by Gideon Marcus

Just ten years after the coming of a virulent yeast-based plague, nine tenths of the world's human population and much of its wildlife is gone.  What's left of humanity survives on vast stores of canned food and spends its time burying the dead and still dying.  The disease has altered our race physically and psychologically, rendering us unable to stand each other's company for a great length of time.  Only the plum-uniformed agents of the FBY make any attempt to impose order on this shambling parody of society.

Enter Sam Sewell, an unprepossessing soul who dwells in the upper levels of a vast set of subterranean shelters designed to house the American leadership in the event of war — now, it is a decaying home to thousands, offering rude shelter and sustenance.  One day, an FBY man calls on Sam, desperate to know the whereabouts of the mysterious and beautiful Despoina, who may have the cure not just for the lingering plague but for the social maladjustment it has wrought. 

This triggers Sam's descent into labyrinthine shelter complex, each successive level containing encounters more dangerous and weird than the last: mad scientists, herds of white rats, and countless blind alleys filled with technological and human detritus.  Underneath this monument to the old world lies evidence of a world older still, one that preserves the ancient pagan teachings of Wicca first promulgated at the mosaiced halls of Minos.  In his journey through the maze, Sam finds himself not just seeking out Despoina, high priestess of the Wiccans, but also his forgotten Wiccan identity that is the key to humanity's revival.

Author Margaret St. Clair is one of the titans of SFF.  Under both her name and the pen name, Idris Seabright, she has enriched several magazines and publishing houses for two decades.  Her work is powerfully and uniquely written, never quite striking familiar chords.  Sign of the Labrys, St. Clair's latest, displays her talents in full.  She perfectly captures Sam's initial disaffection with spare, detached prose.  Later, as Sam first explores the labyrinth and suffers from an unknown fever, St. Clair conveys with dreamlike prose the protagonist's loosed hold on reality.  The settings the author created, both the moribund world above ground and the fascinating den of mysteries beneath, are vividly drawn.

But about halfway through, the car begins to wobble on its rails.  The skein that holds the book together is woven from Wicca, a modern-day myth cobbled in the last decade from various sources by Englishman, Gerald Gardner.  It features nature worship, a god and goddess pair, and it claims the ill-fated witches of the 17th century as earlier practitioners.  In Labrys, Wicca's adherents gain all sorts of superpowers, from clairvoyance to invisibility.  I don't know if St. Clair personally buys into this old/new religion, but given Wicca's recent surge in popularity, I wouldn't be surprised if Labrys isn't intended as a kind of introduction to the creed. 

Some may find the mythology at the heart of Labrys refreshing and delightful, quite different from the wells fantasy generally draws from.  I found it a distraction, particularly by the end.  After all, this book was billed as science fiction, and the first half of it gives no indication that it is anything but.  The latter half is so larded with occult magic as well as superscience like anti-gravity and matter transmission that it becomes a comic book.  A very well-written comic book.

And to be fair, one is told what they're going to get right on the back of the novel:

Wow.

Now, that's some awfully sexist language, and it has caused justified outrage.  On the other hand, I can almost understand (if not excuse) its provenance.  Sign of the Labrys is a weird, woo-woo book, and whomever wrote the blurb was clearly trying to make lemonade from the lemons.  I haven't seen this ridiculous tack used to advertise any of the other woman-penned stories this year, so I feel safe in concluding that this cover is (thankfully) not typical.

Copy-writing blunders aside, I did enjoy this book from cover to cover.  As a showcase of St. Clair's ability to turn a compelling phrase, Sign of the Labrys is as good as any of her works.  Had I known what I was getting into, I might well have been less off-put by the book's ultimate direction.  Maybe.  The fact remains that the novel isn't science fiction, despite its trappings and its billing.  Moreover, any book that suggests that humanity is doomed, and that only one cult has the key to its salvation, is going to turn me off — whether it be Sign of the Labrys, Dianetics, or the New Testament.

Three and a half stars.