Resurrected Review: Fool Me Twice, by Matthew Hughes

I wrote the review below back in 2004. I should add some detail -- Matthew Hughes (born in England but in Canada from age 5) has continued to write a variety of stories in roughly the same milieu -- an acknowledged variation of Jack Vance's Dying Earth setting, featuring a wide variety of differing heroes and antiheroes. As with many writers of his age (a decade older than me) he has lately turned to small presses and self-publishing for his books, though his stories can still be found in places like Lightspeed. The stories remain reliably entertaining and I recommend them. He has also written crime fiction (as Matt Hughes) and other work as by Hugh Matthews.

Review: Fool Me Twice, by Matthew Hughes

by Rich Horton

Canadian writer Matthew Hughes published Fools Errant, his first SF novel, in 1994. His second, Fool Me Twice, followed in 2001. Beginning last year he began to publish (mostly in F&SF) a number of short stories set in the same milieu. Another novel, Black Brillion, followed in 2004. All these works are set in the far future of Earth, just prior to the era of Jack Vance's Dying Earth. Hughes captured Vance's style pretty well, and did a pretty good job of imagining odd societies in the Vancean manner as well. His first novel, however, while quite enjoyable, was probably a bit too overtly a Vance pastiche. However his own voice has become increasingly developed in his more recent stories.

Fool Me Twice is a direct sequel to Fools Errant. In the first novel, the hero, Filidor Vesh, nephew to the Archon of Old Earth, was brought to some understanding of his potential responsibilities, and his capabilities. In this novel, he has become the Archon's apprentice, but despite some additional duties, he does not really seem to have fully taken up his role. Indeed, he seems all to willing to let his aide direct his actions, saving all the more time for his favored pursuits: eating, drinking, chasing women. 

As the novel opens, he more or less simultaneously makes a careless decision to allow exploitation of a remote rural area by some local nobles (named, transparently, Maguffyne); and falls in love with a girl he sees out his window. Not at all surprisingly, upon tracking down the girl he learns that she had come to petition him to protect her land from exploitation by the very nobles he has just supported. Soon he find himself stripped of his seal of office and effectively without an identity. 

He ends up chasing the girl in an attempt to make amends (and recover his sigil). He falls in with a travelling acting troupe, and later ends up thrown off a ship in the middle of an ocean. Luckily -- to an extent -- he is rescued by a sea creature -- unluckily the creature tows him to slavery on a remote island. Filidor is once again forced to take real responsibility for his life, and for the good of others as well ...

The end is never in real doubt, but the journey is very enjoyable. The influence of Vance is very much in view -- fortunately Vance is an author well worth being influenced by. Fool Me Twice isn't a great book, but it's a very diverting read.