Jeannette
Ng rewrites the missionary tale to create a new type of gothic fairytale.
Content
Warning, which is also a spoiler. Please highlight between brackets if you are
interested in the CW: [incest]
Here
at Nerds, all of my book reviews have focused on YA literature, but I’m going
to break my streak for a book so in my personal wheelhouse I have to write
about it—Under the Pendulum Sun: A Novel
of the Fae by Jeannette Ng.
Ng’s
backflap bio describes her writing as “gothic fantasy with a theological twist.”
My original interest in the novel came from the basic plot description:
missionaries are sent to convert the Fae in the newly discovered land of
Arcadia. I’m sure some of you are thinking—wow, sounds super boring. Meanwhile,
I’m flipping out because OF COURSE missionary societies would have sent
missionaries to evangelize the Fae. What a perfect plot.
Part
of my interest stems from a unique childhood that involved reading a lot of missionary
biographies. From Jim Elliot’s story of martyrdom as written by his wife Elisabeth
Elliot in Shadow of the Almighty to Torches
of Joy: A Stone Age Tribe's Encounter With the Gospel about Christian
writer Ted Dekker’s parents (and his childhood). And of course, the Christian
library my family occasionally visited (we went to plenty of regular libraries,
too), carried the entire collection of Christian
Heroes: Then & Now by YWAM (at one point in my life, I could
have told you without Googling that the letters stood for Youth With a Mission).
In fact, I hadn’t realized how much I’d absorbed from those narratives until
reading Under the Pendulum Sun. While
according to Ng’s bio, she comes to this material from an academic background, damn,
did she get it right.
The
novel starts with Catherine Helstone (a nice nod to Wuthering Heights, one among many) searching for her brother, who
has been sent to spread the Word of God to the Fae, but Laon has only sent
unsettling and abrupt letters, and even those stopped arriving months ago. When she arrives
in Arcadia, Catherine is presented with the bizarre and familiar fitting for any
story of the Fae. Ng’s worldbuilding really shines in the descriptions of
Arcadia. I’m not an avid reader of fairy stories, though I enjoy them when I
do pick one up, but Ng’s world felt fresh, not just a rehash of Andrew Lang. As you might
guess from the title, the sun swings in a pendulous arc across Arcadia, but the
moon dangles from a fish (imagine a deep sea humpback angler). The descriptions
of the Fae rarely repeat and vary from the more traditional gnomes to beings
made of sand.
In
fact, I wanted more. Queen Mab keeps Catherine and Laon corralled in a castle
and denies them entry to the interior of Arcadia, so much of the book is spent in
the castle with few forays beyond the gates. While a perfect setting for the gothic
genre, Ng’s descriptions of Arcadia were so compelling I wish the Helstones had
gone beyond the castle. That being said, a castle in Arcadia is no ordinary
castle, and Ng hides plenty of surprises throughout the ponderous corridors to keep
readers turning pages.
While
gothic and fairy genres are certainly niche enough, the missionary aspect
brought a breath of fresh air to the genres. Ng carefully takes the reader
through the traditional tropes of missionary biographies: journals, converts,
translating the Bible into the local language, including racist comments that so mimicked
the voices I remember from my childhood I found myself underlining and tabbing throughout
the book. For example, “Selfishly, I had thought myself abandoned. I spared not
a heartbeat for those that languish in the grim empires without word of the
Redeemer.” Such a line could have come straight from Elisabeth Elliot’s Shadow of the Almighty.
By
capturing this proselytizing tone, Jeannette Ng uses the age-old fairy story to
remind the reader of one of colonialism’s pillars—religion. Untimely, Ng
rewrites the missionary tale, fusing it with fantasy, in a gothic novel where
religion fails.
The Math
Baseline
Assessment: 9/10
Bonuses:
+1 for accuracy on missionary stories
Penalties:
-1 for pacing at the end—cutting fifty or so pages might have helped the book
Nerd
Coefficient: 9/10* “Very high quality/standout in its category.” Read more
about our scoring system here.
*One
caveat, which is not a criticism. This novel is very niche. Folks might find
the missionary aspect grating, but this unique look into colonialism merits a
reading.
Posted
by Phoebe Wagner
Ng,
Jeannette. Under the Pendulum Star: A
Novel of the Fae [Angry Robot, 2017]
