How do we ensure that the rights of all beings are respected and they are given justice and a fair hearing under the law? Who will stand up when a majority treats someone as a thing, rather than a person? Who can stand against the tyranny of a settlement, a society, a species?
These are the questions at the heart of Erin K. Wagner’s novella, An Unnatural Life.
No system of government or society exists without some checks on power. Even the most autocratic autarchy has some checks and influencers on authority, even if informal ones, because the person at the top cannot personally do every single small act of governance. Such checks on power and supports of power can take many forms, including the personal. The relationships between ruler and ruled can get especially interesting when that relationship is frayed and discredited, forcing a society already under tension further into stress. To say nothing of what that relationship does to the actual individuals themselves.
So it is in Nick Martell’s debut novel, The Kingdom of Liars.
In discussing Emily B Martin’s Sunshield, I think the best way for me to draw you into what the book is and what is doing is not to discuss the plot or characters, but instead to talk about worldbuilding in the novel, and the worldbuilding of a lot of fantasy worlds in general.
I’ve written about secondary world fantasy that is beyond the “Great Wall of Europe” before, specifically about “Silk Road Fantasy”, mainly focused on Africa and Asia. Instead of being just places for “The Other”, on the margins of a Europhilic fantasy, we’re getting more novels and stories where African and Asian cultures, peoples, and geographies are front and center.
[Sunshield takes us instead to a fantasy version of North America]
Welcome back. In my previous installment, I looked at Sarah Kozloff’s first two Nine Realms books, A Queen in Hiding and The Queen of Raiders. In this second and final installment, I look at the two final volumes of the quartet, A Broken Queen and The Cerulean Queen. Spoilers to be expected.
Servant of the Crown
In Servant of the Crown, Duncan Hamilton completes his Dragonslayer Trilogy, seeding the world and the narrative with potential plots and threats for future books, while also working to wrap up the major plotlines of the first two novels.
Spoilers ahead for the entire series.
A Queen in Hiding and The Queen of Raiders, the first two novels in Sarah Kozloff’s Nine Realms universe, looks back to traditional fantasy narratives and works to recast them for the third decade of the 21st century.
Juliette Wade’s Mazes of Power is a thought provoking and immersive work of sociological science fiction in the footsteps of genre luminaries like Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessig, Jack Vance, and Eleanor Arnason that has coincidental relevance in our world with the news surrounding the Coronavirus outbreak.
The story of centers on an alternate human world with no connection to our own. It is a world of faded glory, descending from its high peak—similar in spirit to the world of Charlie Jane Anders’ The City In the Middle of the Night. Humans now live almost entirely underground and the surface world is regarded with dread and fear in an almost Asimovian Caves of Steel sort of mode. Society is stratified, split by class and social status. Conflicts that may be present in our own world are reflected here in a much more violent manner, especially when it comes to politics. The Varin, the high caste of this world, are on a precipice of power, and it is the actions of one of their families and its scions that will decide the fate of an entire city and world.
When you have a fantasy series built around a multiverse of dragons, fae, and interdimensional Librarians who acquire books and texts to stabilize worlds, you can play in a lot of subgenres. From political intrigue to interdimensional rescue to murder mystery, the possibilities are diverse, also given the varieties of worlds and settings. So a straight up heist story is, in the end, delightfully and axiomatically inevitable as one of the forms a writer with such a canvas might want to try out. So it is with the latest Genevieve Cogman’s novel, The Secret Chapter, sixth in the Invisible Library series.
Briefly, the series centers around Irene Winters, an up-and-coming Librarian and her apprentice Kai, who just so happens to be a dragon. Their time- and world-hopping adventures see them face off against traitorous Librarians, duplicitous fae, overbearing and very dangerous dragons—and more—with Cogman dialing up the fun, wordplay, and humor. They tend toward similar basic structures that work—a first chapter where Irene gets herself caught into an adventure going wrong, extracts herself from it, and then moves on to the real story. It works for James Bond movies, it works for Genevieve Cogman.
In Knight of the Silver Circle, Duncan Hamilton’s Dumas and Dragons fantastic world of Dragonslayer deepens and continues into a central volume that brings new pieces onto the board and develops the characters and plotlines from the first novel.
Earlier this year, Howard Andrew Jones started a new fantasy series with For the Killing of Kings, with characters, setting and especially tone reminiscent of the heroic fantasy of writers like Dumas, Lamb and Zelazny. Telling the story of Elenai and Rylin, up and coming squires in the kingdom of Darnassus, I found this to be a fresh fantasy in my review. My major complaint was that For the Killing of Kings was clearly the first of a trilogy, leaving many elements of the story hanging: a fleeing Queen, a broken siege, and the enemy Naor on the march, seemingly unstoppable. Even with the return of assumed-dead N’Lahr, greatest general this side of Prince Benedict of Amber, things look bleak for the Altenerai corps and the Five Realms they are sworn to protect.
Upon the Flight of the Queen, the second book in the series, finally continues that story.
Peter F. Hamilton’s Salvation, first in the sequence, created a new universe that resembles his Commonwealth universe; in both, Gate technology proves to be the method of interstellar transport. In many ways, though, the Salvation universe takes the idea and extends it into other facets of life, using gates in a way more reminiscent of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion verse or Larry Niven’s teleportation booths. Salvation’s narrative takes place in two times: in the 23rd century, first contact with the Olyix is not seen immediately as a threat, except by a paranoid few; but in the far future, the danger is all too clear, and the descendants of humanity ruthlessly train themselves and their society to combat the alien threat.
Salvation Lost continues both of those stories in parallel. We know the 23rd century Olyix are going to devestate to humanity—but just how will that play out? And how will the far future conflict resolve?
[Read more]
For all of the tendency in fantasy lately to look at perspectives outside of the aristocratic, the powerful, and the noble, there is a satisfaction in that mode of epic fantasy. Sometimes you want the people at the center of power, the classic rock of epic fantasy where the movers and shakers, and those adjacent to them scheme, jockey and manipulate each other. Multiple viewpoints and perspectives, but generally from that social class help make it seem like a pressure cooker of intrigue and drama. So it is with S.C. Emmett’s The Throne of the Five Winds.
In How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, K. Eason takes a classic fantasy script—of a royal daughter being given gifts by Faeries and the consequences thereof–and upends it right from the get go. For, you see, this Royal Family rules not a typical Secondary World fantasy kingdom, but a Space Kingdom (actually technically a Consortium).
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse leans heavily and often on its boundary position between science fiction, fantasy, and folklore, continually defying expectations by clever genre switching. Our protagonist is the titular heroine, Rory Thorne. Born to a line that has had only sons for generations, her parents set up the fairy ceremony thinking that faeries are not real, and that the proceedings are a pro forma fantasia. When thirteen (including the antagonistic last of their number) faeries show up to give baby Rory Thorne their blessings, the novel becomes delightfully unclear about which genre bucket it falls into. The fairies exit the narrative quickly and permanently, but the mixture of science-fiction and fairy tales continues on throughout the book.
In A Choir of Lies, Alexandra Rowland brings us back the world of Chants, but in the process completely calls into question what we learned about them in A Conspiracy of Truths
I think it is futile for me to discuss what A Choir of Lies does without discussing in depth what A Conspiracy of Truths does, and so readers who do not want to be spoiled for the first book probably should go read it first.
Ready? Good!
You’ve heard this narrative before. Young people chosen because of a special bloodline, a special talent, a rare ability or heritage that they themselves don’t know about. Gather these special people, bring them to an isolated space, be it in the mountains, the world next door, a remote island. Possibly one or two of the chosen have an even more special talent than the usual. Train them in their heritage, preparing them to face against a threat to themselves, and possibly the entire world. It’s a well worn path for a SFF novel to take. Or Star Wars, for that matter.
In Troy Carrol Bucher’s epic fantasy novel Lies of Descent, first in The Fallen Gods War series flips that script and its expectations, early and often.
