The book that started it all. Cover art by Mark Harrison, who nailed the essence of the story the best.
Technically its name is “The World of the Three Moons” but the country the series revolves around is called Ruwenda, so I’m going call the world Ruwenda as well, similar to how “Narnia” refers to both Narnia the country and Narnia the greater world around it. The purpose of this post is to give some clarification about the review I wrote for Andre Norton’s Golden Trillium, here.
To reiterate:
The Trillium series of fantasy novels was born in 1989 at the request of literary agent Uwe Luserke who was interested in representing a book penned by three female, well-respected, classic SF writers. Those were Julian May, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Andre Norton, all of whom were still actively writing in the 1980s. I’m giving links in the names in case you don’t know who they are, or were, as they’re deceased now.
May wrote the initial treatment, a novel that was never published, and from it, each writer took one of the three main characters and rewrote it from their chosen character’s point of view, trading off the chapters. Each character fit the writers’ typical protagonist: powerful yet self-doubting, for Bradley; a hot-tempered Amazon, for Norton; and a sensible yet cozy traditional female for May. It was a bold experiment.
Interior page signed by all three authors. The interior design of the book, with its neo-Art Nouveau typeface and flower decorations, was gorgeous (if a bit pretentious.)
The first of the series, Black Trillium, was published in 1990 by Doubleday Foundation during a heady time for science fiction and fantasy. Books by top SFF authors received the royal treatment: store displays, ads in magazines, special appearances at conventions. That media push fell out of favor with the internet’s rise, but the treatment has returned in recent years for YA and Romantasy books, which have proven themselves to have a passionate market willing to collect hardback books again.
Reviews on Black Trilium were mixed, but that didn’t stop the publishers from continuing the series. My opinion of the book was middling too, but I give props to the worldbuilding, specifically the physical layout.
The plot of the book was how triplet princesses, each very different from the others, battle Orogastus the sorcerer and the evil king of Labornok he’s in cahoots with to take back their kingdom Ruwenda. (Which sounds too much like Rwanda for my taste; this isn’t Africa.) As Chosen Ones destined to save the day, they do this by using the three talismans that echo their roles: a wandlike instrument for Haramis the upcoming mage, a “three-lobed burning eye” swordlike weapon for Khadiya, the appointed warrior, and a crownlike diadem for Anigel, who is destined to rule. Once assembled, the completed talisman will defeat the villains. But the triplets must cooperate and find common ground in order to use it, making this a life lesson story in the vein of most anime out there – the protagonists must band together to defeat the enemy – a Japanese cultural tenet so obvious it seems prescient. And actually the book, with its color-coded princesses and exotic milieu, would have made a GREAT anime. I wonder why no one’s adapted it.
On to the series. After Black Trillium, the three writers were each contracted to write a book about their chosen character and show what happened to them after the big baddies were defeated. I’ll list these below.
Blood Trillium (1992), written by Julian May.
The first sequel has Anigel, who is now Queen of Laboruwenda, the combined nation resulting from her marriage to the evil king’s upright son Anatar, contending with a resuscitated Orogastus. At one point he kidnaps her children and has to deal with them acting like twee English boarding school brats who kick his shins, etc. in “comedic” moments. Anigel is hysterical over the loss of her children and wants to give in to the sorceror, but Haramis and Khadiya, who now serve as her advisors, rather cold-heartedly tell her not to. That’s all I remember of it. In the end, Oro’s defeated yet again.
Golden Trillium (1993), Andre Norton.
Reviewed here. The second sequel, but it’s set immediately after Black Trillium, not years after it like Blood Trillium was. Khadiya must defeat a new threat to Ruwenda from an evil member of the Ancient Ones, Ruwenda’s godlike original settlers who built strange cities then disappeared. Her plans after that victory are hinted at, but since she’s one of Anigel’s advisors in Blood Trillium, we can assume they didn’t work out.
Lady of the Trillium (1995), Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Bradley’s received a huge drop in reader regard in recent years, all of it stemming from disclosure of sexual abuse from one of her children and the fact her husband was a known pedophile. It was one of the last books she wrote and is the only one of the Trillium series to not feature a color in the title. It takes place many decades, perhaps a century, after Blood Trillium. Haramis stands alone in her role as the mage guardian of Ruwenda (or Laboruwenda?) and is growing senile. Her sisters are long dead. She realizes she must train a successor before she dies and so kidnaps a princess of the Ruwenda royal line to be her apprentice, which doesn’t go down well. The themes of decay and failure come across strongly and perhaps reflect Bradley’s interior state at the time. It was a downbeat ending to a series that showed such magic and promise.
Then, two years later in 1997, May releases a NEW Ruwenda novel, Sky Trillium, that picks up right after Blood Trillium and carries on with that continuity as if the events of Golden Trillium never happened, and throws the past events detailed in Lady of Trillium into doubt.
In other words, Black, Blood, and Sky form one continuity, with Golden and Lady representing what-ifs spun off from Black Trillium that have no connection to Black-Blood-Sky. To make things more confusing, Sky was released by a different publisher and its artwork didn’t match the others.
Confused yet? I’m going to confuse you even more with some foreign editions of the book.
Right: German edition. Left: Spanish language edition.
The German edition features the same artwork as the American one but has different title: The Sorceress of Ruwenda. Meanwhile, the Spanish cover features Orogastus, the enemy sorcerer, instead of the princesses. Or, I least I think that’s Orogastus. I don’t remember him looking like Skeletor in the book.
Two French editions.
Oooh-la-la! Can you tell the edition on the left is from France? But there was no nudity going on in the book OR pubic hair. Or ladies whose heads turned into marble cornices. Haramis did have a brief affair with Orogastus, but it wasn’t explicit. The title has also been changed to “The Three Amazons.” I guess “Black Trillium” wasn’t sexy enough.
The edition on the right is a later one released after 1997, when all the books began to be called the The Trillium Cycle. The French title remains the same.
Right: Portugese edition. Left: British or Australian/New Zealand edition.
The Portuguese cover features a single Black Trillium and the Archmage’s tower complex amidst a field of snow. Simple, but it gets the three non-human elements of the story across. (I get Wizard of Oz Emerald City vibes from it.)
The English-language cover on the right might be Canadian, New Zealand, British or Australian. The princesses here have the proper hair colors and are garbed in long ceremonial robes similar to those seen on the covers of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Avalon series of books. Behind them is the Archmage’s mountain fortress and before it the Mazy Mire (see the map, here) that’s been rendered as a literal maze by the artist. Did he or she read the book?
