Review: The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh

The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh

Published: Avon, 1995

Awards Won: Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Book:

“This story of malaria, fever, delirium and discovery stretches across time and space—from Ronald Ross’s malaria research in Victorian India, to the obsessed Murugan’s study of Ross’s life in 1995 Calcutta, to Antar’s investigation into the disappearance of his acquaintance Murugan in near-future New York.  The cord that binds them all together may involve a shadowy conspiracy, which makes use of malaria’s ability to affect the brain to achieve a kind of immortality.” ~Allie

This is the first novel I’ve read by Amitav Ghosh, and it was also my next commute audio book. It’s my second review for Stainless Steel Droppings’ Sci-Fi Experience.

My Thoughts:

This was a very confusing novel for me, and while I was trying to process it I came across this interesting analysis by Prof. Shubha Tiwari.  For anyone who is interested in an examination of the ideas and thematic goals of the novel, I would recommend taking a look.  After reading that article, though, I feel like I just didn't have an understanding of Indian culture, mythology and history that was sufficient to fully appreciate what Ghosh was doing. This is not a novel that leads the reader by the hand, so others like me might want to be prepared to do some outside supplemental reading.  On the other hand, I did enjoy the opportunity to learn a bit more about India, both in the novel itself and in my internet reading afterward. The setting of Calcutta in 1995 was especially vivid and unfamiliar to me, so the bits of usual daily life were just as intriguing as the more unusual or confusing elements.

In addition to the unfamiliar cultural setting, there’s an awful lot going on. The story intertwines a fictional version of Ronald Ross’s malaria research, a ‘present’ story in 1995 Calcutta, a near-future story, and various one-off side stories.  The strongest thread is the ‘present’ one, which includes not only Murugan but also two Indian women—Sonali, a celebrity and former actress, and Urmila, an ambitious reporter.  I enjoyed reading about these characters, but I felt like the plot was a little overly dominated by uncovering and explaining information in dialogue.  Quite a lot of Ross’s story, as well as other historical tales and theories about the shadowy organization and their goals, are directly told by Murugan to whichever character he is around at the moment.  Listening to this in audiobook form, it felt especially noticeable that a lot of the story involved Murugan spouting information at people.  There was a lot of discussion about influencing reality through the careful control of information, so I suspect this may have been a deliberate narrative choice.  

With all of this, there are a lot of ideas and bits of plot floating around, which did not all seem to gel at the end of the novel.  It’s entirely possible I missed some metaphorical meanings or subtle connections, and that I will just need to read this again one day to try and work them out.  However, on this read through it felt like a lot of things were introduced that did not lead much of anywhere. For instance, there were side stories about spiritualists, an epidemic, and a ghostly encounter at a train station, all of which seemed only very loosely connected to the main story.  For that matter, assuming the main story involves the shadowy organization that is searching for the “Calcutta Chromosome”, the entire novel is set at something of a distance.  I vaguely understand some of the organization’s goals, but we only ever see these people through the lenses of other peoples’ stories. In the end, The Calcutta Chromosome felt like something of a puzzle, but one that I could not quite manage to solve.

My Rating: 3/5

I felt like The Calcutta Chromosome was a challenging novel, and one which I think I ultimately did not fully understand. Despite this, it was fun to read a science fiction novel based in India, and it was probably a good experience to read so far out of my reading comfort zone.  I enjoyed reading about Calcutta in 1995 and the characters who lived there.  At the same time, I felt like too much of the story was tied up in the transfer of information through dialogue, and I was disappointed by how little closure there was in the end for the many different topics brought up through the course of the novel.  I found reading this novel to be both and interesting and a frustrating experience. 

Review: The Moon and the Sun by Vonda M. McIntyre

The Moon and the Sun by Vonda M. McIntyre

Published: Pocket Books, 1997

Awards Won: Nebula Award, Intergalactic Award

The Book:

“The family of Marie-Josèphe de la Croix has risen in prominence at the court of Le Roi Soleil, Louis XIV of France.  Her brother Yves has become the king’s favored natural philosopher, and he has just returned from an expedition where he has captured a live sea monster. While Yves wants to study this new creature for science, the aging king suspects it holds the secret to immortality.

Yves and Marie-Josèphe are pulled into the complicated social life of the court at Versailles, as they try to please the king without sacrificing their principles. The court is an especially difficult place for Marie-Josèphe, who has no dowry to ensure a good marriage and dreads one day returning to the silence of a convent. She must find a way to stay true to herself without losing all chance of a happy future.”~Allie

This is the second novel l’ve enjoyed by Vonda M. McIntyre, the first being Dreamsnake. This one is supposedly going to be made into a movie pretty soon, on April 10th! Mysteriously, there are still no trailers or promos for the film, so I’m not sure if it will hold to that date or not.  We’ll see!  

To get into the right mindset, I also watched Le Roi Danse just before my final edit of this review.  The film is set a fair bit before The Moon and the Sun, but also gives an interesting look at baroque music, Versailles, and King Louis XIV.  

My Thoughts:

I think that The Moon and the Sun would be an excellent book for anyone interested in the day-to-day social scene of King Louis XIV’s court at Versailles.  It feels like McIntyre put a lot of time into researching what it might have been like at that particular point in history, and there are endless descriptions of clothing, hairstyles, the social hierarchy, the religion, and a variety of social gatherings.  There are also a variety of real historical figures who show up, of which my favorite was the young Domenico Scarlatti (I am biased, I love playing his music).  I believe that McIntyre actually cut down on the various titles each person carried, but the titles that remained made it a little difficult to keep people straight, at least at the beginning. Aside from the existence of the sea monster, I felt like the novel painted a thorough picture of what it might have been like to live at the Court of Versailles.  As a student of baroque music and a person who has visited the palace and grounds, it was an interesting glimpse into another world.

Though there are several viewpoint characters, it is clear that the heroine is Marie-Josèphe de la Croix.  She’s a perfectly likable lead, but that very perfection can be a little annoying at times. She’s more skilled than others at just about everything: drawing, composing music, mathematics, horseback riding, languages, etc.  She’s devoutly religious, demure and humble, though it seems she is constantly being singled out by important members of the court because she is so special. She’s also very sheltered—she begins the story as a grown woman who believes that having sex is a horrible experience married couples must endure in order to build a family.  With all of her charms, it is inevitable that she would attract a handful of men at court, and so her story involves a romance.  I don’t want to give details of that part away, but I rather liked her slow-building romance and thought it suited the character and her story well. Aside from Marie-Josèphe, the court was populated with a wide variety of characters, and the tangle of these courtiers attachments provided a complicated social backdrop.  

The sea monster was the main fantasy element, but her existence seemed more natural and biological than magical.  From a note by McIntyre after the end of the novel, it seems that the story grew around the idea of what might have happened if sea people had actually existed in this time period.  Through Marie-Josèphe and her brother’s work, we see an idea of how scientists of that age (natural philosophers) might have approached the study of such a creature.  The existence and nature of the sea monster also prompted discussions of personhood and self-determination, not only for non-humans, but also for different classes or genders of humans.  Though the sea monster is eventually important in driving the story forward, I felt that the focus was really on romance and social maneuvering at the Court of Versailles. I feel like I am perhaps not the target audience for this novel, but I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying it.       

My Rating: 3.5/5   

The Moon and the Sun is a historical romance featuring a somewhat improbably perfect heroine, with a fantastical twist in the existence of sea people.  I think it would be most enjoyed by readers interested in fiction about daily life at Le Roi Soleil’s court at Versailles, since the setting, fashions, customs, complicated social webs, and politics were portrayed in great detail.  The many titled people are court were difficult to keep straight at first, but they provided a complicated social environment for the ingenue, Marie-Josèphe, to navigate. The fantasy part of the story comes along very slowly, though it does eventually affect events.  Though I occasionally became impatient with the heroine’s unending goodness and the many hairstyle or outfit descriptions, I enjoyed both the story of The Moon and the Sun and its meticulous setting.   

New Voices: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Published: HarperCollins, Blue Door (2013)

Awards Nominated: Nebula Award

Awards Won: Mythopoeic Award

Helene Wecker published her debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni, in April of last year, and it has already garnered quite a lot of positive attention. In a section after the end of the novel, Wecker describes the story of how this novel came to be.  While she started her career working as a writer in marketing and communications, she realized that not trying her hand at becoming a fiction writer might one day be her biggest regret.  The Golem and the Jinni is a work of many years, inspired at first by her and her husband’s family histories as children of Jewish and Arab American immigrants, respectively. An interesting Q&A about the novel can be found here, on her website.

I would describe The Golem and the Jinni, which takes place in late-1800s New York, as a pleasantly sedate story.  The physical and cultural setting felt very solid to me, and I enjoyed the portrayal of daily city life from various perspectives.  At first I was a little confused at the patient care with which some seemingly minor characters were introduced, typically with a life history explaining how they came to be the person they are today.  However, all of these minor characters eventually had a role to play in the story, as the pieces slowly fell into place for the larger plot that tied the story together.  I enjoyed how neatly everything came together in the end, though the climax risked feeling a little too rushed, and the coincidences a little too convenient.

From my perspective, the greatest strength of the story is in its exploration of the characters and their relationships with one another.  Aside from the supernatural entities of the title, the communities they inhabited were also filled with memorable characters. There are really too many to list here, but some of my favorites were the kind, troubled Rabbi who took the golem in, and the afflicted former doctor known to others in the Syrian neighborhood as “Ice Cream Saleh”.  Even the villain, though he was portrayed as irredeemable, had understandable motivations and was capable of good as well as evil.  Having so many distinct, believable characters helped to give the world an open, expansive feeling, and I felt that their presence also helped to define the communities that Wecker set out to portray.

While I appreciated the side characters, I think that the most memorable characters for me were the golem, Chava, and the jinni, Ahmad.  The two characters were wonderfully complementary, but also had enough in common that it seemed natural for them to gravitate toward one another.  For instance, they are both ‘born’ into a community where they mostly belong, but where they still feel like an outsider.  I don’t have the experience of being the child of an immigrant, but I wondered whether that last might have been meant to portray the sense of belonging/not-belonging that someone in that situation might feel.

Beyond the similarities of their situations, their personalities are balanced like yin and yang.  Chava is able to sense the needs of others, so she is hyper-aware of her connection to the people around her and of the effects on others of her every action and word.  Ahmad, on the other hand, is used to thinking of himself as separate, and rarely considers what effects his actions might have on anyone.  Chava doubts her own decisions and longs for guidance, while Ahmad typically disregards the guidance of others and longs to direct his own path.  Even their situations are inverted: Chava is a being that is designed for servitude, but who finds herself unexpectedly free, while Ahmad is a being that is intended to be free, who finds himself unexpectedly bound.  These differences in situation and temperament led to some very interesting discussions about social responsibility, free will, and religion, where both of them were able to learn from the perspective of the other. Their experiences, both separate and together, helped them both to grow beyond what either might have expected at the beginning of the story.

Altogether, I think The Golem and the Jinni is an award-worthy novel, and a truly excellent debut from a new talent.  The story is a rather slow-moving one, focused largely on the daily life of two supernatural beings in Jewish and Syrian communities of late-1800’s New York City.  The novel is also shaped by a larger, magical plot that slowly surfaces as the novel progresses, in which all the characters eventually play a part.  However, I think my favorite part of the novel was in the strong development of its many characters, and in their interactions with one another and their communities. I look forward to seeing what Helene Wecker will publish next!

Review: Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht

Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht

Published: Night Shade Books 2011

Series: Book 1 of the Fey and the Fallen

The Book:

“Liam is a child born out of wedlock, whose mother never spoke of his biological father’s identity.  Even aside from the mysteries of his parentage, he has plenty to deal with as a boy growing up in Northern Ireland during the period of The Troubles.  As he grows into a man, he senses something strange deep inside himself—something dark and dangerous. 

What he doesn’t know is that his father is one of the fey, and that his people are locked in a long war that is raging in Ireland alongside the religious and political strife.  The enemies of the fey are also the enemies of a secret branch of the Catholic Church, but that does not necessarily make them allies. Liam’s life and loved ones are endangered by both the natural and the supernatural turmoil that fills his world. ~Allie

Of Blood and Honey, which is up for the Campbell Best New Writer award this year, is my 6^th review of the WoGF challenge at World’s Without End (I missed a month. I’ll catch up!).  It’s Stina Leicht’s debut novel, an urban fantasy that takes on the difficult setting of 1970s Northern Ireland.

My Thoughts:

Since Of Blood and Honey features a very recent historical period, it seems especially important that the setting be portrayed respectfully and accurately.  For the most part, I feel like Leicht intended to be respectful of the time period she portrayed, but I don’t have the experience or knowledge to comment on the accuracy. A description by Stina Leicht of the research that went into building the setting of Of Blood and Honey can be found here, as well as a discussion of the subjectivity of personal experiences and how that affects historical accounts, here. A response to the book from the perspective of one Irish man can be found here (beware of series spoilers). 

In terms of the story, Of Blood and Honey moved quickly and was very engaging. Liam’s life seemed to have little breathing space, as it bounced from one catastrophe to the next.  I enjoyed the combination of religious supernatural evil (“the fallen”) and the traditional supernatural elements (the fey) in the story. I enjoyed how Liam’s his fey heritage was incorporated in his character, and how it played a part in shaping who he grew to become. Of course, the non-fey violence of the time also played a large role in his life, and I should warn that this is a book with a fair amount of physical and sexual violence, though I did not think the prose was especially graphic.   

While the story was entertaining, there were a few plot devices that irked me along the way.  For instance, the plot was complicated by the insistence of many characters on not communicating with one another.  As one example, Liam would have had much less pent up anger and confusion if anyone he knew had bothered to let him in on the secret of his heritage.  The aversion to communicating also crept into other situations, such as Liam’s relationship problems with Mary Kate, and Liam’s father’s decision not to keep his family in the loop about potential supernatural dangers. I think the story could have worked just as well without all of this unnecessary evasiveness, and it would have been a sight less frustrating from my point of view as a reader.

Most of the other devices come late in the novel, as the plot begins to verge more towards a traditional kind of superhero story.  Dramatic changes in Liam’s story are motivated by the death and suffering of women he loves, and there is the usual kind of talk about justice and vengeance.  The main villain is not very clearly or convincingly developed, and is seems to be just meant to be “crazy” and evil.  The villain even takes time out to monologue near the end.  I was a little disappointed that a novel with such an interesting premise and beginning moved towards such a familiar conclusion. 

My Rating: 3/5

Of Blood and Honey is an urban fantasy that incorporates supernatural elements of religious evil and the traditional fey in the period of The Troubles in Northern Ireland.  The story is fast-paced and exciting, and Liam and the other characters are engaging.  I felt like the story was more out of the ordinary in the beginning, and I was a bit disappointed that it moved more towards a traditional hero vs. villain story towards the end. The story was still entertaining through the end, even if that end was not as innovative as I might have hoped.

Review: Briar Rose by Jane Yolen

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen

Published : Tor, 1992

Awards Nominated : Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Fantasy Awards

The Book :

”The fairy tale Briar Rose held a special significance to Becca’s grandmother, Gemma.  She told it constantly to her grandchildren, and it became clear that she considered herself the princess in the story. Though her telling differed in some respects to the commonly accepted version, Rebecca always preferred to hear the story from her grandmother.

When Gemma died, Becca and her family realized that they knew very little about her. Her life before she arrived in the United States during WWII was shrouded in mystery, to the point where her family didn’t even know her original name.  Rebecca has few clues to work with, but she’s determined to uncover the mystery of her grandmother’s past.” ~Allie

I am kind of surprised that this book appears to be classified as fantasy, since I would probably have called it mainstream YA fiction.  I think it will still count as genre fiction, though, since it has won several fantasy awards. Therefore, this is my May novel for the Women of Genre Fiction challenge at WWEnd, and also a review for the Once Upon a Time Challenge (fairy tale category).

My Thoughts:

While Briar Rose does contain a retelling of the fairy tale, it is primarily the story of a young woman learning about her grandmother’s experiences during the Holocaust. Becca and the personal history she uncovers are fictional, but her grandmother’s life story is set amidst the actual events of that era.  More information about the particular location featured in the story can be found here.  The story seems to be written for a young adult audience, though some of the details of Gemma’s past are quite graphic (due to the subject matter).  While there are plenty of books based on authors’ experiences from this period of history (Night, The Diary of Anne Frank, and others), I appreciate that fiction can also be used to bring the past to life for readers.  Like most people, I believe that learning about and trying to understand the darker parts of human history is very important, so that these kinds of atrocities might never be repeated.

Unfortunately, I was not very impressed with Briar Rose as a novel, mostly because the characters seemed rather flat to me.  While all of the characters were adults, many of them seemed to behave as though they were in their early teen years.  This was especially noticeable with Becca and her two older sisters.  Becca’s older sisters were described as personally and professionally successful adult women, but they didn’t seem to have matured past their behavior in childhood flashbacks. Becca was in her early twenties, and she lived with her parents while working for an alternative newspaper.  She seemed very sheltered and inexperienced, and her “crush” subplot seemed strangely juvenile for an adult woman.  To me, none of the characters really seemed to grow or change much, or even to be further developed beyond their initial introduction.

The story can be broken down into three parts: the fairy tale, the modern story, and Gemma’s story.  The fairy tale is told through a series of flashbacks to Becca’s childhood.  There was generally roughly a line or two of the fairy tale per flashback, before Becca or her sisters interrupted their grandmother. I had hoped there would be a point where the story was told from start to finish, perhaps after hearing the true story of Gemma’s life.  Gemma’s story could have been haunting, but her words were constantly drowned out by children bickering.

The modern story was the tale of Becca searching for her grandmother’s past.  I suppose there wasn’t much room for false leads, given the length of the novel, but the course of the investigation seemed a little too coincidentally easy.  It was never really in doubt that she would track down her grandmother’s story, and there weren’t any major obstacles in her way.  As a result, Becca’s story never felt especially compelling in its own right, and seemed to be just an overly long set-up for the eventual reveal of her grandmother’s story.

The story of the past that Becca eventually tracks down makes up the third section of the book.  Despite knowing roughly how everything would turn out, I found this to be the most narratively interesting portion of the book.  The person who related the story to Becca was also the most engaging character, probably because of the insight into his life that the story provided.  In broad strokes, it was quite easy to tell what kind of story Becca was going to uncover, and there weren’t any major twists along the way. While it was interesting to see the details cleared up, it didn’t seem to me like Becca gained much understanding of who her grandmother was as a person. 

My Rating: 2.5/5

As a novel, Briar Rose was something of a disappointment. I felt that the characters lacked depth, and did not seem to grow much through the events of the story.  The plot was also extremely straightforward and predictable, so that Becca's success seemed like a foregone conclusion.  Therefore, the part of the story featuring Becca's search seemed to drag.  I think it was an interesting idea to incorporate the fairy tale of Briar Rose into a story about the Holocaust, but it didn’t seem to mesh as well as I had hoped.

Review: Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

Published: 2011, Tor

Awards Nominated: Locus Fantasy Award

The Book:

“Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.

Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist domoviye, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.” ~WWEnd.com

Deathless is the second novel I’ve read by Valente, and the first I’ve read of her adult-targeted novels.  This was a challenging novel for me, so I’m planning on reading some translations of Aleksandr Afanasiev’s collected fairy tales to gain a little more retroactive insight.  In the meantime, I will review the novel as best I can!

My Thoughts:

Even though I had only ever read her young adult fiction, Valente’s descriptive, poetic writing was instantly recognizable in Deathless. She evokes the feeling of fairy tales very strongly, most clearly in the use of some familiar structures.  For instance, many things in the story happen in threes, and the three instances are sometimes described with identical phrasing. Valente’s writing can veer rapidly from humorous to profound, and there were many quotes throughout the story that were especially memorable. For instance, here is one paragraph describing ration cards during the blockade of Leningrad:

“A ration card says, This much life we have allotted you. It says, This much death we can keep from your door.  But no more.  It says, In Leningrad there is only so much life to go around.  It says, The only thing not rationed in Leningrad is death.” p. 523

Valente’s knowledge of Russian culture, history, and folklore is apparent throughout the novel. I feel like Deathless gave me a better understanding of Russian diminutives, as well as teaching various Russian words through naming wordplay (though I did have to look up the meanings). I also learned more about many mythological creatures rarely featured in most fiction I’ve read—like leshy, domoviye, rusalki, and others—as well as learning more about early 20^th century Russia.  Valente does not exactly hold your hand through all of this, so I think it could be a little intimidating for those of us who are picking it up as we go. 

Despite the fairy-tale style and structure, the mature content (concerning war, death, and adult relationships) makes it clear that this is a story for adults.  Valente entwines Russian folklore with the events that took place in the country in the first half of the 20^th century. Marya ends up involved in Koschei’s (the Tsar of Life) never-ending war with Viy (the Tsar of Death). The war between the living and the dead is balanced by historical events—the Revolution, the administrations of Lenin and Stalin, and World War 2. Marya is torn between the real and the unreal, drawn both to the fantastic country of Buyan and the increasingly deadly, constantly changing city of St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad.  Through Marya’s life in both worlds, we see how the common stories of a group of people affect and are affected by the reality they experience.

At the center of the story is the romance between Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless. I am not entirely sure I correctly read the meaning behind the portrayal of their romance.  I think it might have been that relationships change drastically over time, and that the same people can mean very different things to one another through the course of a life.  Marya and Koschei’s relationship is certainly constantly changing—between monogamous and open, vanilla and BDSM, abusive and loving, faithful and unfaithful. Through all of this, Valente explored the power dynamics of love, asserting that the primary question in a romantic relationship is, “Who is to rule?”  I don’t think I especially agree with that, but I enjoyed the complexity of Mary and Koschei’s ideas of love.

As you can probably tell, this was a very dense novel for me.  There was so much information, so many references, and so many worthwhile ideas to explore about mythology/ideology and theory of romance. The writing was beautiful, and at times incredibly emotionally moving. However, the direction and pacing sometimes felt a little haphazard.  It was sometimes hard to pick out a clear narrative arc from all the content, and the story seemed to constantly jump off in unexpected directions.  I often like unusually structured stories, but I felt like I didn’t understand the relevance or importance of some of the plot turns. For instance, I’m certain that a lot of the significance of the Yaichka section went over my head, and I’m still not sure I really understood the ending.  In any case, this was a remarkable novel, and one that I will probably be trying to figure out for some time to come.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Deathless is a creative novel that is notable for the stylistic, poetic flair of the prose, the entwining of myth and history, and the commentary on relationships, power, and other topics. It was a daunting novel to read, due to the knowledge it assumes in its readers and the many levels of meaning in each small part of the story. The plot sometimes seems a little directionless, and it gets progressively more difficult to understand towards the end. However, all of those challenges also combine to make it into a fascinating story.  I think at least a passing familiarity with Russian language, history and folklore would be useful for appreciating the novel to the fullest. Regardless, I very much enjoyed my first foray into Valente’s adult fiction!

Review: Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

Published: Penguin Books, 2010

Awards Nominated: Locus Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award

The Book:

“In his latest innovative novel, the award-winning author evokes the dazzling Tang Dynasty of 8th-century China in a story of honor and power.

It begins simply. Shen Tai, son of an illustrious general serving the Emperor of Kitai, has spent two years honoring the memory of his late father by burying the bones of the dead from both armies at the site of one of his father's last great battles. In recognition of his labors and his filial piety, an unlikely source has sent him a dangerous gift: 250 Sardian horses.

You give a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You give him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor. Wisely, the gift comes with the stipulation that Tai must claim the horses in person. Otherwise he would probably be dead already... “ ~WWend.com

With Under Heaven, I’ve actually finished reading all of this year’s nominees for the World Fantasy Award (all but one are reviewed on this blog).  I didn’t previously state my intention to do this, simply because I wasn’t sure if I’d have time before the winner was announced.  I’ll put up a post with a prediction of the winner and thoughts on the nominees soon!

My Thoughts:

The setting of Under Heaven is a fictional country called ‘Kitai’, which is based on the society and events of China during the 8^th century Tang Dynasty.  It’s pretty clear that Kay has done a lot of research on his chosen historical period, and his depiction of Kitai is intricate and atmospheric.  Beyond geography and general social structure, I enjoyed the inclusion of poetry and superstition.  I don’t have the expertise to judge English poems written to echo Tang Dynasty styles, but I think their inclusion throughout the story strengthened the sense of place.  I also enjoyed the inclusion of supernatural elements.  Some things were written as ‘mere superstition’, but others, like the dead spirits at Kuala Nor and the rites of the barbarian shamans in the north, were undeniably real.  I loved the reverence with which the characters treated the supernatural, and how none of it was ever completely explained.  Kitai is a vivid, magical place to set an adventure.

The story hops around from character to character, with the third-person omniscient voice giving a general detached feeling to the narration.  The three main storylines would be those of Shen Tai, who is gifted with 250 Sardian horses, his sister Li Mei, who travels into the north, and his ex-lover Spring Rain, a courtesan.  They're certainly likable enough characters, but they don’t seem to have much agency.  The three of them feel like they are essentially observer characters.  Kay has set up his story just before huge nation-wide climactic events, and their personal plotlines seem to exist mostly to maneuver them into a position where they can watch these things happen.

Aside from the three major characters, there are occasional brief segments from the point of view of minor characters, which are sometimes never mentioned again.  I think the point of these segments was to show the far-reaching effects of the story.  However, the inclusion of additional observer characters, and ones that I didn’t know or care about at all, seemed a little superfluous.  Though I didn’t dislike Tai, Rain, or Li Mei, I feel like I might have enjoyed the story more if it were about more active, pivotal characters (Such as Prince Shinzu, General An Li, First Minister Wen Zhou, Precious Consort Wen Jian, etc.).

Perhaps because these characters are primarily observers, the story seems to move along rather slowly. Most of the narrative seems to describe the three main characters moving from place to place.  Often, the traveling serves as an opportunity for them to flash back to earlier events in their life.  It is on one such journey that we learn a huge portion of Shen Tai’s life story.  I enjoyed hearing about his eventful history, but I was a little irritated when he did finally reach his destination.  Upon his arrival, he realized that he had no idea what he was going to do.  His explanation was that he had traveled too quickly to think about these things.  I admit that I laughed out loud when I realized that he’d had time to ponder his life story in detail during this journey, but he hadn’t bothered to take a little time from past-introspection to think about his current deadly situation.

His odd lack of foresight ties into some other minor issues I had with certain storytelling decisions.  Shen Tai spends a lot of time considering how he is not prepared to enter deadly court politics, and how he is in such a precarious situation that one wrong move could get him killed.  However, when he is actually at court, I lost count of the number of times I read some variation of the sentence, “He hadn’t known he was going to say/do that.”  I would think, if the slightest misstep could get one killed, one might make the effort to be aware of what one’s tongue and body were doing.  Another minor issue I had was with Kay’s habit of artificially withholding information from the reader.  Often, when a character received some crucial information, the reader would just be informed of the receipt, instead of being told the information itself.  Information was not generally withheld from the reader for very long, but it felt like it was jarring me out of the story every time it happened. 

For all my complaints, I did like the story of Under Heaven. Curiously, though, I enjoyed the story much more in retrospect than I did while reading it.  Taken as a whole, it is an elegant story about the lives of various people navigating through a deadly and tumultuous time period.  The novel shows how they intersect with each other and the great waves of history.  However, taken as individual parts in progress, it was very slow-paced, featured characters that had a frustrating lack of agency, and repeatedly used some narrative devices that I don’t really enjoy.  I think there is a lot to appreciate in this novel, even though I also found a lot to complain about.

My Rating: 3/5

Under Heaven is a sprawling tale, set in a fictional representation of the 8^th century Tang Dynasty China.  The place and society are very meticulously and vividly described.  The atmosphere of the novel benefitted from the inclusion of poetry and the reverent attitude towards the occasional supernatural elements, which were (to my delight) never fully explained.  The major characters, Shen Tai, his sister Li Mei, and his ex-lover Spring Rain, are fairly likeable, though they do not have much power to shape their own stories.  I was a little frustrated by the slow pace, by how the main characters seemed to be limited to observing major events, and by several repeated phrases or situations.  While I appreciated the overall story after completing the novel, I did not always enjoy the process of reading it.  I think Under Heaven is a book that is easier to appreciate when viewed as a forest, rather than as a sum of its individual trees.

Review: The Dark Mirror by Juliet Marillier

The Dark Mirror by Juliet Marillier

Published: Tor, 2007

Series: Book 1 of the Bridei Chronicles

The Book:

“Bridei is a young nobleman, a fosterling of one of the most powerful druids in the land, Broichan. All of Bridei's memories are of this dark and mysterious man who seems to be training him for a special purpose he will not divulge.

But, everything changes when on one bitter Midwinter Eve Bridei discovers a child on their doorstep—a child abandoned by the fairie folk. In order to avoid the bad luck that seems to come with fairie folk, all counsel the babe's death. But, Bridei follows his instinct and, heedless of the danger, fights to save the child. Broichan, though wary, relents.

As Bridei comes to manhood, and the foundling Tuala blossoms into a beautiful young woman, he begins to feel things he didn't know were possible.  Broichan sees this and feels only danger, for Tuala could be a key part in Bridei's future…or could spell his doom. “ ~barnesandnoble.com

I’m reading  The Dark Mirror as a part of the 2010 Women in Fantasy Book Club hosted over at the blog ‘Jawas Read, too!’.

My Thoughts:

The Dark Mirror is a historical fantasy about the life of Bridei I, a member of the civilization of the Picts in the late 500s.  Marillier’s take on the Picts is based on historical fact, imagination, and educated guesswork.  I enjoyed the descriptions of the geography and beauty of ancient Scotland (the area where the Picts lived), and it seemed that a lot of research went into shaping the civilization into a rich setting for the story. 

While the environment was definitely a strong point of the novel, I felt that the characterization of the protagonists was one of the weaknesses.  The main characters, Tuala and Bridei, are almost entirely perfect.  Due to Bridei’s carefully isolated upbringing, he’s more highly educated and skilled than most anyone else in the kingdom. Despite this, he’s humble, and is careful not to hurt the pride of the older, more experienced men that he outclasses.  I had thought that his isolation in childhood might give him problems integrating socially, but his overwhelming natural charisma takes care of that possible problem.  His ‘flaws’, as stated in the novel, involve being too noble, thinking too much about things, and being too compassionate. Tuala is beautiful and intelligent.  Thanks to Bridei, she is more highly educated than almost any other Pict woman, and she is naturally better at magic than all of the humans.  She is also endlessly humble and kind, despite any hostility she encounters.  I didn’t dislike either of the characters—there’s not much about them to dislike—but I had a hard time really connecting with such faultless people.

Their story is also a little too predictable and conventional for my taste, and it moves at a glacial pace.  Tuala and Bridei are both specially chosen for some great destiny.  They are also star-crossed lovers, since Tuala is one of the hated Good Folk. Most of the major obstacles to their love arise from their self-effacing tendencies and their inability to adequately communicate.  The romance also seems to embrace the idea that love makes people lose their ability to reason.  The book would have been much shorter if either Bridei or Tuala used their carefully honed intellects when thinking about the other’s motivations.  The use of these and other generic romance plot devices made their love story feel a little too obvious and familiar to me.

I also was not particularly drawn to the non-romantic story, which was about Priteni (the Pict civilization) politics, and the protection and unification of the realm.  I had some serious personal issues with the aggressively intolerant attitudes of Bridei’s countrymen, in addition to their extreme “My Country, Right or Wrong” nationalism.  My ideological opposition to the society undercut my ability to be concerned about its continued welfare. I would have liked to see some examination of the common prejudices, and perhaps see some people acknowledge their obvious invalidity.  Given that one of the hated Gaels is a main character in the next book of the series, I’m guessing that this might be still to come.

Though I was not particularly interested in the main plot of the novel, I was drawn to the stories of the side characters.  To me, the most fascinating character was Ferada, the sister of one of Bridei’s friends.  Her lively intelligence led directly to a kind of defensive bitterness.  She was well aware of the limited role of women in their society, and she was constantly reminded of her own powerlessness.  I was highly interested in her struggle to maintain her personal integrity, but disappointed that so little time was dedicated to her.  Other interesting characters included Ana, a royal hostage from another land, and Faolan, a Gaelic bodyguard.  I believe that these characters come more into the spotlight in the subsequent books of the series.

My Rating: 2.5/5

I enjoyed the historical aspects of The Dark Mirror, and Marillier’s descriptions of the ancient Pict civilization.  However, I found the main characters, Tuala and Bridei, far too perfect to be truly interesting.  The plot seemed very unnecessarily slowly paced, given the predictability of the romance and their eventual destiny. Some of the minor characters seemed to have much more interesting stories and personalities, but they were not given enough of the focus to become fully developed.  There were definitely things to enjoy in The Dark Mirror, but they were not enough to make me want to continue with the series.

Review: Declare by Tim Powers

Declare by Tim Powers

Published: Subterranean Press/William Morrow & Company/HarperCollins (2001), Corvus (2010)

Awards: World Fantasy Award, International Horror Guild Award

Nominated: Locus Fantasy and Nebula Awards

Currently Shortlisted: Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Book:

“As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, in 1963, he will be forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare.

From the corridors of Whitehall to the Arabian desert, from post-war Berlin to the streets of Cold War Moscow, Hale's desperate quest draws him into international politics and gritty espionage tradecraft -- and inexorably drives Hale, the fiery and beautiful Communist agent Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga, and Kim Philby, mysterious traitor to the British cause, to a deadly confrontation on the high glaciers of Mount Ararat, in the very shadow of the fabulous and perilous Ark.”

~From Publisher

This is yet another Clarke Award shortlisted book.  Declare is kind of an interesting choice for the shortlist, not because it isn’t fantastic, but because it was published in 2001.  It was published in the UK only recently, which is why it’s up for awards again this year.  This is the first book I’ve read by Tim Powers, and I am left both amazed and feeling a little intimidated.

My Thoughts:

Declare is both a spy novel about WWII and the Cold War and a dark fantasy.  The two elements seemed to intertwine remarkably well.  The British, French, and Soviet secret services have agents, double agents, and agents under such deep cover that their own organizations don’t even know which category they fall under.  The plot is intricate and filled with careful manipulation, violence, shifting loyalties, and even romance. 

Underneath all the espionage, there are the supernatural elements.  I love the physicality of the magic.  It was not flashy or frivolous, but dangerous, poorly understood, and incredibly eerie. The djinn, also referred to as fallen angels, are at the heart of a secret Cold War, fought through the schemes and many-layered betrayals of the British, French and Soviet spies.  These creatures are deadly destructive, terrifying, and so inhuman that any communication with them is all but impossible.  Rather than casting spells, magic comes in the form of actions, such as beating trance rhythms or carrying ankh-shaped ‘anchors’. 

This story of djinn and spies follows the life of Andrew Hale, but in two different time periods.  One plotline follows his life from his childhood to the first disastrous attempt at Mt. Ararat in 1948.  The second follows his mysterious reactivation over a decade later, where he is asked to end operation Declare once and for all.  There are very rare instances where others briefly become the viewpoint characters, but Andrew Hale is clearly the hero of the story.

While Andrew Hale is a fictional creation, many of the events and people in Declare come from actual historical records. Tim Powers described his method of creating the story as looking for ‘perturbations’ in history, odd events that might suggest some unseen cause.  In his novel, he required that all recorded historical events happen just as they have in reality.  Then, he looked at all of the things in reality that seemed strange, and came up with an elaborate behind-the-scenes story that would account for them.  This strict rule of maintaining observed history applies as equally to momentous events in WWII as it does to recorded details of the lives of real people, such as the real British traitor Kim Philby.  I think that the result is a story that seems incredibly grounded in reality, despite its supernatural leanings. 

Of course, it definitely helps the sense of reality that Powers has clearly done a momentous amount of research on topics ranging from mountaineering, to the Bedouin, to mid-20^th century daily life in Britain, France, Russia, and the Middle East.  There’s an incredible amount of detail and description throughout the entire book, bringing the environment alive as much as the characters. 

One possible downside of Powers highly researched, painstakingly described 20^th century world is that he expects a lot of his readers.  If you don’t have a lot of knowledge beforehand of European 20^th century history, the undercover work of the Soviets against Nazi Germany, the life of Kim Philby, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, the life of T.E. Lawrence, Arabic folklore, and various other topics, it might be a good idea to brush up a little with Wikipedia before digging into the novel.  I don’t think that all of this knowledge is absolutely necessary to reading Declare, since most things directly important to the plot are well explained within the novel.  However, if you want to appreciate all the hints and allusions, a wide base of knowledge is a must.  I feel like I actually learned a lot from this novel, and it inspired me to learn more about the events of that period in history.

My Rating: 5/5

I found Declare to be almost overwhelmingly entertaining.  It sounded more or less like a political thriller from the description, but it ended up being so much more complex.  The level of period detail and meticulous scenery is amazing, and the djinn magic was deeply unsettling.  I feel like it’s obvious that a tremendous amount of work went into the creation of this novel, and I think it definitely paid off in the end.  It’s not exactly light reading, but I think that this richly imagined historical fantasy is well worth the time and effort.