An engaging and entertaining novel that does most, but not quite everything, that it says on the tin
In a world of fallen empires, lost gods and the power to channel divinity, Kirby, a young woman from a dying village, sets off on a quest to find the stolen icon of goddess Iona. Kirby is convinced, with some solid evidence, that Iona’s absence is the reason why the community suffers under a curse that is slowly and steadily strangling it. Meantime, Aleya, the overachieving daughter of the current ruler of the powerful city of Ash, is finally given a quest (a Calling) to prove her worth, which sets her off on the road as well, to the same destination as Kirby: to a city that once ruled the vast and now fallen empire of Nivela.
This is the story of Grace Curtis’s Idolfire, a resolutely standalone fantasy novel.
I do want to lead off with that. In a world of trilogies, duologies (which appear to be especially popular these days) and other extended series, this is a story that wraps up everything in one volume. You will get a complete story here of the two (and then a third) main characters, complete and whole. Kudos to the author for managing that feat.
Idolfire is advertised and marketed as “A character-driven science-fantasy road trip book with sword fights and a slow-burn romance. An epic sapphic fantasy roadtrip inspired by the fall of Rome.” We do get most of that in this book.
First up, the characters. Our two main protagonists, Kirby and Aleya, do take their time to meet, and their sapphic romance is definitely a slow burn in the squabbling-squabbling-acceptance-sparks sort of affair. It should be said that this fantasy world is resolutely queernorm; their relationship is just an accepted part of human relations in this ’verse. And while Kirby may have been shy and barely kissed anyone before, Aleya definitely has had prior lovers (and we meet one while on the road). So the bones of all that are good, and a lot of the novel works on the engines of its characters, both when they are apart and then when they unite.
Their relationship and their natures are an excellent engine for drama and events that unfold during the course of the novel. While Kirby can’t fight her way out of a paper bag at the beginning (despite having what might be a magic sword she can barely swing), she has practical skills for living off of the land that Aleya does not. Aleya has trained as a fighter all her life (see the above mention of sword fights), but also has diplomatic and administrative skills (after all, she does want to rule Ash, or thinks she does). Aleya is also the one that can use the titular Idolfire, using the belief and power of gods stored in relics and other items in which it resides. The power unleashed by this does degrade and use up the relic, and it is tied to the nature of the god/dess herself. If you use a statue consecrated to the God of War, you are going to get war and martial-based effects, not healing.
Let’s continue. It is definitely a road trip book of the first water, as they both are not only traversing the landscape; they are in many cases following the old straight-line implacable roads of the fallen prior civilization, the Nivelans. This is where the “Fall of Rome” inspiration comes in, as the Nivelans have built their roads in what many readers would recognize as a “Roman” mode: straight lines, and damn the geography that is in its way. Roads that most definitely do not harmonize and work with the landscape, but rather seek to dominate it. There are a couple of names and other things that also tag as Roman, but in the main, though, while the author was inspired by the fall of Rome (as she says in the acknowledgements/afterword), I saw a different model and inspiration that she does call out in the aforementioned back matter, but I think is a fairly more dominant influence overall in the book. You might have guessed it already with a city-state named Ur.
Yes, this book and its world very much run on lines inspired by Ancient Mesopotamia. We have a world that is mostly city-states (with a fallen empire for good measure). We have a world where there are a ton of local deities, and those deities and their worship are tied directly to the land, and can be, in fact, stolen. Curtis relays an incident in the back matter where this actually happened in real-life Ancient Mesopotamia, and that incident shapes Kirby’s life and story profoundly as a result. And Mesopotamia, with its palimpsest of prior civilizations, fallen cities, ruins, and more, is very much the model for the landscape of the road trips that Kirby and Aleya go on, separately and together. Even the realm that the city of Ash sits in is called Ur, after a famous Mesopotamian city state.
Mesopotamia, the Land Between the Rivers, is an inspiration and a model for fantasy that gets a lot less play than Greece or Rome or Egypt. The author is not unique here: Harry Turtledove’s Between the Rivers is very much in the mold of this book. That book uses a godly point of view, but the whole idea of this fractured Mesopotamian landscape of rising and falling civilizations, tons of deities, and a city-state-based mentality with the occasional and irresistible eruption (and then decline) of empires resonates between Curtis’s work and Turtledove’s. I can also find resonances in L Sprague De Camp’s Novaria novels and stories, and the Godserfs series by N. S. Dolkart. Also, Kirby’s home village of Wall’s End, at the edge of the huge ruined city of Balt, reminded me strongly of Pavis, a massive ruined city in the RPG world of Glorantha, which itself as a setting takes a lot of its notes from ancient Mesopotamia.
But in the main, Ancient Mesopotamia is a rich (and underused) setting for all this, and one that more authors could definitely take ideas from and claim as their own. Thus, Curtis takes advantage of that and uses it effectively and deeply to give a real richness to the road trip. A road trip across the fallen Roman Empire? Tired. A road trip across Ancient Mesopotamia? Wired.
Where the novel doesn’t do what it says on the tin, then, is the phrase “science fantasy.” For me, and I think, as is commonly accepted in the fields of genre, science fantasy is a fusion of the ideas, concepts, trappings and motifs of fantasy with science fiction. It is the original “peanut butter in my chocolate / chocolate in my peanut butter” subgenre, and discussing it in full detail might be beyond the remit of this review.. But while Idolfire has some excellent fantasy elements, as outlined above, there is no science fiction in this work whatsoever. There is, unusually, a moment of *science* that recalls a real-life remarkable event in ancient history, and it delighted me that Curtis slotted it in there. But that doesn’t make it science fantasy either.
Instead, a different subgenre of SFF fits this novel better. It’s a well-made and cromulent sword-and-sorcery novel, not a science fantasy novel. Sword and Sorcery fits as a much better label for this book. Swordswoman (and her companion), fighting, adventure, road trip, strange gods, weird magic, and the like. Could I see Kirby and Aleya and Nylophon (I’ll get to him in a moment) wandering around Hyperborea, or Lankhmar, or Ranke or, even more recently, and really on the mark, the sword-and-sorcery world of Howard Andrew Jones’s Hanuvar? Absolutely. I think the label “science fantasy” does this book a disservice, and “sword and sorcery” reflects more accurately what this world and its characters are like, and what the reader can expect as they navigate the book. Is Sword and Sorcery a limiting label? Possibly that is a subject beyond the remit of this review.
But enough of that. Let’s dig back into this book and what it does. So, aside from our two protagonists, we are given two additional characters and points of view. The first is a mysterious one, where Curtis uses a second-person point of view to inject mystery into this character, whose identity and nature is only slowly revealed in the course of the novel. That character provides some parallax to the events and backstory of the novel, and to reveal more would be spoilery.
The other character is Nylophon. Nylophon is a mercenary soldier from the mercantile realm of Carthe. It’s not quite Carthage, although that is clearly meant to be a bit of an inspiration; the Carthe hire themselves out as mercenary soldiers and make bank on it. Nylophon has clawed his way to a small command by luck and perseverance and making the right friend (lover, implied; Nylophon is queer as Kirby and Aleya) to basically save his life. After a disastrous encounter with our two main protagonists, he takes on a Javert-like role, and also his is a story of redeeming himself and coming to terms with who he is. Even if he is rather a prat for a lot of the novel, he does in the end get better.
Finally, a word about the writing, and especially the dialogue. The novel crackles when the characters engage with each other, and the descriptions of the world, their adventures and the landscapes come out well written and engaging. Combat and swordfighting, although present and a highlight in the book, isn’t as lingered over in the text as other things; the writing here is economical and to the point, much like Aleya’s own fighting style. Where the novel comes off the best of all is in the whole road trip, from sea voyages to the Nivelan road, to some of the truly strange things our protagonists encounter along the way. There is a great sense of atmosphere here.
Like I said at the start, the story is completed in one volume, with some fillips and twists as our two protagonists (and yes, Nylophon) make their way to the culmination of their quests, and find that the city of Nivela, their destination, is not quite what they expected at all. There are real moments of heroism and completion here, especially for Nylophon, who gets a “payoff scene” in the climax of the book that he clearly has been working toward ever since he was introduced in the narrative. The novel satisfies, in the end. The author promises more fantasy novels in the future, and I am quite reasonably happy to give them a go.
You can also read Roseanna's review of Grace Curtis’s Floating Hotel here at the NOAF blog.
Highlights:
Interesting pair of primary characters on a road trip adventure
Strongly imagined Mesopotamian-flavored fantasy setting
Not a science fantasy after all, but very much worth reading
Reference: Curtis, Grace. Idolfire [DAW, 2025].
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
