An awesome sismance (the sisterly equivalent of a bromance) in post-apocalyptic magic-land!
Sumner-Smith, Karina. Radiant. Talos, 2014.
Sumner-Smith, Karina. Defiant. Talos, 2015.
Think back to the near-perfection of Terminator 2. It has it
all, right? Excitement, poignancy, a bit of engagement with Deep Stuff, you
name it. But have you ever thought about what it doesn't have? Romance. The main characters? An asexual cyborg, an
awesome female protagonist whose worth has nothing at all to do with her
attractiveness to anyone else, and a (super-annoying) prepubescent boy. The cyborg
can be fatherly, and the three of them certainly come to resemble a weird nuclear
family, but without the messiness of sexual attraction or desire.
 |
| With a face like this, you just know heterosexual romance is in the air |
"But Zhaoyun, you're always going on and on about
romance as the Best Thing Ever—what gives?" It's true, I'm about as romantic
a person as there is. In sentimentality, I stand second to none: I cry at
virtually anything. I'm almost as bad as that Brendan Fraser character in
Bedazzled (you know the one I mean--Sunset Man!). The eternal dream of heterosexual union is near and dear to my mushy
heart. Nonetheless, even for a terminal romantic like me, sometimes it's nice
for books and movies to explore other dreams, and other kinds of love.
This brings us, at last, to Karina Sumner-Smith's glorious
Towers trilogy, of which I've read the first two (in my defense, the third book
has yet to be released!). At its core is the mighty bond of love (possibly
Sapphic but seemingly asexual and, even if romantic in nature, obviously
impractical!) between two young women and their very different types of magic.
The first two novels are riveting (after the brilliant start with Radiant, Sumner-Smith may have accomplished that rarest of feats, actually surpassing her first novel with the sequel), despite knowing that obviously neither
character is going to find true love—Sumner-Smith gently but firmly makes it
clear that there is more to young women than who they're going to fall in love
with, in the process throwing down the gauntlet on like 99% of cultural
products nowadays (my favorite example is The Hundred, which is like a reality
TV tell-all complete with webs of jealousy and almost immediate, and constant,
speculation about who will shack up with whom in heterosexual bliss, but love
triangles and so forth abound in post-apocalyptic/sci-fantasy fiction, e.g.
Twilight, The Hunger Games, etc.).
As Vince Vaughn says in every movie, we "are [or
can/should be] better than this." Ask yourself: do we really only care
about characters when we can be confident they'll end up together? Is that all
there is to their stories? Sumner-Smith has produced a resounding rebuttal in Radiant and Defiant (and, one hopes, a climactic conclusion in the eagerly
awaited third volume!). Xhea and Shai form an unlikely friendship over these
two books, and it certainly kept this reader entertained despite a serious
addiction to romance and no prospect of a fix anytime in the future.
Personally, I think it would have been even cooler if Sumner-Smith had taken it
one step further and played with reader expectations (which, of course, will be
overwhelmingly for some sort of heterosexual pairing by each novel's end) by
introducing a likely male suitor only for him to suffer some grisly fate, or
turn out to be gay, or something like that. For better or worse, Sumner-Smith
has a far lighter touch than that, and weaves together a mesmerizing tale
without the biggest crutch of all, romantic love.
To understand just how momentous an accomplishment this is,
especially in this particular sub-genre of post-apocalyptic sci-fantasy, imagine
that you didn't have me singing the series' praises, explaining how great and
occasionally downright poetic the writing is, the delightfully rapid pacing and
the extremely well-rounded characters. Instead, all you have is the following
tag-line: "it's about two girls, one of whom is a ghost, and there are
basically no boys in the story at all." Sound like a book you want to pick
up? And the truth is, these are books we all should pick up, because it's such a wonderful series, but I have no
idea how Sumner-Smith managed to convince the publishing industry to take a
chance on her. I'm just glad she managed it, because this is the only sismance
I've ever encountered and it's awesome!
The Math
Objective Assessment: 8/10
Bonuses: +1 for hanging a great, fast-paced story around two
young women, with no male love interests in sight, and +1 for making those two
young women awesome
Penalties: -1 for not sticking it to addicted-to-romance
readers by playing with their expectations
Nerd coefficient: 9/10 "A standout in its category"
[Note that a 9/10 here at Nerds of a Feather is incredibly
rare, and indicates the work in question is better than all but a tiny handful
of all books—ever! See here for
details.]
Zhaoyun, Terminator-2/sismance lover by day, regular lover by night, has been tearfully, joyfully reviewing books and other stuff here on Nerds of a Feather since 2013.
