I got to read an early version of this, and even when I was extremely ill and in a lot of pain, it was STILL entirely unputdownable! I laughed so muchI got to read an early version of this, and even when I was extremely ill and in a lot of pain, it was STILL entirely unputdownable! I laughed so much, and my heart MELTED for these two wonderful guys, and it was exactly what I needed while miserable. Absolutely perfect.
Will review it properly when I've read the finished version!...more
*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the c*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
HIGHLIGHTS ~no vows of chastity for these nuns ~supporting women’s wrongs 100% ~don’t touch someone else’s pearl (not a euphemism!) ~drown all colonisers ~brace yourself for ALL the Emotions ~a love triangle that is actually excellent ~if she lets down her hair, RUN
Saints of Storm and Sorrow grabs you by the throat and does not let you go for an instant.
It’s also a book where, to be honest, I feel like my main task is just to make sure you know about it – because once you do, it sells itself. A bisexual nun who can summon typhoons by letting down her hair is caught between the goddess she’s hiding from and the totally-not-Spaniards who’ve colonised her home? In a setting inspired by the Philippines?? What else could you possibly need to hear to convince you that Saints of Storm and Sorrow is a must-read?!?
I know, I know, sometimes we get super excited for books with amazing pitches that, in the end, are let-downs. But this is not one of those times. Saints of Storm and Sorrow is every bit as incredible as it sounds. There is no wasted potential here. If I may add a little more alliteration – Saints of Storm and Sorrow is simply superb.
Anitun Tabu herself, garbed in light, the dark moon of her face too beautiful to gaze upon, the black river of her hair a halo lashing in unseen winds. She was crowned in lightning, the spear of heaven’s judgement in her right hand.
“You called my name, Daughter?”
Lunurin is biracial, the daughter of a woman of the archipelago and a Codicían priest – but although she’s spent a good chunk of her life playing a Christian (and therefore Codicían) nun, in her heart she’s anything but. Not for lack of trying; Lunurin works hard to be soft and pleasant, both for her lover and the Church that’s given her a (kind of) sanctuary; she has kept her head down for years, playing the dutiful Christian novice. Behind closed doors, though, she has her romance with Catalina, another biracial novice, with Catalina’s younger sister filling an almost daughter-like role to round out their little family. Interestingly, despite Catalina’s Christian faith being far more genuine than Lunurin’s, Catalina seems to have no shame or complicated feelings about being queer, despite the fact that her sexuality, and her love for Lunurin, go completely against the church’s rules. But in all other respects she’s a good Codicían woman – and very clearly wants Lunurin to be one too.
Lunurin isn’t, though. And not just because she’s a stormcaller – chosen by Anitun Tabu, goddess of the sky and weather, ‘blessed’ with immense power only kept under wraps by the same powerful talisman that hides Lunurin from her goddess. Lunurin sees the hypocrisies and abuses of the Church and the Codicíans, and can’t close her eyes to them; whenever she can, she helps the poor and abused escape the Church’s reach, often with the help of Alon. In Western terms, Alon is basically a prince, the heir of the island’s ruler since his older brother was exiled; he’s also, secretly, one of the tide-touched, able to manipulate salt water with the blessing of Aman Sinaya, goddess of the sea. And he’s the only one who might be able to help when Lunurin and Catalina make a horrific discovery in the early chapters of the book – one that will lead all three of them to the breaking point, and tear them, and maybe even their island, apart.
It took everything in Lunurin not to laugh until she wept. What divine calling could there be when a primordial goddess of the heavens, with lightning for blood and storms at her beck and call, curled under Lunurin’s breastbone, whispering, “Daughter, won’t you drown them for me?”
Drawing inspiration from the Philippines, its history, and its mythology, the setting of SoSaS feels new and unique, a gorgeous and entrancing contrast to the generic Medieval-Europe-esque backdrop that is so confusingly popular in Fantasy. The world Buba has created here is beautiful and intricate, one that I fell more and more in love with the more I learned about it. The people’s relationship to the land and sea and sky, the matriarchal politics, the pearls, the hair, the wildly different (from Christianity) approach to religion, the trio of goddesses whose chosen ones are so integral to the Aynilan way of life… It’s all incredible. No detail has been missed or hand-waved or not-thought-through, with the result that it feels real enough to be a place you could visit it in person if you chose. It doesn’t feel invented, which is the highest praise I can give to a land that doesn’t exist.
For example, let’s talk about mutyas. In the (unnamed) archipelago that Lunurin lives in – clearly a fantasy version of the archipelago that is the Philippines in our world – cultures vary somewhat from island to island (we know that there are hundreds of languages spoken in the archipelago, and in the prologue, we hear of an island ruled by rajs who have tossed out the Codicíans entirely; Lunurin’s island of origin Calilan had a Datu, who was some kind of ruler; and Aynila, which is the setting of SoSaS, has the Lakan who rules the entire island alone, as best I can make out) but mutyas are one of the many things that tie everyone together. A mutya is a piece of jewellery – usually some kind of hair comb for women with magic, but for others it can take just about any form – set with the pearl the person found when they underwent their naming dive. If a person finds a special kind of pearl, it marks them as goddess-chosen – a stormcaller like Lunurin, tide-touched like Alon, or a firetender, depending on the pearl and the goddess. This is a relatively simple piece of worldbuilding, I guess, but for one thing, it’s a beautiful concept, and for a second, it’s woven throughout the entire book. Lunurin’s mutya is one of the things that helps her control (read: suppress) her magic, so it’s something she nearly always has on her person; it’s a sacred, highly personal object that every Aynilan character we come into contact with has and wears, usually openly; by the time we see someone fondle another person’s mutya uninvited, I didn’t need Buba to spell out for me how shocking and violating that was, because she’d already made sure I’d absorbed exactly how important a mutya is. Every concept Buba invents or introduces us to is like that; easy to understand and remember, shown naturally rather than info-dumped on us, and never forgotten or not-followed-through on.
*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
HIGHLIGHTS ~no vows of chastity for these nuns ~supporting women’s wrongs 100% ~don’t touch someone else’s pearl (not a euphemism!) ~drown all colonisers ~brace yourself for ALL the Emotions ~a love triangle that is actually excellent ~if she lets down her hair, RUN
Saints of Storm and Sorrow grabs you by the throat and does not let you go for an instant.
It’s also a book where, to be honest, I feel like my main task is just to make sure you know about it – because once you do, it sells itself. A bisexual nun who can summon typhoons by letting down her hair is caught between the goddess she’s hiding from and the totally-not-Spaniards who’ve colonised her home? In a setting inspired by the Philippines?? What else could you possibly need to hear to convince you that Saints of Storm and Sorrow is a must-read?!?
I know, I know, sometimes we get super excited for books with amazing pitches that, in the end, are let-downs. But this is not one of those times. Saints of Storm and Sorrow is every bit as incredible as it sounds. There is no wasted potential here. If I may add a little more alliteration – Saints of Storm and Sorrow is simply superb.
Anitun Tabu herself, garbed in light, the dark moon of her face too beautiful to gaze upon, the black river of her hair a halo lashing in unseen winds. She was crowned in lightning, the spear of heaven’s judgement in her right hand.
“You called my name, Daughter?”
Lunurin is biracial, the daughter of a woman of the archipelago and a Codicían priest – but although she’s spent a good chunk of her life playing a Christian (and therefore Codicían) nun, in her heart she’s anything but. Not for lack of trying; Lunurin works hard to be soft and pleasant, both for her lover and the Church that’s given her a (kind of) sanctuary; she has kept her head down for years, playing the dutiful Christian novice. Behind closed doors, though, she has her romance with Catalina, another biracial novice, with Catalina’s younger sister filling an almost daughter-like role to round out their little family. Interestingly, despite Catalina’s Christian faith being far more genuine than Lunurin’s, Catalina seems to have no shame or complicated feelings about being queer, despite the fact that her sexuality, and her love for Lunurin, go completely against the church’s rules. But in all other respects she’s a good Codicían woman – and very clearly wants Lunurin to be one too.
Lunurin isn’t, though. And not just because she’s a stormcaller – chosen by Anitun Tabu, goddess of the sky and weather, ‘blessed’ with immense power only kept under wraps by the same powerful talisman that hides Lunurin from her goddess. Lunurin sees the hypocrisies and abuses of the Church and the Codicíans, and can’t close her eyes to them; whenever she can, she helps the poor and abused escape the Church’s reach, often with the help of Alon. In Western terms, Alon is basically a prince, the heir of the island’s ruler since his older brother was exiled; he’s also, secretly, one of the tide-touched, able to manipulate salt water with the blessing of Aman Sinaya, goddess of the sea. And he’s the only one who might be able to help when Lunurin and Catalina make a horrific discovery in the early chapters of the book – one that will lead all three of them to the breaking point, and tear them, and maybe even their island, apart.
It took everything in Lunurin not to laugh until she wept. What divine calling could there be when a primordial goddess of the heavens, with lightning for blood and storms at her beck and call, curled under Lunurin’s breastbone, whispering, “Daughter, won’t you drown them for me?”
Drawing inspiration from the Philippines, its history, and its mythology, the setting of SoSaS feels new and unique, a gorgeous and entrancing contrast to the generic Medieval-Europe-esque backdrop that is so confusingly popular in Fantasy. The world Buba has created here is beautiful and intricate, one that I fell more and more in love with the more I learned about it. The people’s relationship to the land and sea and sky, the matriarchal politics, the pearls, the hair, the wildly different (from Christianity) approach to religion, the trio of goddesses whose chosen ones are so integral to the Aynilan way of life… It’s all incredible. No detail has been missed or hand-waved or not-thought-through, with the result that it feels real enough to be a place you could visit it in person if you chose. It doesn’t feel invented, which is the highest praise I can give to a land that doesn’t exist.
For example, let’s talk about mutyas. In the (unnamed) archipelago that Lunurin lives in – clearly a fantasy version of the archipelago that is the Philippines in our world – cultures vary somewhat from island to island (we know that there are hundreds of languages spoken in the archipelago, and in the prologue, we hear of an island ruled by rajs who have tossed out the Codicíans entirely; Lunurin’s island of origin Calilan had a Datu, who was some kind of ruler; and Aynila, which is the setting of SoSaS, has the Lakan who rules the entire island alone, as best I can make out) but mutyas are one of the many things that tie everyone together. A mutya is a piece of jewellery – usually some kind of hair comb for women with magic, but for others it can take just about any form – set with the pearl the person found when they underwent their naming dive. If a person finds a special kind of pearl, it marks them as goddess-chosen – a stormcaller like Lunurin, tide-touched like Alon, or a firetender, depending on the pearl and the goddess. This is a relatively simple piece of worldbuilding, I guess, but for one thing, it’s a beautiful concept, and for a second, it’s woven throughout the entire book. Lunurin’s mutya is one of the things that helps her control (read: suppress) her magic, so it’s something she nearly always has on her person; it’s a sacred, highly personal object that every Aynilan character we come into contact with has and wears, usually openly; by the time we see someone fondle another person’s mutya uninvited, I didn’t need Buba to spell out for me how shocking and violating that was, because she’d already made sure I’d absorbed exactly how important a mutya is. Every concept Buba invents or introduces us to is like that; easy to understand and remember, shown naturally rather than info-dumped on us, and never forgotten or not-followed-through on.
This was PURE JOY and I hope we get many more books of Droplet and her adventures!
~superficially simple worldbuilding that is actually excellent and iThis was PURE JOY and I hope we get many more books of Droplet and her adventures!
~superficially simple worldbuilding that is actually excellent and interesting ~lost count of how many times I laughed out loud ~possibly my favourite depiction of shapeshifters EVER ~surprisingly awesome nuns ~this author made me fall in love with a character named Cheesebreath, I think that deserves its own award...more
EVERYTHING that I wanted from the sequel to Artifact Space!
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*I received this book for free from the author. This does not affect my opinion of theEVERYTHING that I wanted from the sequel to Artifact Space!
Rtc!
*I received this book for free from the author. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
Highlights ~the aliens will surprise you ~being a hero is very odd, actually ~neural lace = superpowered brain ~do we trust the AIs? ~everything you think you know is about to go bye-bye
:this review contains spoilers for Artifact Space!:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Listen. LISTEN. I reread Cameron’s books every year, at this point. At the time of writing, I just finished rereading his Masters & Mages trilogy for the fourth time. The first book in this series, Artifact Space, made my Best of 2021 list and was the only book I read twice that year. I’ve finished reading it twice more since, and read bits of it many more times than that, when I felt the need to reread particular scenes or chapters without reading the whole book.
To say I’m obsessed is putting it mildly.
I had no idea what was going to happen in Deep Black, but I was pretty sure it was going to be fantastic – AND I WAS CORRECT!
We left Nbaro and co having run off the ‘bad’ aliens and made contact with the Starfish at last. Deep Black opens what feels like minutes later, with the Greatship Athens still at Tradespoint – which is now in the process of being rebuilt, since the Bubbles (our bad aliens) did, you know, blow it up. Cue an exhilarating frenzy of construction, with the Athens making Tradespoint 2.0 much more sophisticated (and comfortable) than it was before. Cameron is especially good at this kind of thing; what would be extremely boring in the hands of another author is somehow (I genuinely can’t figure out how) escapist and delightful and soothing, even when it’s paragraphs of Nbaro welding things together. It doesn’t hurt that Nbaro is one of the very privileged few now allowed to trade with the Starfish directly, and worldbuilding fanatics like myself will swoon at all that we learn about Starfish physiology and…can you call it linguistics when no words are used??? Well, Starfish communication, anyway. Dorcas is doing his best to infer as much as he can about Starfish culture, with sometimes hilarious, often insightful interjections from everyone else, and it’s so freaking fascinating. I am constantly being hit with non-humans in SFF who are just humans in fancy dress, but Cameron’s aliens feel alien, my friends! How they’re built, how they think, how they structure their society… C’EST MAGNIFIQUE! *chef’s kiss*
Readers less interested in worldbuilding don’t have to be alarmed: you will not be drowning in info-dumps, I promise. I genuinely think that the worldbuilding is spread out enough throughout the book – instead of coming all in one or two reveals – that it won’t be overwhelming for anyone. And it’s all so freaking COOL!
Ahem.
So Tradespoint goes fairly well. It’s when the Athens is on the way home that things get…complicated. Again!
I loved Artifact Space, and I still do, but I am in awe of Deep Black. The grasp of tactics and strategy that is Cameron’s signature in his fantasy books is on full display here, but arguably even more impressive because now we’re in space. We saw some of this in Artifact, and it was extremely epic then, but it feels like Cameron’s playing on a whole nother level here. Which is partly because, yes, there are more space battles in this book! And the way that the fighting feels so believable, and so unfamiliar – because of course, you can’t fight a space battle the way you would on land or even water – the way Cameron makes it all make sense, and never, ever forgets that his characters are fighting in three dimensions and specifically, three dimensions in space, where refuelling is a huge concern and astronomical bodies shape the ‘terrain’ and the enemy don’t have to be close to take out your ship – all of it is just so freaking excellent.
The story, also, feels like it’s been levelled up. If Artifact Space was a story zoomed in on the little picture, intimate and almost homey at times, then Deep Space is Cameron zooming out to show us the big picture – and holy gods, it is not what you think it is! The twists and reveals keep coming, but beautifully, elegantly, each building on the last – and the sheer scope of it all! Bit by bit, we’re guided to an understanding of the full picture, not just with regards the conspiracy that’s been taking out Greatships, but also the different factions and philosophies within human space, and humanity’s place in the wider universe; one by one, all our expectations and assumptions are subverted, and it’s done so gracefully, with such brilliant precision. And as for what is revealed? When we learned who are pulling most of the strings, my jaw DROPPED. And yet, it made so much sense, and was just objectively brilliant both in terms of worldbuilding and wow factor!
HIGHLIGHTS ~midwives get RESPECT ~know! your!! myths!!! ~not all men sure but DEFINITELY this one ~the MC is Too Logical ~4.5 stars happily rounded up.
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HIGHLIGHTS ~midwives get RESPECT ~know! your!! myths!!! ~not all men sure but DEFINITELY this one ~the MC is Too Logical ~sapphic selkies ftw
A Sweet Sting of Salt is what I think is called low fantasy – there’s not a lot of magic at all, and what there is doesn’t try to explain itself. But it’s also a fantasy in the sense of, this is almost a historical fiction novel, but it’s one where queer characters get their happy endings without too much homophobia; where women escape and make lives for themselves outside of the patriarchy, again without nearly as much trouble as people of the time period probably would have experienced. It’s fantasy in the same way a daydream is fantasy, in that one aspect, and I really appreciated it.
There’s enough queerphobia in the real world, I don’t want to read about it in my fiction, okay?
But though it’s low-magic, don’t think this is a low-stakes, low-tension novel, because it most certainly is not. Anxiety for the characters had my guts in knots for a good half of the book, and there’s real, and really awful, violence, with the threat of worse hanging over the heads of the MC and her love interest.
It’s not a chill time, is what I’m saying here. A Sweet Sting of Salt is, well, sweet, but it’s also heart-in-your-throat nerve-wracking when it’s not giving you heart-ache – or both at once! Don’t curl up with this one expecting a calm cosy read, because that is NOT what you’re going to get!
Jean was outed by the spiteful mother of the girl she loved years ago, but earned back the respect of her neighbours by becoming a very skilled midwife. (This is not a coincidence; Jean’s amazing mentor, the half-Indigenous Anneke, deliberately set Jean to learning midwifery because few people are so bigoted they’re willing to ostracize the person their lives, or those of their female relatives, will almost certainly depend on someday.) And as the blurb says, the story gets moving when a heavily pregnant woman Jean didn’t even know about (what kind of pregnant person wouldn’t make sure the local midwife knew about their condition?) appears on her land late at night, only to go ahead and have the fastest and easiest delivery Jean has ever seen.
The mysterious woman is Muirin, who barely speaks a word of English – and yet, Jean is able to pick up on something between Muirin and her husband, Tobias, that makes her insist Muirin and the newborn stay with her for a while ‘just to make sure all’s well’.
I despise the lack-of-communication trope, where things could be cleared up so easily if characters just talked to each other clearly and honestly – but in Sweet Sting of Salt, the issue is that Muirin legitimately can’t communicate, as she knows very little English. And although the reader knows – or at least strongly suspects! – that Muirin is a selkie, and that’s probably why she’s so (charmingly) odd and doesn’t speak English, Jean reaches very logical conclusions to her own questions about Muirin’s nature and origins. A whole lot of assumptions are made, but they’re well-reasoned given what Jean knows of the world. This isn’t one of those stories where the supernatural is staring the MC in the face the entire time and they almost wilfully refuse to see it; although I was frantic for Jean to figure things out and get to helping Muirin, I could absolutely follow her reasoning when she came up with explanations for Muirin’s lack of family, her ignorance of the local culture, and even her strained relationship with Tobias. It was – kind of amusingly frustrating, that Jean was so rational? That there were so many perfectly obvious, perfectly reasonable explanations for all of Jean’s questions? There was just no way for someone in Jean’s position – in life, in history, in geography, even in the patriarchy – to put it together that Muirin isn’t a foreigner in a bad position, but an honest-to-gods selkie.
Part of that – and this is really my only critique of the book – is that selkies never come up in Jean’s thoughts or any other part of her life. I was really surprised that Sutherland never took the time to let the reader know what a selkie actually is – especially given that there was one scene in particular, when a child is asking for water-legend stories, that would have been the perfect moment to introduce the concept and make sure the reader knew the myth of the selkie. If you don’t already know what a selkie is when you go into this book, there’s a good chance you’ll be pretty confused when the reveal does come, as the book is written as if it’s taken for granted that every reader knows about selkies.
I mean, I do? But I’m a myth-nerd born in Ireland, where selkie stories are traditional. I’m not sure how or why Sutherland – or her editor – expects most readers to know what she’s on about. Selkies are not a type of magical creature that show up a lot in fantasy fiction; everyone knows what a dragon is (debates about how many limbs they should have aside) but selkies? Joane Harris’ The Blue Salt Road is the only selkie book I can think of from a reasonably-big-name author, and I don’t think it made enough of a splash (hah!) to put selkies on the map, as it were.
But as I said, this is a very low-magic historical fantasy, where the selkie reveal is a comparatively minor plot-point near the end of the book. Infinitely more important is the relationship that develops between Jean and Muirin, how trust becomes friendship becomes another kind of love; and there are definitely feminist themes, as the blurb promises, but Sweet Sting of Salt never feels like an IssuesTM book – I never felt like I was being preached at, or that Sutherland was stating the obvious and rubbing my face in it, as other heavier-handed storytellers have done.
I think it helps that the focus of the book is so intimate; it’s not an IssuesTM story because it is Jean-and-Muirin’s story. And a big part of that story is the legal powerlessness of women in this time period; is the specific danger most women and femmes face from most cis men, ie the threat of someone who is bigger and stronger than you; is the slowly growing horror of just how awful Muirin’s situation is – one that she is only in because of supernatural means, but that plenty of human women have experienced through history, and still do today. But I appreciated that these were all treated less as themes and more like real, practical problems faced by the characters, if that makes any kind of sense. It’s not about lessons for the reader, it’s about the stumbling blocks and hindrances and outright dangers the characters have to overcome to get their happy ending.
A masterpiece of boundary-breaking fantasy. Absolutely breathtaking, stunning, utterly perfect. US/UK/World publishers need to get on this and bring MA masterpiece of boundary-breaking fantasy. Absolutely breathtaking, stunning, utterly perfect. US/UK/World publishers need to get on this and bring MAD SISTERS OF ESI to the whole English-speaking world.
Then translate it into every possible language so everyone else can read it too!!!
If you one-star a book before there are even arcs I'm gonna five-star it, sorry-not-sorry.
9th July: I just finished my arc and I cannot even COMPREHENIf you one-star a book before there are even arcs I'm gonna five-star it, sorry-not-sorry.
9th July: I just finished my arc and I cannot even COMPREHEND how I'm supposed to write a review that will do this masterpiece justice!!!
*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
HIGHLIGHTS ~beware speech without speech-marks ~names are everything and nothing ~in the midst of surreality, a train ~eldritch is putting it midly ~a most unusual set of bee-hives
:A note: my advanced reader copy did not have the illustrations of the final version! The illustrations make the whole Medieval marginalia thing very obvious, but that’s not how I made the connection.:
There is a castle, of sorts. It is populated with people, of sorts. It is ruled by ladies…of a sort.
A quest, of sorts, is undertaken. Two quests. Because a monster (of sorts) approaches, and the seasons are broken, and much lore has been lost. Even a quest – two quests – may not be enough to save things. Especially when neither adventurer has any idea what they’re getting into.
We’re used to stories of castles and people and quests and monsters. They’re practically commonplace! And yet I beg you to believe me when I tell you that The West Passage is like nothing you have ever seen before. It is the dream a Medieval manuscript might dream, if you gave it enough poppy and absinthe and just a little ecstasy (whether the drug or the emotion is at the potion brewer’s discretion): boldly baroque, casually surreal, full of curlicuing story and powerful honey and illumination(s). It has all the weight of an ancient myth, grand and mostly-forgotten, every detail weighted with meaning that is tantalising, transfixing, unpredictably portentous. It rests upon an extensive, solid framework that we cannot see, but can be sure is there: there is a logic to it all, a way it all fits together, but it is the logic of dreams, a way we can’t quite follow.
We are not meant to understand. Not really. The Ladies do not deign to share their secrets with mere mortals, and why should they?
Wandering here and there were cattle, nibbling at the grass. Their horns were tied with blue and yellow ribbons. Their gills flared and contracted as they breathed.
The actual prose and structure of Pechaček’s debut aren’t experimental; the tale is told linearly, more or less straightforwardly, and readers are not required (or even requested) to perform cerebral gymnastics in order to follow along. You can pick the book up and begin reading immediately without any trouble whatsoever.
But the world Pechaček has created! That is marvellously bizarre, a quietly intense strangeness infused into every element. Cows having gills is the least of it! There are ‘spoon-faced’ people, and the most, um, unconventional bee-hives you will ever encounter, and frogs laying the most incredible eggs. Much of the strangeness is beautiful; some of it is gross or ugly; most of it is neither, only is, and nearly all of it is treated with a matter-of-factness that only adds to the sense of disorientation. It would be so easy for this to have been mishandled, for it to become Too Much, but in Pechaček’s hands disorientation is delicious, addictive, freeing in a way I don’t know how to articulate or explain. Instead of being confusing or annoying or pretentious, the dissonance between how our reality works and how it works in West Passage is intoxicating. I wanted more and more and more of it, and Pechaček didn’t disappoint, showing me wonders and mysteries and miracles everywhere I looked.
A mason bee burrowed into some mortar.
It is not possible to be bored in The West Passage. Especially if you take your time with it, go carefully enough to notice every detail – because the details are, often, mindblowing. Take the quote above: a mason bee?! What is a mason bee?! What do you mean it burrows into mortar?! WHAT?!
It’s very easy to read right past delights like this, because the characters don’t bat an eye at things like mason bees, and so if you’re not paying close attention, you are likely to miss all sorts of treasures; the kinds of things and creatures and people that could only exist in a dream, that make perfect sense until you open your eyes in the morning. One has to approach The West Passage with your sense of wonder bright and fresh and ready to be wowed, but also with one’s magnifying glass ready, slowly examining each and every thing before moving to the next. Because while there is great deal that is front and centre and spotlit, there are even more mirabilia to be found tucked away into corners and between lines – like Medieval illustrations peeking out from behind a capital letter or hiding in the margins.
Making this book both a near-infinite treasury, and a book to be savoured, lingered over as hedonistically and luxuriously as possible.
Mesmerising, breathtaking, darkly wondrous. A fucking FEAST. I am wildly ravenous and unspeakably satiated. Utter perfection.
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*I received this bookMesmerising, breathtaking, darkly wondrous. A fucking FEAST. I am wildly ravenous and unspeakably satiated. Utter perfection.
Rtc!
*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
Highlights ~who needs trains when you have spiders? ~sell your soul, become a saint ~falling in love with your own shadow ~there used to be not-gods, now there’s new not-gods ~you can run, but can you hide?
Asunder is velvet and dust and the softest ashes, salt and copper and crystal. It is twilit. It whispers. It has sharp edges. You must hold it very carefully as you read, or it will slice your fingers open to the bone. When you are finished, you will have its teethmarks on your heart.
It is a treasure.
The task of describing Asunder demands poetry, because mere prose can’t possibly capture the scintillant brilliance of Hall’s writing. I want this book tattooed on my skin. I want to wear it and breathe it and have it with me always; I want it wrapped around my fingers so I can punch it into people’s faces. It’s soft and brutal, clear and secretive, straightforward and intricate. It is dazzlingly original and quietly subversive, magical and horrifying, beautiful and heartbreaking. It hurts, and I want it to hurt me again.
I wanted to turn back to the first page the moment I finished the last, and the second I’m done with this review, I will.
Hall has, yet again, created an impossibly impressive world so real that you can feel its wind on your face, so strange that it feels like a dream, conveyed to us through prose both sharp and somehow delicate, a Fabergé egg with razors inside. It’s a world shaped by otherworldly conflict, but not in the way you might expect; our main character Karys doesn’t wander through a landscape bearing the scars of undivine war, but her culture, and the geopolitical history of her world, are inextricably entwined with the rise and fall of different…pantheons, families, species?…of not-gods. The once-mighty Vareslain empire has fallen, bereft of the nod-gods who once favoured it; Karys’ native Mercia is currently rising in prominence as the bastion of the Ephirite, who slaughtered the not-gods who came before them. The miracles of the deceased Bhatuma linger alongside those of the newer Ephirite, both fulfilling vital services for mortals – everything from public transport to the postal system are the workings of the undivine, or derived from those workings. The result is a setting both dream-like and nightmarish to the reader, but which the characters living in it see as perfectly normal, a dissonance that adds only adds to Asunder’s lustre.
It’s also, brilliantly, a world you have to discover for yourself. I’m used to a certain amount of telling in the books I read – which is fine; it’s only when there’s too much of it, or it’s done clumsily, that it’s a problem. The ‘show don’t tell’ rule is, like probably every writing rule, only applicable some of the time – it’s not a sin to ‘tell’ the reader things! But Hall has taken the rare approach of barely telling us anything at all; instead it’s up to the reader to note and gather together every clue, every fragment of lore, every scrap of backstory, and piece them together – and we very rarely get clear confirmation that the picture we’ve made is the correct one. Puzzling out the history of the Bhatuma, the dead not-gods, and their relationship with different humans and countries, involved a fair bit of reading between the lines, drawing inferences from other bits of the worldbuilding – and yes, I can see some readers being a bit frustrated by this, but you know what, I loved it. It’s somehow incredible immersive, makes it feel like a real world, because in real life there are no info-dumps, you have to learn by experiencing, and that’s very much what reading Asunder is like. None of the worldbuilding feels vague; I’m absolutely convinced that Hall has all the details worked out, has thought all of it through, because everything fits together perfectly, no matter how deep you dig at it. Hand-wavey worldbuilding doesn’t do that; you only get this kind of neat precision when a storyteller knows their world inside-out and backwards, and it’s obvious that Hall really does.
CHANDRASEKERA KINDLY STOP BLOWING MY MIND TO GLITTERY SMITHEREENS, SIR!
(Never stop ever.)
Rtc!
*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetCHANDRASEKERA KINDLY STOP BLOWING MY MIND TO GLITTERY SMITHEREENS, SIR!
(Never stop ever.)
Rtc!
*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
HIGHLIGHTS ~a handful of minutes ~hunt treasure, find demons ~time ain’t what it oughtta be ~the things one will do to get a son-in-law ~grandparents made of abnormal atoms
I’ll be honest: I don’t think I understood most of what was going on in Rakesfall.
But I loved every second of it.
In the simplest possible terms, it is, as the blurb claims, the…story…of two (at least two) souls as they reincarnate again and again. But describing it that way doesn’t even BEGIN to give you an idea of what Rakesfall is, or is like.
enormity cannot truly, fully be spoken of without recourse to fable. There is a dread scale at which only myth works; only nightmare has the technology. Worlds must be broken to convey that attempts to depict a multidimensionally unspeakable reality in fiction, including this one, are but contemptible in the final reading.
Part of it seems to take place in the past of our world, and some in our present or near-present – but the vast majority of it, all the stories that are really one story, are taking part in a world that isn’t ours, and then in a future that could be, but could just as easily be the future of this world that isn’t ours. (Readers familiar with Chandrasekera’s debut, The Saint of Bright Doors, will recognise the city of Luriat, which we visit again this book – albeit relatively briefly.
Does that make Rakesfall the/a sequel to The Saint of Bright Doors? I don’t think so, but some of the terms used in TSoBD come up again in Rakesfall, so it is helpful to have read TSoBD first. Very not-mandatory, though.)
Possibly this is the meaning of the title – The Rakesfall, if I understood it correctly, was an event that…‘broke’ isn’t the right term…changed the timeline, and thus the world, into…not what it ‘shouldn’t’ be, but what it wasn’t before. So I think the setting(s are) meant to be…a world our world could have been, or might have been, or would be, if time hadn’t gone the way it did. And/or will be, re the future parts, if we don’t hurry up and eat the rich already.
I’M TRYING MY BEST, OKAY?
Georges does not ask himself why the Christian devil has hooves and horns, which is of course that they are satyrical.
There is wordplay and mindplay and a rapid cycling through perspectives, sometimes several perspectives of the same event or events. We jump from the colonialisation of Indonesia to the far-future when humanity has left Earth behind entirely, and a whole bunch of places – some real, some meant-to-be-real, some meant-to-not-be – in-between (and before, and after). I don’t think it’s accurate to say that there is one clear, linear story being played out over all these lifetimes and timelines (if there is, I missed it) but it would be equally untrue to claim that Rakesfall has no plot; each section of the book – most of which cover one lifetime or time-period – covers a series of events that I was very invested in, even when I knew I was missing some nuance or only comprehending a piece of the whole. There is a murder-mystery; there are many attempts to ‘regreen’ the Earth after climate collapse; there is identity-theft with souls; there are quests, kind of; there is subtle and unsubtle resistance to political oppression; there are ghosts being taken to court to stop their hauntings. There is a LOT.
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