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Liz Bourke Reviews A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard
October 21, 2023
A Fire Born of Exile is Aliette de Bodard’s second novel-length Xuya universe space opera. It’s a compelling, atmospheric tale of consequences, romance, and revenge. (I should note that I’m mentioned in the acknowledgements, which may cause you to consider me a biased observer.)
Minh is the daughter of the prefect of the Scattered Pearls Belt, raised in sheltered luxury, her future laid out for her regardless of her own desires. Her mother is emotionally distant at best, though it would be more accurate to categorise her as abusive. A brief moment of rebellion sees Minh, in disguise, attending the Tiger Games to enjoy the entertainment: in the aftermath of a riot, she’s rescued from a kidnapping attempt by the mysterious ‘‘Alchemist of Streams and Hills,’’ the cultured, cosmopolitan scholar Sương Quỳnh and her companion, the mindship Guts of Sea.
Thiên Hoà is a struggling engineer keeping a business going with her sister, Thiên Dung. Hoà’s elder sister, a scholar, was disgraced in the aftermath of a rebellion, the Ten Thousand Flags Uprising, and is years dead, while Dung, whose skills include working on mindships, is very ill. Dung was supposed to take a job repairing a very badly wrecked mindship, Flowers at the Gates of the Lords, but her illness means Hoà needs to go in her place, pretending to skills she doesn’t have, if they’re to keep going. When she visits her dead elder sister’s grave, she encounters a cultured, attractive upper-class stranger who corresponded with the elder sister before the Uprising making offerings there: Quỳnh. Quỳnh offers to help Hoà with the mindship job, and Hoà accepts. But Hoà suspects that Quỳnh is ‘‘hurtling along some private path to some disastrous, distant conflagration.’’ Hoà doesn’t really want the risk of associating with someone who might well set others on fire along with herself.
Quỳnh had a different name, once. A survivor of the Uprising – from the wrong side – she’s planned for revenge for years: Revenge on the prefect who put down the rebellion and on the general, General Tuyết, who stood by her side. Tuyết, who had once denounced Quỳnh to the magistrate to be condemned to death. Now she and Guts of Sea are putting their plans into motion, and she has left her toddler child (also a mindship) in another person’s care in order to execute it. Quỳnh does not expect to survive her revenge, but she plans to ruin the lives of all the wealthy, powerful people who were happy to condemn an innocent woman to death before she dies. She didn’t expect to meet Hoà. She didn’t expect to be attracted to her. There’s – just barely – room for a small kindness to Hoà in her plan. There’s no room at all for attraction.
There’s a saying about best laid plans and how often they go awry. In this case, it definitely applies.
De Bodard has said that A Fire Born of Exile was inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo, and while I can’t remember much of the original (it was not formative literature for me, I do not recommend reading it aged ten), the revenge plot that teeters a little off the rails because the avenger catches an unfortunate case of compassion for the collateral damage – and because other people’s choices tilt the scales – is a fascinating one. This doesn’t mean that Quỳnh abandons her revenge, but it does end up looking different than she anticipated. That happens in part because her burgeoning relationship with Hoà, and Hoà’s resolute determination not to be part of Quỳnh’s revenge, pushes her off-balance. And in part because Minh, and the choices Minh makes as she tries to navigate a way out from underneath her mother and her stepmother without losing herself, end up having consequences Quỳnh didn’t entirely take into account.
De Bodard’s work is often concerned with power: with the indifference or cruelty of people who hold it and the difficulties of finding ethical paths to any kind of real justice or fair dealing in societies that enforce hierarchical structureswith exemplary legal violence and call it just; with the problems posed by power differentials in interpersonal relationships even when all parties try to act with kindness and good faith; with the responsibilities owed by parental figures to their children and the power that parental figures and teachers have to help or harm those children by action or omission. In A Fire Born of Exile, Minh’s family situation mirrors in microcosm the greater injustices of her society, a smaller and perhaps more intensely personal version of the injustice that Quỳnh once suffered at Minh’s mother’s hands. Hoà, who has never expected either justice or revenge but who has not let the injustice in her make her cruel or cynical, changes them both.
Minh’s growing recognition of her mother’s cruelty, her longing to be valued, to be loved, and her eventual realisation that she’ll never get this from her mother, is painfully well-drawn. So too is the romance between Hoà and Quỳnh, a romance that is against each of their better judgement. For Quỳnh, Hoà is a breath of happiness but a terrible vulnerability, and though she knows that her commitment to revenge means their romance is doomed, she can’t quite draw back from it either. For Hoà, Quỳnh is unexpectedly compelling, fascinating, someone who makes her feel something new, but she’s afraid of the consequences of Quỳnh’s revenge, for Quỳnh and for her. Their relationship is fraught with that push-and-pull, but the ultimate resolution feels decidedly earned.
A Fire Born of Exile opens with a riot and doesn’t let up from there. Poisonings, intrigue, terrible secrets and tense confrontations combine in a tense, accomplished space opera, told with de Bodard’s usual vividness and verve. For my money, it’s an even better novel than The Red Scholar’s Wake, which I loved.
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STARLING HOUSE by Alix E. Harrow
RELEASE DATE: Oct. 31, 2023
A broke young woman takes a job as a cleaner at the creepiest house in town.
Opal’s life in Eden, Kentucky, has never been easy. When their mother died, teenage Opal faked her way into getting custody of her younger brother, Jasper, and years later Opal and Jasper are still struggling to make ends meet. Jasper is an exceptionally bright and creative boy, and Opal desperately wants to scrape together enough money to send him out of Eden to a fancy private school with all the resources he deserves. Opal has always been mysteriously drawn to Starling House, a big old mansion shrouded in rumor and local legend. When she encounters the house’s reclusive owner, Arthur Starling, she talks her way into the opportunity of a lifetime. Arthur is willing to pay Opal enough money to send Jasper to school; in return, she gets to explore—while cleaning—the house she’s been dying to see for as long as she can remember. But when a sleek woman claiming to be working on behalf of the local power plant offers to pay Opal even more handsomely for information about Arthur and the house, Opal must discover for herself why Starling House seems to have a mind of its own and why powerful people want so desperately to get inside. Harrow has a gift for turning settings into characters, as she does with both the strangely alive Starling House and the working-class town of Eden.
Carefully unpacking the institutionalized power dynamics of class and race, Harrow untangles the many mysteries of Starling House, revealing how powerful people and groups will twist the truth until the story suits their purposes.
A spooky story about how hidden truths always come back to haunt you.
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THE WATCHMAKER OF FILIGREE STREET by Natasha Pulley
RELEASE DATE: July 14, 2015
Set mostly in 1880s London, Pulley’s debut novel twists typical steampunk elements—telegraphs, gaslight, clockwork automata—into a fresh and surprising philosophical adventure.
Nathaniel Steepleton is a telegraph clerk at the Home Office in London. Grace Carrow is studying physics at one of Oxford’s new women’s colleges. Her friend Akira Matsumoto is the emperor of Japan’s second cousin. What connects them, although they don’t yet know it, is the eponymous watchmaker, one Baron Mori, a brilliant and mysterious figure who appears able to predict the future. Mori made Grace’s watch, whose filigree rearranges itself into a swallow when the lid is lifted: “Clever tracks of clockwork let it fly and swoop along the inside of the lid, silver wings clinking.” He also made the pocket watch whose ear-piercing alarm startles Thaniel out of the path of a terrorist time bomb. But did Mori make the bomb’s clockwork control as well? As the characters’ stories mesh and spin, they rearrange themselves like that filigree into intricate and surprising patterns. But this is more than just a well-paced, atmospheric mystery with elements of fantasy. Pulley is concerned with deeper questions of fate, chance, and trust. How dangerous is a man who knows in advance the likelihood of every possible event? When does probability crystallize into inevitability, and how could the future affect the present? The story thwarts expectations; whenever an outcome looks as predetermined as clockwork, it might well go another way.
Clever and engaging, this impressive first novel will reward both casual readers looking for a fun period adventure and those fascinated by the tension between free will and fate.
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The Magic of Found Family in The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry
The Magic of Found Family in The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry
By Vanessa Armstrong
Published on March 1, 2023
It’s a rare book that is able to create a detailed, immersive world that also has richly developed and complicated characters. The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry, I am happy to write, is one of those books.
The novel takes place in a 1912 version of our world and follows Biddy, a 16-or-so-year-old girl who has lived on the magical island off the coast of Ireland called Hy-Brasil her entire life. She was raised by a magician named Rowan and his rabbit familiar, Hutchincroft, and she has met no other person since she washed up on the island’s shores as a baby.
Biddy loves her home but yearns to see the world beyond, a place she knows is full of people and a place that no longer has magic. Even Hy-Brasil, an isle once rife with magical energy is waning—the interdimensional rifts where magic had seeped into the world started closing up 70 years ago, making magic a scarce resource. In 1912, Rowan and the other magicians out there believe all of those rifts are gone, making the remnants of magic that remain something that other mages seek to hoard and have control over. Those other magicians find Rowan, Hutch, and Biddy one day when creatures made up of dead bone and sinew come to the island and attack Biddy. It turns out, Rowan hasn’t been honest with her about the state of the world or about Biddy herself, and the three leave Hy-Brasil for the deary streets of Whitechapel on a mission to protect themselves. That mission soon goes awry, and Biddy finds out there’s even more that she’s been left in the dark about. Her journey goes on from there, where she seeks to save those she loves and possibly even save magic itself.
The plot, however, is arguably the least interesting thing about The Magician’s Daughter. That’s not to say the plot is bad, it’s perfectly fine, although those looking for a fast-paced, plot-driven story won’t find it here. There’s so much else to really love about the book, however, to make up for the relatively slow pace of the prose (if that’s even a negative to you to begin with).
Parry, as in her other works, weaves a rich version of the world the story takes place in. Her 1900s Britain isn’t without its sharp edges and dark sides, and the places that are meant to be damp, deary, and sad are exactly that. But then there’s Hy-Brasil, a beautiful, wild place that people from the mainland can only see once every seven years, and that you can’t help but want to visit as you read.
The magic that suffuses Hy-Brasil also suffuses the rest of the book, and as such, becomes a character in itself, with its own personality and wants. In this world, magic is an untethered thing, an essence that, when it was plentiful, helped people when they were at their worst. How magic helped, however, was a fickle thing, and may make things change in ways that the receiver might not accept or even, in certain circumstances, appreciate. That doesn’t stop Rowan, however, from expending what little magic is left when he wants to warm his cup of tea, and that doesn’t stop Biddy from always yearning to be able to touch magic directly like Rowan can.
This world and the chaotic fantastical power that once infused it is enough to get lost in on its own. But the heart of the story is the relationship between Rowan, Hutch, and Biddy. They are an unexpected family, but a family that couldn’t love each other more, although their relationships still have complexities and problems. The love the three have for each other is heart-aching, however, and I couldn’t help but want to give them all (but especially Hutch in bunny form) a hug.
It’s Biddy, however, who Parry eloquently describes as a “liminal person, trapped between a world she’d grown out of and another that wouldn’t let her in” that makes The Magician’s Daughter so refreshing and so compelling. She is the protagonist of the story, and while it seems at first that she’ll be a protagonist who follows the Chosen One path, Parry instead subverts that trope and gives us something different. Biddy isn’t special—she cannot wield magic and is, by one definition, one of the least special characters in the book. Despite being adopted by a mage and tied to magic in a way that few others are, her strength and ability to achieve remarkable things come from her unremarkable but solid convictions. She knows she is loved, and she also knows that she is, in many ways, alone. And while she finds herself thrown into a maelstrom of power grabs, undying vengeance, and mystical creatures beyond the confines of time, she is able to remain true to herself.
It’s through this harrowing journey that Biddy comes into her own. And you can’t help but feel for her and root for her—not just to save magic as well as her found family, but to figure out who she is and who she wants to become. If you’re looking for a book about found family, coming of age, and a tale with beautiful worldbuilding, then this is a book you should definitely pick up. And if you’re also looking for an adult book that reads like a fairy tale, where the plot is secondary to just wanting to spend time in this world and with these characters, then you should not only pick The Magician’s Daughter up but put it on the top of your TBR list.
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July 6, 2020Riley B.Book Reviews
Book Review – How To Defeat A Demon King in 10 Easy Steps
The Story:
The world is being taken over by the newest generation of Demon King and everything good is perishing. As everyone waits for the 100 year marker to reveal the next Great Hero, the one individual who can save everyone from certain doom. However, tried of waiting for just a hero to save the day, a young bag mage takes on the quest of saving the world. Even though she isn’t the hero and isn’t in the hero class, Yui Shaw heads out on a grand quest to accomplish the impossible. Her 10 steps to achieve saving the world is her only hope and just might help her survive if she sticks to her plan. It’s time gather your party, gain those experience points, level up your classes, and learn some new spells! And hope that we are strong enough to take on the bosses.
Key Elements:
Science Fiction, Fantasy, Gaming, Adventure, RPG
Have you ever played a RPG (Roll-playing game) before? Some game that is similar to Skyrim or World of Warcraft. If I could embody these games into a fun, lighthearted story this would be the book. I was a bit hesitant at first when I realized what the author was attempting and didn’t see how someone could actually write about a person leveling up and working on quests essentially; however, I was very surprised. I felt that Andrew Rowe did a very nice job at creating a strong balance of gaming jargon and a relatable story to keep the reads involved. I have not run across a story that incorporated a leveling system and class skills before this book. And being that I am a gamer, I was able to picture just how some of the mechanics would work and the ‘pop-up’ screens would be functioning during the game.
There were moments that I was having a hard time trying to figure out how I should be reading the story. I couldn’t decided in some situations if I should be seeing these characters as real people or simply characters that people are playing in a game. I feel that a little part of that is supposed to be the charm of the story. Always keeping you on your toes and making you think about what is in a game and what isn’t; however, having some key phrases and random jumps with the story bounce between a person or a player threw me off. It kept me from really getting full into the story because I was trying to figure it out during some chapters.
I would say that if you are not much of a gamer or at least haven’t played something that involves a skill and level grinding process, this book probably isn’t the best option for you. Rowe does rely a little on his readers to have at least a base knowledge of how some properties work in a game environment. Don’t get me wrong, he does a fantastic job at describing some of the advanced spells, or fights. But with a gaming background, I feel that I was able to appreciate the story a bit more and fill in some of the blanks that are created.
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THE BEDLAM STACKS by Natasha Pulley
RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2017
ulley’s (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, 2015) second novel demonstrates that the imagination she showed in her impressive debut was no fluke.
The story opens in 1859, with the narrator, Merrick Tremayne, morosely nursing an injured leg at his decrepit family estate in Cornwall. Merrick used to smuggle opium into Hong Kong for the East India Company until an explosion a few years ago cost him his health and job. Botany and exotic travel run in the family: his grandfather and father both spent years in Peru, combing the Andes for botanical valuables such as orchids and frost-resistant coffee. Now the company wants to send Merrick to his ancestors’ old stomping grounds, hiring him to break the Peruvian quinine monopoly by smuggling out cuttings from cinchona trees, the source of the antimalarial medicine. Is Merrick well enough to hike the Andes? Pulley understands her genre—swashbuckling costume fantasy—but she deals in surprises, not clichés. An exploding tree, a mysterious moving statue, and a visit from an old friend help make up Merrick’s mind, propelling him across the ocean to a strange world of thin air, volcanic glass, and floating cities, where descendants of the Incas keep magical secrets. Strictly speaking, this is a prequel—a few paragraphs and a character or two tie this novel to Pulley’s masterful debut—but the two books have very different atmospheres.
Where Pulley’s first novel sparkled with the ingenuity of spinning gears, her second offers a slower, sadder meditation on love, trust, and the passage of time.
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THE POWER by Naomi Alderman
RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 2017
THE POWER
by Naomi Alderman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 2017
Very smart and very entertaining.
All over the world, teenage girls develop the ability to send an electric charge from the tips of their fingers.
It might be a little jolt, as thrilling as it is frightening. It might be powerful enough to leave lightning-bolt traceries on the skin of people the girls touch. It might be deadly. And, soon, the girls learn that they can awaken this new—or dormant?—ability in older women, too. Needless to say, there are those who are alarmed by this development. There are efforts to segregate and protect boys, laws to ensure that women who possess this ability are banned from positions of authority.
Girls are accused of witchcraft. Women are murdered. But, ultimately, there’s no stopping these women and girls once they have the power to kill with a touch. Framed as a historical novel written in the far future—long after rule by women has been established as normal and, indeed, natural—this is an inventive, thought-provoking work of science fiction that has already won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in Britain. Alderman (The Liars’ Gospel, 2013, etc.) chronicles the early days of matriarchy’s rise through the experiences of four characters. Tunde is a young man studying to be a journalist who happens to capture one of the first recordings of a girl using the power; the video goes viral, and he devotes himself to capturing history in the making. After Margot’s daughter teaches her to use the power, Margot has to hide it if she wants to protect her political career. Allie takes refuge in a convent after running away from her latest foster home, and it’s here that she begins to understand how newly powerful young women might use—and transform—religious traditions. Roxy is the illegitimate daughter of a gangster; like Allie, she revels in strength after a lifetime of knowing the cost of weakness. Both the main story and the frame narrative ask interesting questions about gender, but this isn’t a dry philosophical exercise. It’s fast-paced, thrilling, and even funny. Very smart and very entertaining.
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Review: The Stranger Times by C. K. McDonnell
A dark yet humorous urban fantasy, The Stranger Times is ready to report some of the weirdest and unrealistic stuff (or at least, that’s what they think) happening in our world at the moment. Based in Manchester, things are about to get eerie and the link between the real world and the fantasy world is starting to turn really vague.
McDonnell did an absolutely splendid job at telling the story from alternative perspectives, gradually revealing the darker forces that are happening in the alleyways of Great Manchester. An evil plan is hatching and possibly only the people at The Stranger Times are able to stop them.
Well, speaking of the people at The Stranger Times newspaper…they’re definitely not a peaceful bunch. They’re all such different people and one can only imagine the dynamics between them. What’s fascinating is that there isn’t one character who doesn’t have an interesting backstory, and they’re all written in a way that makes me feel like they’re just normal people like us, or perhaps people we encounter on an everyday basis.
Take Vincent Banecroft for example, the drunken editor of The Stranger Times, whose only hobbies are probably swearing all day long and shouting at anyone who speaks or tries to speak to him, but there is just something about him that you simply can’t hate. There’s so much more to him than his drunken appearance once you get to know his stories. Honestly, I am a bit disappointed that we didn’t really have much written from his perspective, it would be interesting as hell to see what’s going on in this fellow’s mind 24/7.
Then we have the new assistant editor, the ‘new Tina’, Hannah Willis. Poor girl left her husband and accidentally burned down their house after finding him cheating on her multiple times. She ended up becoming a new member of this crazy newspaper crew after making the decision to leave everything behind and start over again. Hannah has a lot of potential and it would be super encouraging and satisfying to see her transform even more.
Reggie and Ox definitely are the funniest pair, aren’t they? One determined to jump off the building every Monday and another who perhaps lack a bit of enthusiasm when attempting to persuade the other from jumping. And then we have Grace and Stella, a kind-hearted receptionist (I believe) and a girl with something more to her than meets the eye. We also have the nerdy teenager Simon, who dedicates his whole life trying to get Banecroft’s approval and become a member of The Stranger Times. Will he succeed eventually? Guess we’ll have to wait and find out.
Working together to produce some of the strangest news, they were quickly dragged into a series of investigations where weird things start to happen, and The Stranger Times newspaper might start to turn into that name literally…
McDonnell’s style of writing is whimsical, the dialogues are hilarious, and the characters are certainly entertaining enough, especially the guy who keeps trying to sell Hannah the story of him seeing a ghost for 10 grand, honestly dude, I’m very impressed with your persistency. Additionally, in between chapters, there are also short extracts from the newspaper with all sorts of strange things reported daily which makes it even more interesting to read.
This story contains a mixture of dark humour and fantasy elements, and you can always get a good laugh while reading it. It’s funny but not cringey and you could get hooked on right from the start. The next one in this series comes out next year and I certainly can’t wait to read more about the strange things that happen at The Stranger Times.
Get ready, for the weird things might just turn out to be real…
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A Time Capsule for Who We Used to Be: A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid
Martin Cahill
Thu Dec 14, 2023 3:00pm
To say I consumed this book isn’t accurate—instead, this book consumed me. I read it from cover to cover onboard a flight that raced the sunset; outside the window, the light of the world kept pushing back against the inevitable, encroaching dark. Within the pages of their newest novel, Ava Reid has written several brilliant, haunted individuals, adrift and seeking answers, all of which can only be found in a home built for darkness. This is a story about stories—who tells them, and who they’re about; if the tellers are telling the truth, and if the subjects can ever have power over the tellers. And what power lies within the reader’s hands? When you are witness to a beautiful lie, do you have an obligation to find the truth? Reid grapples with these questions of art and artistry, legacy and literature, love and power, abuse and survival, and so much more in their dazzling novel, A Study in Drowning.
Effy Sayre is a young student in the college for architecture, as the university doesn’t allow women to enroll in their literary program. Belittled by many of the students around her, mostly male, haunted by visions of a character from her favorite book Angharad, and desperate to escape both, Effy believes she’s found it when she enters and wins a contest to redesign the ancestral home of Emrys Myrddin, the beloved and mysterious author of Angharad. Arriving at Hiraeth Manor, she can’t help but notice all the danger that abounds and riddles with no answers: There are no mirrors within this home; the sea threatens at the edge of the storm-wracked cliffs; Emrys’ son looks at her with a hunger that makes her stomach turn; and there is another student within the Manor. An academic rival who is determined to prove that Emrys Myrddin was a fraud, Preston Héloury becomes a splinter beneath Effy’s very heart. But as the two grow close, despite their best intentions, they begin to unravel the true mystery of Myrddin and Angharad, the truths of Effy’s childhood and her haunting visions, and the decrepit foundation upon which the Manor, and Myrddin’s life, was built.
Whether it’s before, during, or after reading this excellent novel, I urge you, dear reader, to read this essay from Reid. I think you would find a lot in there to admire on its own, but having read it prior to reading A Study in Drowning, it gave me the proper scaffolding to embrace the book Reid put their whole heart into, their experiences acting as a foundation that only added to my own experience of this novel. More than that, it is a tremendous and vulnerable essay of Reid’s mental health history and journey, and the ways in which they shaped A Study in Drowning. As I read this novel, I found myself reflecting back on the essay they had written, which only made me appreciate the book more: A Study in Drowning, like all great art, becomes a time capsule for who we used to be, a story that, in the now, may be the very mirror another might need to see and find themselves in.
And Reid holds nothing back, examining with brutal beauty how a young woman might contort herself, round and round, to keep herself safe from a world designed to make her feel lesser than, ashamed, hurt, and as small as possible. And, as a character towards the end of the novel aptly says, Reid stakes that that’s nothing to be ashamed of; in a story so centered around the idea of heroism, Reid asserts that in such a world, simply surviving, making one’s way through the horror and terror in a single piece, is absolutely enough. It casts the entire novel in a really incredible light, that even when Effy is at her lowest, when no one believes her and forces magical, mundane, and institutional threaten her in every conceivable way, even then, she picks herself up and keeps pushing. Forward, onward. Effy, at the end of everything, saves herself and it is beautiful.
Along the way, Reid delivers in every possible fashion. Atmospheric, gothic prose, sentences of shadow and mist abutting against the glamour and pine of fae malice, pages dripping with the brine and salt of seawater and history. Amidst these landscapes, they give us a tender and honest slow-burn relationship between Effy and Preston, these two hungry young academics so eager for truth, each hoping to bring the other into their own worlds of warmth and wonder. And throughout it all, the building menace and tension as it all comes crashing together in a crescendo that had me holding my breath at 30,000 feet.
Ava Reid has quickly become an author whose every work I will read, no matter what. I know when I open a book they wrote, I will find everything I want as a reader, and in A Study in Drowning, they have once again delivered. From the prose to the characters, from the world to the mood, from page to page, I found only delight, joy, and an eagerness to see how it would all come together. If you’re looking for a good starting point for Ava Reid’s work, I couldn’t recommend A Study in Drowning highly enough. Then, once you’ve been blown away, go and read the rest of their work, too!
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Alexandra Pierce Reviews
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
April 21, 2023
Getting through the first few chapters of this debut novel required trust. I haven’t read Emily Tesh’s Greenhollow duology (2019 and 2020), so I had no sense of what her work is like. I have read a lot of Tordotcom’s publications, though, so I had to hope that there was more to the story than initially met my eye. You see, the first few chapters were both oddly familiar and creepy. The familiarity came from an opening setup like many military SF stories: humanity striving against aliens and impossible odds, doing what’s right for the species, individuals subsumed to the military cause (and the ‘‘population targets’’; at which no one who’s read Joanna Russ’s We Who Are About To can help but shudder). The creepiness is in reading this in 2023, from a woman, and from a publishing house that I know for its progressive work. It took a leap of faith to keep going.
It did eventually become clear Tesh has crafted an outstanding novel for her debut precisely in subverting all those tropes that troubled me. Indeed, early as it is in 2023, I’ll say it’s likely to be one of the best debut novels of the year.
Valkyr – Kyr to most people – has grown up on Gaea, the last noncollaborating outpost of humanity left after the destruction of Earth. She’s a warbreed, genetically enhanced, and constant drills, plus seeing every other person as competition, have made her very, very good at fighting. Her entire life revolves around the expectation that she will assigned to a combat unit so that she can strike a blow against the majo – all the alien species who contributed to the destruction of Earth, and its 14 billion inhabitants. The only person she really has time for is her brother, Magnus, since her older sister Ursa turned traitor and left Gaea many years ago. Eventually Kyr is compelled to leave Gaea on a mission of her own devising – taking humanity’s revenge on the aliens into her own hands, after feeling betrayed by Gaea’s hierarchy. And that’s when everything starts to unravel.
There is a long list of content warnings that precede the opening of Some Desperate Glory, particularly around the attitudes and language of some of the characters (they gave me heart that there was more going on than initial impressions suggested, although other readers may find them off-putting; it’s a more hopeful book than the warnings may suggest). One of the warnings is around radicalization, Kyr and the entire cohort of Gaea having been radicalized by the adults in charge. Once Kyr has left Gaea, she begins a slow and painful deradicalization – which requires, in the first place, a recognition that such a thing is necessary, itself a deeply troubling experience. She is aided in this partly by new people – an alien held captive on Gaea, and a friend of her brother who really doesn’t fit Gaean expectations – but also by finally seeing more clearly the people who have always been around her, especially Magnus.
Kyr is rarely likeable, especially in the first half of the novel. She is driven and ambitious and passionate – all qualities that can be turned to good or evil, and her circumstances on Gaea mean that those qualities were turned early on towards a single goal: revenge on aliens, whom she does not see as people. She is an unpleasant messmate, singularly focused on making the rest of her mess into appropriate Gaean citizens; she is as emotionally ignorant as it is possible to be, and entirely lacking in self-awareness beyond her fighting abilities. She is exactly what Gaea has trained her to be. Tesh’s ability to present all of that and still make Kyr a compelling character – to make her development and gradual change make sense within her context – are testament to her remarkable talent. The rest of the cast, while important, rather pale in comparison to the monumental journey Kyr is on, emotionally and intellectually.
Tesh presents no easy answers to the issues she raises. The Earth really was destroyed, because the Wisdom deemed that it was necessary to do so for the greatest good. The Wisdom, something like an AI with the ability to shape and change reality, was built thousands of years ago by the majo. This is what Kyr is ultimately confronted by: both the Wisdom itself, and also its reasons for acting. Is it appropriate to sacrifice one for the many – in this case, a truly galactic-scale version of the trolley problem: one planet for how many others?
This is a spectacular space opera. It’s bold, imaginative, occasionally grim, and ultimately hopeful that individuals can change, and can make a difference. It’s not a light read – with themes like genocide and racism, that would be hard – but it’s rewarding, and I suspect will reward a second and third reading.
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REVIEW: Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee
By Fiona Denton
Perilous Times is Thomas D Lee’s debut novel. It is a wickedly funny Arthurian inspired satirical fantasy novel, set in a contemporary world. In it, and the idea where the title derives from, the knights of the road table rise up from a magical sleep whenever England is in peril. This means they have been called upon to help in almost every battle in English history, from Agincourt to the Somme. In Perilous Times, the current peril resurrecting the knights is a doomsday level of climate change – mass extinction of birds and bugs, rising sea levels meaning a lot of the country is underwater, and it is twenty-five pounds a pint in the north of England. Oh, and a dragon is on the loose. Perilous times indeed.
Now, picking up an Arthurian-inspired story, I did expect more of the big man. Arthur does appear later in the novel, but he is very different from how the legends have had us remember him. However, the knights we see the most are Kay, Arthur’s brother, and Lancelot. These, and the other Arthur-linked characters, are names that I recognised, but Lee’s presentation of them, and the others taken from the legend, feels new. Which is remarkable, given just how many Arthurian retellings there are out there. The original characters in Perilous Times are also very good creations of Lee’s, particularly one who is arguably the novel’s main character, Mariam, whom I hope other readers will love as much as I did. I think that Lee has done a stellar job in terms of representation with all of the characters, and none feel like token-inclusive gestures added to tick a box on a diversity checklist.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Perilous Times. I thought I would like it when I picked it up, thinking it would be a palate cleanser from darker novels, a jolly romp with knights of old. Which it is. But it is also so much more than that. Lee’s writing is nuanced, and he covers some serious issues in a careful and considerate way. The loss of loved ones, trying to find a sense of belonging in a world that doesn’t seem to fit you, questioning why you fight when fighting seems to get you nowhere, and hope even when hope feels foolish. Perilous Times is sometimes sarcastic and cynical but equally poignant and touching at others. So as well as being a delightful escapist fantasy, with some jolly romping with knights, Lee’s emotive writing will stick with you long after you have read the final page. A huge thank you to Thomas D Lee and the team at Orbit for sending a copy to be able to review it.
Read Perilous Times by Thomas D Lee
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Against All Gods by Miles Cameron review
Review
Epic Epic Epic awesomeness!!
Such a fun and epic start to a fantasy story. These are exactly the type of stories I look for when reading fantasy. A wrap tag group of people brought together by one insurmountable goal. The ultimate David vs Goliath underdog story. Humans against Gods!
The premise alone already enticed me since I’m a sucker for a story where Gods are used as a mechanic, even better that they’re the enemies. The Gods really didn’t disappoint, they felt equal parts powerful, petty, vain, and threatening for all the wrong reasons. I like that they’re seems to be a mystery behind them too. They obviously came from somewhere else 1000 years ago, possibly running from something. There is something going on with their true appearances, the fact that they’re these hideous insect like creatures (and one lion creature) masquerading as these perfect beautiful people. It’s fascinating and something you couldn’t really do if the is was just another Greeek mythology narrative. The politicking was engaging as well, I don’t normally care for politics but the scheming of the Black and Blue Goddesses and the Storm God kept me wondering what was going to happen next and trying to get a sense of they’re overall plans. I didn’t quiet understand why the Storm God didn’t just kill them if he even suspected them(or why he kept them alive in the first place if they’re the “Enemy”) There is history there and I can’t wait to find out what it is. Overall I’m excited to get more from them and see the Storm God get punched in the face by Zos. Thats’s going to be epic
Speaking of Zos, the human characters in this book were all great. Zos is the perfect aging hero I want to follow, Era is badass and capable, we need a women like her in the group, Pollon’s magic, Archery and general knowledge is that wild card we need and even Anat and his family were endearing and will do well to ground our heroes. Gamesh and the black smith were fun too. They all read like epic heroes being told throughout the ages and I know they’ll be even more powerful when they get their hands on these God weapons. I know it’s coming!
The magic was basic but I still liked the idea of Aura being used. I’m a sucker for magic weapons in fantasy and I want to see more of these in the vault in the next book.
The plot itself flowed at a fair pace that always kept me from getting bored. It does this thing I really like where it skips over the travel time or prep work to get to the next plot relevant point/place. So many books will decide what to do next for the plot then spend 30 pages talking about and preparing to do that thing. It’s tedious and I always catch myself thinking “All this could have been cut out”. So I’m so happy this book didn’t have that problem. I tend to like faster paced plot heavy stories though. It wasn’t a ton of action throughout but I didn’t mind since what we got was well done and I had fun seeing everyone get where they needed to be. I was super happy when all the POV characters got together fairly quickly. Freeing the slaves, killing some demons and Gods where all super fun to watch. The ending was epic and on par with anime scenes I’ve watched.
The worldbuilding was cool. I liked the Dry ones, The Jekers and the different cultures we caught a glimpses of. The location names themselves were a little confusing and did not really stick in my mind but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment. Overall the Bronze Age aesthetic was refreshing (I’m so tired of English medieval fantasy) I want to see more from this world and lore.
A couple negatives:
*For Whatever reason I never cared Pollon’s POV chapters/moments. I was always so bored during them. I like him as a character but I think he works better as a side character rather then a POV character
*The writing was a tad bit bland. It didn’t take away from my enjoyment but I do think it played a part in why it took me so long to read this relatively short book. Normally a book this size would take me 3-4 days but it ended up taking me about 7 days.
*I’ve seen a few review where people say the villains were just evil for the sake of being evil. I agree but it doesn’t really bother me but I thought I’d mention it
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Being an intern at One Wizard sounds magical on the page, but in practice mostly means getting yelled at by senior mages and angry clients alike. And so, after receiving a frantic call from a young man who’s awoken to a talisman on his bedroom wall—and no memory of how it got there—Journeyman Wen jumps at the chance to escape call-center duty and actually help someone for once.
But the case ends up being more complicated than Wen could ever have anticipated. The client has been possessed by a demon prince from Hell, and he’s not interested in leaving.
Review:
Dear Em.X.Liu,
I purchased this book on impulse, because somebody on my tweeter feed retweeted the review by KJ Charles. I don’t follow her myself, but the review hit several of my buttons, and I said to myself why not.
First of all, this is not a long read. The author calls it a novella, it has 165 pages on my kindle and it took me few hours to finish it.
The writing was on another level. I am not capable of analyzing the finer details, but I wanted to stop and taste every word and every sentence. Also, since I have not read any other reviews, I need to nod in agreement with KJ Charles’ one. Most of the story is written in second person present POV. The author does infuse some other tenses from time to time, but the vast majority is second person present. Let me tell you, I dislike first person present, but I certainly have read the books in that POV that I liked.
Second person present? I usually run away from the book when I see it. This book however I inhaled.
Now let me tell you what this book is not in my opinion – it is not a romance, at most it is a beginning of the romance and at the end of the book I was still not completely sure between which characters the romance may start (or NOT! and NOT is a very real possibility when the story ends). There are certainly emotional attachments formed between all four main characters, but where it will go, who the heck knows.
I also don’t think that this book is actually about magic, even though the settings are described very accurately in the blurb – the main character works in the magical agency and the actual magic is part of this world, but we dont see much of the magic at work. I mean, very real possession is at the heart of the plot, so magic should be involved, but I think the unhelpfulness of magical bureaucracy is what we see more than actual magic and dont get me wrong, the portrayal is very on point.
And main character trying to help to the best of his abilities and getting his heart involved too, was lovely and the client possessed by Demon Prince from Hell was wonderful, too. Oh and there was Nathaniel too who fit very well…
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Mammoths at the Gates: A tender fable of grief, forgiveness and transformation
Posted by Marion Deeds
Mammoths at the Gates (2023) is the fourth of Nghi Vo’s novellas set in the world of the Singing Hills Abbey. Chih, a cleric tasked with gathering oral histories of the world, has returned home after three years, to find old friends, great sorrow, and disruption. The source of the disruption is a pair of war mammoths and their warrior handlers, two sisters, who wait outside the abbey’s gates.
Once inside, Chih learns that most of the clerics have been sent to a distant project. Ru, a dear friend of Chih’s, has assumed responsibility since the abbey’s beloved abbot, Cleric Thien, died three weeks earlier. Before Thien became a cleric they were the patriarch of the Coh clan in the far north, and those warrior sisters were his granddaughters. They want to take the abbot’s body back to their village, which is not the way of the abbey.
This brief fable explores love, grief, guilt, atonement, memory and transformation. In spite of the deep wounds various characters carry and the serious nature of the themes, this is a gentle tale. While the humans struggle, it is the abbot’s neixin, or memory bird, whose actions drive the plot. Myriad Virtues was the abbot’s most constant companion, and the neixin remember everything perfectly. How much deeper that must make grief. Myriad Virtues is inconsolable, and engages in an act of grief that shocks the other neixin, who see it as self-mutilation. Almost Brilliant, Chih’s memory bird, asks for him to help her friend, and Chih tries, but at the end, it is Myriad Virtues herself who makes the decision that resolves the deep-seated conflict between the mammoth warriors and the clerics.
Like all of the novellas, this is a short book, and Vo wisely doesn’t try to delve too deeply into the serious themes she has tackled. My favorite part of this story is the neixin themselves. For the first time we get to hear from them about their culture and their history. While it’s unlikely that the memory birds truly shared their origin story with Chih, the three “legends” they do share provide insight into the birds and how they see their role. Chih tries to give Myriad Virtues the place she deserves at a memorial dinner for the abbot, but even though the clerics admire and like the neixin, it is still clear they don’t see them as equals.
In spite of grief, loss, domestic violence and mutilation, I could characterize this story as tender. Chih reconnects with their old friend, and even a strange and ghostly presence is melancholy and eerie rather than scary. I read this story in a few hours, and I enjoyed it—I think you will too.
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A Cozy Sci-Fi Mystery: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
Alex Brown
Tue Mar 7, 2023 2:00pm
Between Martha Wells’ Fugitive Telemetry and Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes, detective mysteries set in space in the distant future are quickly becoming one of my favorite science fiction subgenres. Murder, mayhem, and the infinite expanse of space. What’s not to love?
On a remote platform high above the swirling gasses of Jupiter on the edge of civilization, a scholar vanishes. Was he pushed? Did he jump? Investigator Mossa is tasked with figuring out what happened, but to do that she’ll have to go to the man’s home platform of Valdegeld. He was a scholar there at the same institute as Pleiti, Mossa’s ex. Pleiti is in the Classics field, studying the Earth humans fled centuries before, while the missing man was in the Modern department, studying life as it is now, bound to metal platforms and gazing at Earth animals forever trapped in a zoo.
At first, Pleiti agrees to help Mossa work her way through the scholars and get her access to facilities and researchers she might not otherwise be able to find. Soon, Pleiti is as deep into the mystery as her ex is. Our missing man may be part of a larger conspiracy that threatens life on the platforms and the future of humanity. Past, present, and future collide miles above Jupiter. As the two women follow trails and leads across the platforms orbiting Giant, they must also chase their own feelings for each other.
I went into this novella expecting a sapphic space mystery and was delighted to discover it also had Sherlock Holmes and John Watson vibes. Mossa is the emotionally distant investigative intellectual who picks up on the tiny discrepancies that will eventually break the case wide open. Pleiti is the science-leaning assistant who may not be a genius but can still figure things out. But here the romance between our Holmes and Watson is not just a headcanon.
Mossa and Pleiti begin the story as ex-girlfriends who haven’t seen each other in ages. We spend most of the novella in Pleiti’s perspective, so we don’t fully know what’s going on in Mossa’s head. However, both seem to feel like they themselves have changed but worry the other hasn’t. Or, more accurately, worry that the other still thinks they’re the same unyielding people they were before. Mossa flirts but doesn’t push, as if she worries Pleiti is still nursing old wounds. Pleiti treats Mossa with kid gloves like they used to, so much so that they can’t see the person Mossa’s become.
Like with Older’s Infomocracy series, The Mimicking of Known Successes explores alternate forms of governance: the failures, the ideals, and the practicalities. From Pleiti’s perspective, the whole point of her job as a Classical scholar is to analyze the past so they can create a better future. Turn the past into datasets, pluck out the flaws while reinforcing the benefits, and then apply the results to what’s left of Earth. Pleiti and Mossa live in a utopia, but one that is stuck in stasis. Most people are simply living their lives within the parameters they’re given—from the farmers clustered together on agricultural platforms to the commuters riding free public transit to talented cooks in outposts in the middle of nowhere—while others want more. Scholars like Pleiti want to recreate and perfect the past, but others want to force a new future, whether by destroying the past entirely or by, well, mimicking known failures.
Malka Older’s cozy little sci-fi mystery was a delight in every way. The Mimicking of Known Successes blends a sort of Western/Victorian/Edwardian feel with speculative flair and mystery and romance tropes. I yearn for a 10-book novella series of Mossa and Pleiti’s romantic adventures.
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Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed
By: S. Qiouyi Lu
Issue: 24 February 2020
Nick Prasad has always been Joanna “Johnny” Chambers’s sidekick. Friends since a young age, Johnny has rocketed into an early and brilliant career as a child prodigy scientist, while Nick has lived a quiet, mundane life in which his biggest concerns are work and family. But the two of them still have a regular, teenage friendship, one filled with banter and misadventures. So when Johnny comes up with a new invention that could change the world, Nick doesn’t think much of it at first: after all, this is the seventeen-year-old girl who has already fitted the world with solar panels, created lifesaving medications, and perfected tools that assist millions of people’s lives—to name just a few of her accomplishments.
When strange things start to happen, Nick soon realizes that this invention isn’t like the others. An aurora borealis that shouldn’t be visible from their latitude heralds the coming of monstrous creatures, relentless in their pursuit of Johnny and her new invention. Bit by bit, the scale of what’s happening comes together: there are other realms beyond ours where terrible evil lurks and waits for its opportunity to trigger the next apocalypse. Those beings, “The Ancient Ones,” are responsible for the annihilation of civilizations ranging from Carthage to Cahuachi to Çatal Hüyük to Atlantis. And now, they’re after Johnny’s invention and the power it can unleash to destroy the world again.
But that’s not all. Suspicious of how much Johnny knows about the origin of these monsters, Nick pries the truth out of her and discovers that she’s made a covenant with the Ancient Ones. One of their terrifying pursuers, Drozanoth, is here to uphold that covenant, and will do anything to make Johnny hand over the invention responsible for calling the Ancient Ones back to Earth. Now, only she has any idea how to close the gates that are opening between realms. Determined to help stop the apocalypse, Nick embarks on a wild scavenger hunt with Johnny across the Maghreb and the Middle East to gather the items they need to put an end to the invasion.
Beneath the Rising, Indo-Guyanese author Premee Mohamed’s debut novel, is a rollercoaster of an experience. Although Mohamed draws from cosmic horror tropes as classic as Lovecraft’s, she challenges the oppressive foundations on which Lovecraft built his career. The novel is set in an alternate history shortly after a failed terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The impact of September 11 doesn’t go unnoticed: instead, it, and the period setting of the early 2000s, deeply inform the characters’ every movement through the world and the global context around them. Nick, who is Indo-Caribbean and often refers to himself as “brown,” details the various ways in which his racial and class background affect how he sees the world, and how the world sees him. Unlike Nick, Johnny, the wonder-kid know-it-all seemingly blessed with endless genius, is White and rich. Although the sexism she faces is made clear, her privilege on other axes is called out in a way that feels natural to the characters and important to the narrative.
Lovecraft’s work often relies on racism to fuel its narrative and to lend horror and dread to cosmic horror elements. Mohamed, on the other hand, lays out the intersecting foundations of that marginalization and shows how those systems of oppression are the all-too-mundane backdrop against which otherworldly cosmic horror can play out. On top of that, Mohamed brings a genuinely global scope to her doomsday narrative. It is not just the West that faces an imminent catastrophe in Beneath the Rising. Rather, most of the main events occur in the Maghreb and across the Middle East. The rise and fall of civilizations across a broad set of cultures at the hands of the Ancient Ones feels like a smooth integration of all parts of the world, creating a truly global and historically linear scope of events that adds urgency to the narrative.
When it comes to the technical details of craft, Beneath the Rising shows Mohamed’s masterful command of description, pace, and emotion that renders powerful characters and settings. The prose is lean and deliberate, a short story writer’s novel. Mohamed, who also has several short fiction publications to her name, makes sure that every sentence, every paragraph, every simile serves multiple purposes. A sentence can reveal period- and character-appropriate details while also being embedded in an unusual, yet apt, metaphor that vividly describes and furthers the events of the story:
[Johnny] was trembling so hard she was almost flickering, like a poorly-tracked VHS tape. […] This [fear] felt more like something from outside of me, like secondhand smoke, greasily invisible, sinking into my pores, blown from someone unseen. (pp. 56–58)
Mohamed’s command of the rhythm of a sentence shows through in her control over the pace of the story as well. When Nick and Johnny have room to breathe, the prose is denser and slower as it lingers on fuller descriptions.
In the moment of relative safety I craned my head to try to take it all in, wishing I had sunglasses or a hat—it was so bright it just seemed like a spangled kaleidoscope of car windows, men in suits, tiny booths hawking electronics, sunglasses, clothing, CDs, food, tiles, everyone gabbling around me in languages I didn’t know, plus blessedly recognizable if not actually comprehensible French and English. People bumped and buffeted me apparently without even noticing. I had been picturing … I don’t even know what. Some mud-brick city from Raiders of the Lost Ark? Flowing white robes? Tintin books, for absolute sure. (p. 144)
But when Nick and Johnny are on the run, Mohamed’s prose goes into fight-or-flight mode, highlighting only the barest of actions, reactions, and sensory details. The reader barrels along, breathless, with the characters.
I shut the closet door, hearing first a bang, and then—oh shit—the musical tinkle of falling glass from the living room. A multilegged shadow, all spikes and floppy appendages and translucent nodules, firmly struck the hallway wall, like an ink stamp. I cast about, left, right, left, right. Kids. Bedroom. Two quick steps: empty. (p. 103)
At the same time, Beneath the Rising isn’t just an action-adventure chase after a string of McGuffins against a backdrop of tentacles, shadows, uncanny eldritch pawns, and imminent apocalypse. It’s also a slow tale about a different kind of unrequited love between two teenagers who were forced to grow up too early, and who have never had the space to address their lingering PTSD after surviving a shooting during a hostage crisis. Woven between the multidimensional chaos of the Ancient Ones’ return is a poignant, melancholy tale of what growing out of childhood ideals means and feels like. As Nick confronts the codependent nature of his love for Johnny, who turns out not to be the person he thought she was, he shores up memories and emotions that illustrate the processing he’s doing internally while also showing his growth as a character. The vindication of his fury and betrayal feels both earned and deserved.
The biggest strength of the novel, however, comes from the shocking reveal toward the end of the book that explains the true nature of Nick’s “friendship” with Johnny, and why he was even dragged along on such a dangerous journey he had no hand in creating. I’ll be including spoilers from here on in order to fully discuss the impact of the ending.
Instead of being a magnanimous scientist who simply wants to help the world, Johnny practices “altruism” as a reflection of her own need for power and worth. She may be doing good with her work, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t channel great evil and also be a villainous mad scientist. Her prodigal power and inhuman brilliance stem from a covenant she struck with the Ancient Ones. In exchange for time off of her life, Johnny can speed up her mind, like a supercomputer’s processing power getting a boost, to do what she does. But with that covenant came another clause that Johnny only reveals to Nick when she can no longer hide it. Afraid that her unbelievable talent would alienate her from the rest of the world, leaving her alone forever, Johnny bargained for Nick to be forever by her side as a companion. Nick’s true relationship to Johnny is as a slave.
This Faustian covenant, however, didn’t have to take place. Johnny admits that, if she’d refused the covenant, she would have still lived a comfortable, successful life, and would have still been a great scientist. But, lured in by power and the opportunity to influence the world, saving millions of lives in the process, Johnny agreed to a deal with the Ancient Ones. She justifies her actions with all the good she’s done—but Beneath the Rising is, at its heart, a novel about the true cost of power, and whether the ends can justify appalling means. After all, the Ancient Ones would never have been attracted to the world if Johnny had refused the covenant in the first place. The millions of lives potentially lost in a global apocalypse don’t factor into Johnny’s calculations of how much good she does and her positive impact on the world.
Therein lies the extended metaphor that forms the secret crux of Mohamed’s narrative: Johnny’s covenant, and Nick’s role as her “companion,” are tools to critique the legacy of colonialism; in particular, slavery. In a key character turning point, Nick reminds Johnny that his family, of Indian descent and from Guyana, descends from indentured servants who were exploited for the sake of the British Empire. Nick takes deep offense at the way Johnny doles out money, as if to buy people and solutions to her problems. Johnny’s race is actually the most insignificant reflection of her position as a symbol for colonization and empire. It is her utilitarian attitude toward people and her perceived self-importance as a representative of “the greater good” that motivate the true horrors that Johnny commits. Loyalty can always be bought. Nick’s loss of agency, the loss of his potential livelihood, and the psychic toll of not being a genuinely free individual, never enter into Johnny’s mind. Nick isn’t truly a friend, an equal, or even a person to her. He is a sidekick, a person to be uprooted from place to place so that Johnny can always have someone to carry her when she is weak, provide strength when she has none, and sacrifice his life if she needs him to. Nick is merely a resource she can exploit as an extension of herself. How many families, societies, and whole cultures have similarly been torn apart to support the advancement of Western civilization?
No matter how euphemistically slavery is named, whether as “indentured servitude,” “incarceration,” or “debt bondage,” it is ultimately the real covenant that robs people of their time and life force. The lasting socioeconomic impact of slavery, too, oozes through Beneath the Rising as the gulf in wealth between Nick and Johnny, as well as the gulf in opportunity and attitudes toward self-worth between them. No eldritch covenant needs to be made for oppressors to keep subjugating the oppressed. Through Johnny, the whole empire of colonization is laid bare and exposed: for all the “advancement” purportedly created by colonizers, for all the status colonizers lay claim to, millions of people whom colonizers considered as second-class were sacrificed. When Johnny sets out to “save the world,” what she is truly saving is the status quo of her own world of privilege. Nick’s world, the world of the subjugated and oppressed, has long since been lost.
On a micro scale, Beneath the Rising is the best inversion of the sidekick trope I’ve ever seen. The effect of a reckless superhuman crashing through the world are called out early: who will clean up? Who will pay for property damage? Who will handle witness protection? Insurance? Jobs? How will people recover from the trauma of such a disruptive event? Then, when the true nature of Nick’s slavery is revealed, we see the rare story of a sidekick walking away—of codependency not being romanticized, but called out for the real destruction it can cause. Nick’s anger and betrayal are validated narratively as he sets boundaries at last and recovers from Johnny’s exploitation. The scale of Johnny’s betrayal and the evilness of her act are never downplayed, even as Johnny herself, like many benefitting from the legacy of colonization, remains clueless of her impact, even going so far as to still believe that she is doing good, and that all the devastation behind her can be a footnote to her altruism.
Beneath the Rising is a near-flawless debut novel. While it works well as a standalone, the story and worldbuilding leave room for sequels as well. Multilayered and richly rendered, Beneath the Rising is a darkly humorous romp through unspeakable cosmic horrors that also paints a portrait of two hurt teenagers grappling with their place in the world and their relationship with each other, all while navigating complex inner worlds impacted by the legacies of colonization, slavery, racism, and sexism. Like a doomsday device, Beneath the Rising is compact, powerful, and devastating as it hurls the reader through a brilliantly crafted narrative. Prepare for an epic journey, and don’t forget to bring a barf bag for the turbulent ride.
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