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Selah Kelios is the new Imperial Historian in the distant colony city of Sargassa, far from the center of the Roman Empire but high in pride and strength. Her father has just died (honestly, assassinated) and so she has been thrust into his role as Imperial Historian at a young age. Her father has left some secrets (as well as the secret of who assassinated him and why) and as Selah tries to uncover them, it’s the social bonds, and the bonds of love and relationships that tangle Selah and those around her, that are all the more important.
All this is the story of Sargassa, by Sophie Burnham.
Longtime readers of me know that, in the tradition of the meme of “men thinking about the Roman Empire”, I resemble that remark. I’ve thought about the Roman Empire since I first heard about it, more than 40 years ago. So, novels, fantasy and otherwise set in the Roman Empire, or Roman Empires than didn’t fall, et cetera, are catnip to me. It has been a few years, though, since I’ve read one that has satisfied me. “Roman Empire never fell” books often feel like pantomimes or pallid continuations of ancient society without any real growth, change, evolution or development. This really goes even against the spirit of Rome itself. Rome of 250 BC, before the Punic Wars, is a very different place than 146 BC, at the fall of Carthage and of Corinth, different than 45 BC, with Julius Caesar at his height, 5 AD, at Augustus’ high point before the disaster in Germany, 110 AD, Hadrian and building the wall in Britain, and so on. Writing, speaking, army composition, society, all the details of Roman life changed over the centuries. And that doesn’t even get into what 9th century A.D. Byzantium might look like to a Roman from 100 BC.
Happily, Sargassa avoids that trap. Sargassa is a major Roman city that by contextual clues appears to be somewhere in North America. There is some digging one can do in the book to piece together the world situation, but that’s not the worldbuilding Burnham really is interested in--there is no map, and a map would be beside the point. Instead Burnham is interested in what Roman society, in a city far from Rome, is like after rising from a dark age (the mysterious “Quiet” that gets mentioned a lot in the book). Some things are still the same. There are patricians and plebs, client-patron relationships. Sargassa is ruled by a Consul. But then there are differences. Evolutions from the Rome of textbooks and historical novels. There are a class of people called Verna, which sit in a very precarious social relationship with plebs, patricians and the rest of society. Religion is focused on a mother goddess figure (Christianity apparently exists, but never became the state religion in this world). Selah, although a woman, gets to be a paterfamilias in the wake of her father’s death, which would never fly back in the time of the ancient Roman Empire. So we get a built up web of a world in Sargassa, as a Roman society building back from a dark age, trying to recapture things that were lost, but going forward. Selah’s role as Imperial Historian is to try and help preserve some of the lost and glorious past.
And while the book is about Selah and a MacGuffin from that glorious past, and the question of who killed her father and why, it is also really much more about the relationships in the book. Selah’s very complicated relationship with her lover Tair, at first in flashback and then Tair's unexpected return. Selah’s half brother Arran. Arran's role and status as being Selah's half-brother is complicated from the get go and his drifting for meaning and life draws him into contact with another POV character, Theodora, who goes by Theo. Arran’s complicated is-this-a-romance with the nonbinary Theo is further complicated by the fact that Theo works for a revolutionary underground. Thus, these four are four of our five main points of view (Selah being primary), coming from very different social castes and situations in Sargassa society, the evolution of Roman society (as seen above). How they all eventually converge and interact really is the matter of the book. How these four deal with what is happening, to their city and to each other, is the reason to keep turning pages. Burham does an excellent job in point of view in showing the strata and roles of Roman society The relationships, brotherly, sisterly, queer, and otherwise really make this book what it is and give it its potency. Secrets, lies, the secrets of the heart, both confessed and otherwise, all under the slow burning of the aftermath of Selah’s father’s death.
Our fifth point of view is a bit different and is somewhat off the map compared to the others, and that is Darius. Darius provides us the “interior government role” as a law enforcement officer. Darius fits in as our “straight man” to the quartet of the primary POV characters (which is an apt pun, come to think of it). He utterly represents the establishment, the old guard of this new Roman society. He also fills in the “last incorruptible man” slot in the murder mystery strand of the book. He has been told by the powers that be to investigate the death of the Imperial Historian in a very specific way...but Darius wants to, bless his heart, actually find out the truth. It doesn’t really spoil anything to tell you that this approach doesn’t go that well for Darius.
At the three quarter mark, however, the novel changes. I know the conflicting theories and opinions about the nature, use and validity of spoilers are a thing, but I think in the case of this novel, the less I say about the last quarter of the book, the better. It reframes the entire previous book to that point, and to what Burham is doing here. It doesn’t make any of her ideas and her explorations of revolution, class warfare, society and the costs, personally and otherwise, of repression any less valid. If anything, those ideas she explores get turbocharged by the turn at the three quarter mark and to its conclusion. We spend three quarters of the book with a murder mystery, a character web, and a building of a world and society and conflicts, social and societal for them...and then, well, that would be telling.
This does make giving references to books that are similar difficult--because the books I am thinking of that resonate really strongly with Sargassa also rhyme with that three quarter mark turn that I am really trying to not spoil here. I think that telling you it is there does better than to leave it a complete surprise, you’ll watch for it now, and it will be an interesting extra fillip for you to watch out for as the rest of the pleasures of the book unfold.
The book is the start of a series and there really isn’t a good offramp here. I think it would be amazingly difficult to even try, given the last quarter of the book. There is a lot of the world, and the implications of the world left to explore in the projected next two books. I really want to see where Burham goes with this. I know for a lot of people waiting for a trilogy to complete before buying the first book is their power move (as bad as it is for sales of the original book). Thus, if my review has moved you, I do hope you will give Sargassa a try...be it by borrowing it from the local library, audio, or what have you. Burham has something interesting and wondrous going on here and I hope she gets the chance to continue to explore it.
All this is the story of Sargassa, by Sophie Burnham.
Longtime readers of me know that, in the tradition of the meme of “men thinking about the Roman Empire”, I resemble that remark. I’ve thought about the Roman Empire since I first heard about it, more than 40 years ago. So, novels, fantasy and otherwise set in the Roman Empire, or Roman Empires than didn’t fall, et cetera, are catnip to me. It has been a few years, though, since I’ve read one that has satisfied me. “Roman Empire never fell” books often feel like pantomimes or pallid continuations of ancient society without any real growth, change, evolution or development. This really goes even against the spirit of Rome itself. Rome of 250 BC, before the Punic Wars, is a very different place than 146 BC, at the fall of Carthage and of Corinth, different than 45 BC, with Julius Caesar at his height, 5 AD, at Augustus’ high point before the disaster in Germany, 110 AD, Hadrian and building the wall in Britain, and so on. Writing, speaking, army composition, society, all the details of Roman life changed over the centuries. And that doesn’t even get into what 9th century A.D. Byzantium might look like to a Roman from 100 BC.
Happily, Sargassa avoids that trap. Sargassa is a major Roman city that by contextual clues appears to be somewhere in North America. There is some digging one can do in the book to piece together the world situation, but that’s not the worldbuilding Burnham really is interested in--there is no map, and a map would be beside the point. Instead Burnham is interested in what Roman society, in a city far from Rome, is like after rising from a dark age (the mysterious “Quiet” that gets mentioned a lot in the book). Some things are still the same. There are patricians and plebs, client-patron relationships. Sargassa is ruled by a Consul. But then there are differences. Evolutions from the Rome of textbooks and historical novels. There are a class of people called Verna, which sit in a very precarious social relationship with plebs, patricians and the rest of society. Religion is focused on a mother goddess figure (Christianity apparently exists, but never became the state religion in this world). Selah, although a woman, gets to be a paterfamilias in the wake of her father’s death, which would never fly back in the time of the ancient Roman Empire. So we get a built up web of a world in Sargassa, as a Roman society building back from a dark age, trying to recapture things that were lost, but going forward. Selah’s role as Imperial Historian is to try and help preserve some of the lost and glorious past.
And while the book is about Selah and a MacGuffin from that glorious past, and the question of who killed her father and why, it is also really much more about the relationships in the book. Selah’s very complicated relationship with her lover Tair, at first in flashback and then Tair's unexpected return. Selah’s half brother Arran. Arran's role and status as being Selah's half-brother is complicated from the get go and his drifting for meaning and life draws him into contact with another POV character, Theodora, who goes by Theo. Arran’s complicated is-this-a-romance with the nonbinary Theo is further complicated by the fact that Theo works for a revolutionary underground. Thus, these four are four of our five main points of view (Selah being primary), coming from very different social castes and situations in Sargassa society, the evolution of Roman society (as seen above). How they all eventually converge and interact really is the matter of the book. How these four deal with what is happening, to their city and to each other, is the reason to keep turning pages. Burham does an excellent job in point of view in showing the strata and roles of Roman society The relationships, brotherly, sisterly, queer, and otherwise really make this book what it is and give it its potency. Secrets, lies, the secrets of the heart, both confessed and otherwise, all under the slow burning of the aftermath of Selah’s father’s death.
Our fifth point of view is a bit different and is somewhat off the map compared to the others, and that is Darius. Darius provides us the “interior government role” as a law enforcement officer. Darius fits in as our “straight man” to the quartet of the primary POV characters (which is an apt pun, come to think of it). He utterly represents the establishment, the old guard of this new Roman society. He also fills in the “last incorruptible man” slot in the murder mystery strand of the book. He has been told by the powers that be to investigate the death of the Imperial Historian in a very specific way...but Darius wants to, bless his heart, actually find out the truth. It doesn’t really spoil anything to tell you that this approach doesn’t go that well for Darius.
At the three quarter mark, however, the novel changes. I know the conflicting theories and opinions about the nature, use and validity of spoilers are a thing, but I think in the case of this novel, the less I say about the last quarter of the book, the better. It reframes the entire previous book to that point, and to what Burham is doing here. It doesn’t make any of her ideas and her explorations of revolution, class warfare, society and the costs, personally and otherwise, of repression any less valid. If anything, those ideas she explores get turbocharged by the turn at the three quarter mark and to its conclusion. We spend three quarters of the book with a murder mystery, a character web, and a building of a world and society and conflicts, social and societal for them...and then, well, that would be telling.
This does make giving references to books that are similar difficult--because the books I am thinking of that resonate really strongly with Sargassa also rhyme with that three quarter mark turn that I am really trying to not spoil here. I think that telling you it is there does better than to leave it a complete surprise, you’ll watch for it now, and it will be an interesting extra fillip for you to watch out for as the rest of the pleasures of the book unfold.
The book is the start of a series and there really isn’t a good offramp here. I think it would be amazingly difficult to even try, given the last quarter of the book. There is a lot of the world, and the implications of the world left to explore in the projected next two books. I really want to see where Burham goes with this. I know for a lot of people waiting for a trilogy to complete before buying the first book is their power move (as bad as it is for sales of the original book). Thus, if my review has moved you, I do hope you will give Sargassa a try...be it by borrowing it from the local library, audio, or what have you. Burham has something interesting and wondrous going on here and I hope she gets the chance to continue to explore it.
--
Highlights:
Rich and detailed worldbuilding on a social and societal focus
Excellent set of protagonists and points of view
The three quarter turn in this book...watch for it.
Reference: Burnham, Sophie, Sargassa [Daw, 2024]
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
