Last January, Dorothy Bray, a professor at McGill University where I study, handed me an old Ballantine Adult Fantasy classic: Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970) by the well-named Joy Chant. Rediscovering the Ballantine fantasy books proved to be a nostalgic romp through territory supposedly familiar to all of us who read and love fantasy novels. The Ballantine series was where the motifs and cliches of the genre supposedly had their birth, but my experience was not of reading yet another derivative fantasy novel. Those who pick up Joy Chant are in for something deeper.

Joy Chant, although otherwise obscure, is an author of classic heroic fantasy. Her work is a product of the generation more or less directly succeeding the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Lord Dunsany–at least, that is how the Ballantine series markets itself. Here the tradition of heroic fantasy is pure. There’s no steampunk, cyberpunk, slipstream, or New Weird; historical fantasy, urban fantasy, and magic realism are likewise nowhere to be seen. This is the fantasy of the hippies and the anti-Vietnam protesters. There is something fundamentally distinct about this period of fantasy, still untouched from the complex generic fusions and postmodernisms of later generations. There is a nostalgia here I never experienced myself, being too young to witness these novels’ actual publication, but it has nonetheless left its mark on me indirectly. These novels were the fantasy Guy Gavriel Kay and Charles de Lint grew up reading. It was the fantasy several of my McGill professors grew up reading, namely Profs. Bray, Brian Trehearne, and Sean Carney, among others no doubt.

(An excellent history of fantasy up until the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series is given by Jamie Williamson in a book published by Palgrave Macmillan called The Evolution of Modern Fantasy.)

Ballantine for better or worse made fantasy what it has become today, by marketing authors who could write novels in the bestselling styles of Tolkien, Lewis, Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, and other fantasists from earlier in the century. I am inclined to think there would be no shelf space at your library or bookstore labelled ‘fantasy’ if it were not for this series.

Joy Chant’s contribution to the development of the genre was small but one of high literary quality. It may not be easy to get your hands on a copy of Red Moon and Black Mountain, but if you happen upon it at a second-hand bookstore, you will discover a novel written in the high style of Tolkien but with child protagonists worthy of Lewis–who, by the way, Chant represents realistically and profoundly. Like YA novels today, Red Moon and Black Mountain can be enjoyed by adults as well. Indeed, Lin Carter writes in his introduction that he was convinced, after reading Chapter 3, “The Battle of the Eagles”  “that this was not only not going to be  a children’s book, but also that it was going to be a masterpiece” (x).

The three Powell children, Oliver, Nick, and Penelope, are off exploring an English country road when they pass a gate and inexplicably tumble into a secondary world known as Vandarei. Nick and Penelope find themselves alone on an icy mountaintop. Oliver, their big brother, is no where in sight. Fortunately, Princess In’serinna rescues them with her retinue of bodyguards on their way to witness a battle between the white and black eagles, the result of which battle will foretell the fate of the land. The dark lord Fendarl has been bound within Black Mountain, but the wards that hold him at bay wear thin and he is preparing to test the terrible power he has mastered against the magic of the Star-Born.

Meanwhile, Oliver finds himself among the Khentor, a race of nomad plainsmen. He becomes Li’vanh to them, adopting to the Khentor way of life, forgetting his old name, Oliver Powell. Since he clearly does not come from Vandarai, Li’vanh is viewed as a deliverer from another world. A man, where in England he had only been a child. Tuvoi, the Chosen One.

As the red moon waxes, Fendarl begins to mass his forces and the power of the Star-Born wanes. An epic catalogue of the armies of Vandarei marches forth to do battle against the dark lord and its massed horde. In the ensuing battle, Oliver will be forced will confront his destiny, at a dear cost.

Joy Chant writes in the style of classic fantasy, a refined, formal mode that is, however, not unfamiliar with techniques of stream of consciousness to grant immediacy of emotion to what the child protagonists are feeling and sensing. Every sentence is measured and intoned consistently with faultless delivery. It is the kind of style to expect from a Ballatine classic.

The vulnerability of Penelope and Nick is lovingly rendered and they are believable as children who suddenly find themselves wrapped up in a strange, frightening world. Penelope must conquer her fear of heights and Nick is chased by wolves in one harrowing scene. By the end of the novel, the reader has the sense that the characters have matured and conquered their fears, although it is Oliver who ages the most profoundly in the end.