Maia (novel)
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| Author | Richard Adams |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Beklan Empire |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Romance novel |
| Publisher | Penguin Books |
| Released | 1984 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0140064761 |
| Preceded by | Shardik |
(This article is about the fantasy novel. "Maia" is also the title of a fictitious novel by the main character of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice".)
Maia is a fantasy novel by Richard Adams, published in 1984. Although not marketed as a romance novel, it also fits into that genre.
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[edit] Plot introduction
Maia is set in the same fantasy world as Adams's novel Shardik, which was published in 1974, about ten years before Maia. The events of Maia take place about twenty years earlier than those in Shardik. Several characters appear in both books.
Maia is a beautiful teenage peasant girl who is sold into slavery. She meets many colorful, boldly drawn characters and has many adventures in dance, high and low life, rivers in flood, espionage, politics, and war.
Some scenes, including some depicting Maia's period as a slave in a wealthy and noble household, include moderately explicit sexual and sado-masochistic elements. These, like the torture scenes in Shardik, will be disturbing to some readers.
Several of the characters in the book grapple with the morality of slavery, and a civil war is fought in part to restrict the actions of slavers and limit the number of slaves in the Beklan Empire.
Maia ends with the sort of quotidian, pastoral, familial scene (in Maia's memory and expectation of returning home) which seems to be the reward of positive characters in many of Adams's works.
[edit] Plot summary
[edit] Part 1: The Peasant
Maia is a beautiful 15-year-old blonde girl who lives in the Tonildan Waste with her mother Morca, her three younger sisters and her stepfather Tharrin who desires her secretly.
Morca finds that Tharrin had seduced Maia and purposefully sells Maia to agents of the slave-dealer Lalloc. She is knocked unconscious and is almost raped by Genshed, one of Lalloc's employees (and a villain in Shardik). Fortunately for her, Occula, a black slave girl, stops him just in time.
Maia and Occula become very good friends and Occula tells her of her past briefly; Zai (Occula's father) sold jewels, mostly very good emeralds. One day, the aristocratic girl Fornis (who would become the Sacred Queen of the Beklan Empire by the time the book takes place) killed Zai, taking his emeralds for her crown, ignoring and forgetting about Occula, who was six at the time.
Occula and Maia try to escape by burning down the hut that they were captured and kept in, but Lalloc sees them and seizes them back. They are then sent with another slave-dealer to the City of Bekla.
The reader learns more than Maia does about the political situation in Bekla. The ruling faction, led by Fornis, Lord General Kembri and the grossly fat High Counsellor Sencho, has financed itself by legalizing and controlling slavery. Rebellions have sprung up in many provinces.
[edit] Part 2: The Slave-Girl
Maia and Occula are bought by Sencho for a small fortune each. They join his "bed-slaves" or concubines and have sex with various rich and powerful men for small parcels of money. Being beautiful, young and fun-loving, Maia shows promise of going far.
Sencho becomes drastically ill and Occula tends to him single-handedly, apparently unselfishly. He comes to depend on her. During a party, she lures him into a boat, where her rebel confederates stab him to death. To make herself look less suspicious, she stabs herself several before the guards come. Meanwhile, Maia had been swimming naked in an ornamental lake and had met the cruel but beautiful Queen Fornis.
Both Maia and Occula are captured by guards and imprisoned in the Great Temple, where they are tortured to find out if they killed Sencho together. Maia is suspected much less than Occula. Queen Fornis, for no apparent reason, buys Maia from the Priest of the Temple and tests Maia to see if Maia was truly as cruel as she believed herself to be and thus could serve Fornis's sexual needs. Maia, unknowingly, fails at the tests and is left to Lord General Kembri.
Kembri orders Maia to seduce and spy on Anda-Nokomis (the nickname of Bayub-Otal, the dispossessed ruler of the province of Suba and a potential ally of the rebels). Maia follows Anda-Nokomis through marshy and backward Suba into exile in a rival kingdom, meeting the young army officer Zen-Kurel (Zenka) there. They fall passionately in love after one night, and in the morning Zenka dashes off to an invasion of Bekla.
After learning that the invading force would fight a Tonildan detachment among others, Maia does a nigh-impossible thing by swimming the treacherous River Valderra, wounding herself, so she can warn the Beklan commander defending the border and put an early stop to the bloodshed and war.
[edit] Part 3: The Serrelinda
Maia returns to Bekla; she is freed and celebrated as the Serrelinda (after the Serrelind district where the invasion was to occur), the luck of the city, a great heroine so loved that the soldiers themselves vote her a house, money and property.
For a while, she lives well, but her friends warn her that she must not broadcast her popularity too greatly. It was expected that Fornis would retire and someone else would be acclaimed as the Sacred Queen. Since Fornis does not want to retire, she might kill Maia to protect her position.
Maia sees Tharrin as a prisoner in Bekla and bribes Fornis to free him, but Fornis frustrates her by inducing Tharrin to commit suicide. In the process, Maia learns that she is Anda-Nokomis' cousin. After another attempt on her life, she learns that her warning led to the capture of Zenka and Anda-Nokomis, who are still prisoners. As factional war breaks out in Bekla, she frees them and flees once more.
[edit] Part 4: The Suban
The three plan to go to Zenka's country—despite the former prisoners' anger at Maia for betraying them at the Valderra, as they see it.
Maia and her companions travel for a time with rebel freebooters (led by Elleroth, a major character in Shardik). After an arduous boat escape from the Beklan Empire to Zenka's country, Anda-Nokomis is killed and Maia receives a marriage proposal from the man whom she loves most dearly.
Two years later, Maia (with her little son) visits the capital of her new country and by chance meets Occula. Occula reveals that she has killed Fornis death and that everyone believes that the Serrelinda, the luck of the city, is also dead.
The story ends with Maia refusing Occula's plea to come back to Bekla.
[edit] Characters in "Maia"
Those marked with an asterisk also appear in Shardik.
- Anda-Nokomis ('The Dragonfly's Son)
- See Bayub-Otal
- Ashaktis
- A Palteshi woman, attendant upon Fornis
- Bayub-Otal (otherwise known as 'Anda-Nokomis')
- The dispossessed Ban of Suba; natural son of Nokomis by the High Baron of Urtah; half-brother of Eud-Ecachlon; in actuality, Maia's cousin
- Bel-ka-Trazet *
- High Baron of Ortelga
- Berialtis
- An Ortelgan girl: Ta-Kominion's mistress; a worshipper of Shardik
- Domris
- Proprietress of the Lily Pool in Thettit-Tonilda; knows Occula
- Drigga
- An old woman, neighbour to Morca during Maia's childhood; a village story-teller, ballad-singer, etc.
- Durakkon
- High Baron of Bekla and nominal head of the Leopards
- Dyphna
- A concubine of Sencho, later a Beklan courtesan or 'shearna'
- Elleroth *
- Son and heir of the Ban of Sarkid; commander of a force of irregulars with Santil-ké-Erketlis
- Elvair-va-Virrion
- Son of Kembri-B'sai, Lord Generel of Bekla
- Enka-Mordet
- A baron in Chalcon; father of Milvushina
- Eud-Ecachlon
- Son and heir of the High Baron of Urtah; half-brother to Bayub-Otal
- Fornis
- Daughter of Kephialtar-ka-Voro, High Baron of Paltesh: Sacred Queen of Airtha in Bekla; kills Zai and Tharrin; is determined to remain Sacred Queen for as long as possible
- Fravak
- A Beklan metal merchant; at one time Sencho's master
- Genshed *
- A slave-trader employed by Lalloc; almost rapes Maia
- Karnat
- King of Terekenalt
- Kelsi
- The eldest of Maia's three younger sisters
- Kembri-B'sai
- Lord General of Bekla: father of Elvair-va-Virrion
- Kephialtar-ka-Voro
- High Baron of Paltesh: father of Fornis
- Lalloc
- A Deelguy slave-dealer in Bekla; fires Genshed
- Lenkrit-Duhl
- Baron of Upper Suba
- Lirrit
- An infant, youngest of Maia's three sisters
- Maia
- A Tonildan girl; later becomes known as 'Serrelinda'; is really half-Suban
- Melathys *
- A child rescued from the Orthid slave farms (minor character, noted because of her appearance in Shardik)
- Meris
- A Belishban, concubine of Sencho; assassinates Sencho; later killed accidentally
- Milvushina
- A Chalcon girl, daughter of Enka-Mordet; a girl of noble blood enslaved by Sencho; dies in childbirth
- Morca
- Tharrin's wife; Maia's foster mother; hates Maia
- Nala
- The second of Maia's three younger sisters
- Nasada
- A Suban doctor; befriends Maia and helps her through her first pregnancy
- Nennaunir
- A Beklan courtesan or 'shearna'
- Nokomis ('The Dragonfly'; originally named Astara)
- A Suban dnacing-girl, mother of Bayub-Otal by the High Baron of Urtah; actually Maia's aunt
- Occula
- A black girl; befriends Maia and becomes her lover for a time; helps kill Sencho and eventually Fornis (who had killed Occula's father)
- Ogma
- A lame slave-girl; first Sencho's slave, then Maia's
- Otavis
- A Beklan slave-girl, afterwards a courtesan or 'shearna'
- Randronoth
- Governor of Lapan; infatuated with Maia; is killed by Fornis
- Sednil
- A young Palteshi; lover of Nennaunir
- Sencho-bé-L'vandor
- High Counsellor of Bekla; the Leopards' Chief of Intelligence
- Ta-Kominion *
- A young Ortelgan nobleman and army officer; changes to Elleroth's side
- Terebinthia
- Housekeeper (or 'säiyett') to Sencho
- Tharrin
- Maia's stepfather; is in love and sleeps with Maia; is later imprisoned and killed by Fornis
- 'Zai' (Occula's name for her father, actually named Baru)
- a jewel-merchant; was killed by Fornis
- Zen-Kurel
- A Katrian staff officer of King Karnat; Maia falls in love with him; they later marry and have children
- Zuno
- A young man in Lalloc's, later in Fornis' employ
[edit] The Gods
In Maia, there are a variety of Beklan gods, many of them originating in different provinces of the empire. They include Lespa of the Stars, Frella-Tiltheh the Inscrutable, Shardik the Bear, Shakkarn the Goat, Canathron, Cran, and Airtha of the Diadem.
[edit] External links
- Maia publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
