, I enjoyed parts of this book. There are places where his idiosyncratic charm shines through and rewards the effort, but as a whole, The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter misses the mark of Myers' typical magic. It is interesting as a literary curiosity, but should be avoided by all but the boldest of literary connoisseur, and the most devoted of Myers' fans.
• 
  Stephen Hergest

  Myers' 1981 followup to his cult classic Silverlock isn't as much a return to his "Commonwealth" as it is a trip through Sumerian, Babylonian, and Classical mythology, with a touch of Welsh and British thrown in for good measure.
  
  His protagonist here is George Puttenham, an associate professor of Economic Geography in New Stonehenge in the United States of Artless Letters. Hopelessly in love, he is recruited by Venus in her many guises to do a survey of "the Road" (not that of the Commonwealth, but rather of history, and poetic history specifically). Her ultimate goal is to have Puttenham write a poem of how she (Inanna, here called "Ininni") stole the Mes (knowledge, and poetry in particular) from Enki, the Sumerian sea god, and gave it to humanity. His guide along the way is Inanna's second, Ninshubur, who redubs him "It", sets him on his way, and shows up to pull his feet out of the fire on several occasions.
  
  In addition to being thrown into the midst of mythological history, in typical Myers style, 'It" encounters poets and prose writers from throughout literary history, their names often colloquialized but still recognizable. Myers writing style here is often irritatingly cute, hip, and sometimes inpenetrable. This is particularly true in the early chapters, but the reader tends to get used to it. As with Silverlock, there are literary allusions aplenty for scholars to gobble up, and to set students a-hunting. Of course, there is no shortage of poetry here, probably deserving to be taken up by filk singers if they haven't already. Tom Canty's illustrations are pretty, but largely irrelevant to the content. Still, they might provide inspiration to costumers.
  
• 
  Thomas Rau

  One would like to say: What the? Four stars for the sheer audacity. - This book has been marketed as a sequel to Silverlock; it is nothing of the sort. It is shorter, the protagonist is flatter, there is no development. We don't get to meet any characters from fiction (Sumerian and later mythology always excepted) - but we meet authors, in an anachronistically. The second half is better than the first, and I had trouble parsing the literary debates in convoluted faux noir jargon. But then again, I enjoyed that trouble. In many ways, a curious throwback to 1930s to 1950s mythology comedy films and novels like My Friend Harvey, Topper, Night Life of the Gods, but with epic poetry.
• 
  Julian White

  Another book languishing on my shelves since 2001 or so. Bought after reading Silverlock - this is a very different style and I don't remember how I felt when reading it then...
  
  Associate Professor of Economic Geography George Puttenham is walking cross campus on is way to lecture when a sudden rainstorm causes him to take shelter in a tavern/bar where he is recruited (dhanghaied) by the goddess Venus into taking a detour along the Road to survey the develpment of literature. I think. On his travels tnrough time he meets, mostly in bars of one sort or another, a series of writers and gods... With several selections of verses interspersed this is odd - baffling to many, I should think - as various 'names' appear in sometimes incongruous groupings...
  
  Not, as I began, something I really recall; nor do I need to read it again.
• 
  John Garrett

  I wanted to like this book, I really did.
  
  However, while it was billed as a sequel to "Silverlock", it is nothing of the kind.
  
  The language is hard to follow, also, mostly because I don't think I was ever in the hipster mode of the early to middle 1960s.
• 
  Jon

  Made it to page 69 before giving up. Really enjoyed Silverlock way back when, this is a hard pass.
• 
  Jeffrey

  
  Silverlock was better. That should really be a surprise to anyone, as Silverlock is so much better known. This book felt like the author knew how clever he was and why Silverlock was popular, and just went way way way too far in that direction. The end result was a much more incoherent plot and a protagonist you couldn't care less about. There were several moments that were amusing and references that when you recognized them you chortled to yourself about how clever you were, but that was too few and far between to carry the rest of the story.
• 
  John Behnken

  Great tribute to literature.
  Way too academic.
  Every page is like deciphering a literature teacher's cryptex.
  However, it's got some great poetry interspersed.
  
  My recommendation: Read Silverlock and forget this nonsense.
• 
  Josephine

  Just for the record, this is not a sequel to Silverlock; it does not pick up with any of the characters in that book. It's similar to Silverlock in that it has a lot of literary references.