William Mayne, in A Game of Dark, has taken on not only the Oedipal conflict but the basic existential one of staying or going, holding on or splitting….

Appropriately the story opens with a feeling of sickness and a pervasive stench. The bad smell of Donald's life has carried over into a second life in which he must ultimately fight a stinking worm who leaves a slimy track behind him as he preys on a feudal village….

Mayne is technically unlimited—he can do anything with words—and he handles his psychical shifts suavely. For a time Donald chooses the second life in the feudal village. Eventually he kills the worm, not in the proper knightly fashion but with the ingenuity and tenacity of desperate courage. (p. 73)

Mayne has taken on themes that require considerable force and depth of the writer; how well he has done them is...