Echoes of the well of Souls

Nathan Brazil had been the guardian of the Well of Souls, where the Well World's master control lay. But now the universe faced a threat more grave than mere destruction: an unnamed and utterly alien entity had somehow been released from its ancient prison and was bent on the corruption of the Well World itself. If successful, it would cause chaos beyond mortal understanding.

Echoes of the Well of Souls opens the Watchers at the Well trilogy, Jack L. Chalker's mid-1990s return to the universe that had made his name. The original Saga of the Well World began in 1977 with Midnight at the Well of Souls, a book that went on to sell over a million copies in its first printing and is now firmly part of the furniture of 70s and 80s science fiction. By the time Chalker came back to that universe with Echoes in 1993, the appetite for more was substantial, and his return was much anticipated. This new trilogy, completed by Shadow of the Well of Souls and Gods of the Well of Souls, isn't a reboot or a re-imagining. It's a continuation, designed for readers who already know what the Well World is and what the stakes of meddling with it amount to.

For those coming in cold, a quick refresher. The Well World is a planet-sized construct built by an extinct ancient race known as the Markovians. Its surface is divided into 1,560 hexagonal regions, each home to a different sentient species and operating as a kind of self-contained laboratory. Anyone arriving on the Well World is shunted through a gate and transformed into the dominant species of whichever hex they land in, a conceit that has powered most of the dramatic engine of the saga and that gives Chalker licence to do the thing he loves most as a writer, which is putting human consciousness into bodies that are anything but human. Control of the Well World means control of the universe itself, because the Well is, in effect, the universe's master computer. None of this is small-stakes science fiction.

Nathan Brazil, the immortal keeper of the Well, is back, of course. And so is Mavra Chang, the space pilot and former high-tech thief who was elevated to co-Keeper in the previous saga. The interesting wrinkle is that Brazil is exhausted. He has been doing this job for so long, and has destroyed and re-created the cosmos so many times, that the prospect of another reset is no longer the call to duty it once was. There is a genuine weariness to him in this book, a sense of an immortal who is increasingly aware that immortality and infinite patience are not the same thing. Whether he answers the call when the Well World summons him, and what kind of figure he is by the time he does, is one of the central questions the trilogy is interested in.

If you have read the original saga, this is a comfortable and welcome return. If you haven't, Echoes can be picked up cold, although you'll get more out of it with at least Midnight at the Well of Souls under your belt for context. One caveat worth flagging: this is genuinely the first third of a single story rather than a complete novel in its own right, and it ends accordingly. Readers who prefer their volumes to wrap themselves up neatly should be prepared to commit to the trilogy before starting. Those who do will find Chalker doing what Chalker has always done best, which is to take the largest possible canvas in the genre and paint pulpy, propulsive, body-bending adventure on it with a generous hand. It's not literary science fiction, and it isn't trying to be. It's something rarer, and in its way more useful: a reminder that the wide-screen Big Idea adventure novel, the kind that hooks teenagers on the genre for life, is a perfectly honourable thing to write.