The Silver Stallion: A Comedy of Redemption
1926
Dom Manuel has vanished. He was the Redeemer of Poictesme, the hero who saved the realm with blood and sorcery, and also the least scrupulous rogue of his age. Now his castle stands empty and his kingdom reels, suddenly forced to reckon with the absence of the man who defined it. Through the eyes of his daughter Melicent, a boy named Jurgen, and the grieving lords of the Silver Stallion, James Branch Cabell constructs a dazzling comedy of manners about what happens when a legend walks out the door. This is fantasy for readers who understand that heroes and rogues are often the same person, and that the stories we tell about our saviors tell us more about ourselves than about them. Cabell's wit is surgically precise, his cynicism is warm rather than cruel, and his meditation on redemption asks whether any of us can truly be saved from the roles we're forced to play. It endures because it knows something true about the gap between the men who make history and the legends that survive them.
