Review: March's End by Daniel Polansky

Taking some of the basic the tropes of epic and portal fantasies and intensifying them via the lens of a family drama. 

You may think you have heard this story before. Young scions of a ruling family in a fantasy kingdom have to come to terms with being the next generation and having to fill their parents' and ancestors' shoes, especially as a power capable of undoing the world comes calling. Plenty of extruded fantasy product has this sort of dynamic, in epic fantasy novels, trilogies, and series that are not yet complete.  If you are a seasoned reader of epic fantasy, you know all the beats, the shape of this story.

Except, you haven't heard this particular story before. The Harrow family is well off in our world, our own Earth, but every evening, once they find themselves of age, they can find themselves in a secondary fantasy world of fantastic landscapes and even more fantastical anthropomorphic intelligent creatures. The Harrow family, rulers of this world, are, in fact, the only humans in the March. But when time has moved on and the younger March family members are faced with the possibility that the March's time has come, one way or another.

This is the story of Daniel Polansky's March's End.

A mix of urban and epic fantasy, mixing a secondary fantasy world with our own world, and having people with agency in both, is not sui generis to Polansky here. Eric Nylund's Pawn's Dream took a similar conceit, with the protagonist falling asleep in our world and waking up in a secondary fantasy world, and then back again when he fell asleep there, night after night, day after day. Violette Malan's Shadowlands novels have a Professor of History in a Canadian university who finds out he is really a Prince of Faerie, and Faerie definitely needs him back. The feel at the beginning of the series is urban fantasy, with magic intruding into our world, and ending with epic fantasy with the action mainly in faerie. Edward Lazellari works on a similar method, where a NYC police officer in Awakenings finds out he is a knight of a secondary world fantasy realm. By the third book in the series, Blood of Ten Kings, the story has gone completely from urban to secondary world epic fantasy. 

Polansky's method and style and ethos subverts and plays with all of this throughout the book. He starts it off with a couple of the Harrow children, as young children, discovering their family's secondary world secret for themselves for the first time. But he subverts what might be a straightforward coming of age by having time frames both set early on in the kids' lives, and then 20 some odd years later, in our present. Mary Ann, Will and Constance are very different than their young selves, and old conflicts between the three of them and their mother, Sophia, have driven strong wedges into the family. A lot of the present day narrative does not take place at all in the March and instead focuses on the family conflicts and drama between the three of them, as the seams of what is going wrong with the March, and has been going wrong for quite some time, come to light.  

Thus, Polansky relies on their younger selves to show the March and the rot and decay underneath the Harrows and their rule subtly and carefully even as he shows and then undercuts the secondary world fantasy narrative. And this then is the grist for the mill of the present day conflict that the Harrows primarily face in our world. The Harrows bicker, come into conflict, and finally must not only face themselves and each other, but face the problems they themselves have helped to create. The novel shows us the consequences of rule, and often gives us a stark exploration of what a secondary fantasy world is like, and not just for the ruling class, either. 

Thus, overall, the book does feel like a deconstruction of secondary world fantasies, in particular, as well as portal fantasies and urban fantasies. Polansky's deep focus is always on the characters, especially in the present, and it is their fates, nature, destinies and problems. Just why the March is falling apart, who is ultimately responsible and what can be done--sure, Polansky does give us some big action sequences, but in some ways, even the big set piece one we get, is a sideshow to his development and study of these characters. Just what would ruling a secondary world fantasy kingdom by night do to a family over generations, over time? What does having that secondary world do to a person or a group of people who can share that experience? How can you make connections and bonds to people who can't appreciate, quite literally, what you do in that other world?  This is also territory that Seanan McGuire has been exploring in her series of Wayward Children novellas.  

This is definitely, in the end, not a Fantasy 101 book by any means. This is a reconsideration, reformulation and distillation of several types of fantasy and looking to see how they actually work with characters out of mimetic fiction who have, by birth, not by choice, have the connections to a magical world as their legacy, birthright, and even curse. Polansky doesn't explain some key bits about how the Harrows' world of the March vis a vis our own actually works and doesn't work, and there are some beats in the story that happen and are remarked on, but again, are not explained and explicated.  I think that's part of Polansky's point, his design for this novel. He challenges readers to think about these subgenres but doesn't spoonfeed any answers, but rather poses the Problem of Secondary World Fantasy (capitalization intended) through the lens of the Harrows and their lives. 

Thus, I don't think this book is for everyone. For all of the fantastic that Polansky shows us in the March, and it is vivid and amazingly well shown when he focuses on that, this is not a novel about escapism. No, I am wrong in that. It is a novel entirely about escapism and the perils of escapism and not facing up to the consequences and problems of the escapism that is, at the bottom, what the March *is*.  It's a strongly written book, a book that often cuts very to the bone, especially for a fantasy reader. It's not a comfortable book (but that seems to be a Polansky speciality, in my reading of his work).  Reader beware, but also, reader discover.

--

Highlights:

• A strong family dynamic central core
• Interesting if uncomfortable discussions of genre and what it is for.
• A challenging and rewarding read on an emotional and textual level.

Reference: Polansky, Daniel, March's End, [Angry Robot, 2023]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Microreview [Book]: The Seventh Perfection by Daniel Polansky

The Seventh Perfection is a fantasy story that tries something uniquely demanding. To some, it will look like a gem, while others will see it as rot.

Sometimes it feels like society moves in zigzags, and we’re following its path under the false belief that we’re going straight. The world is fueled by greed, power, and misinformation to dictate and change how people think. Many people are empty vessels whose opinions and alliances can alter instantaneously with just a little push. And our biggest burden is our own mind, with its faulty memory. At our worst, we become porous vessels that those in power can fill with love or hate, until it all leaks out from forgetfulness, and the powerful fills us with a new thing to be preoccupied and driven by. The Seventh Perfection tackles those flaws in an experimental way—an inventive writing style that is incorporated to support its themes but might be a bit too experimental for its own good.

The novella follows Manet, an Amanuensis (a person who dictates a manuscript) for the God-King, the supreme leader of the land. What makes Manet special is that she has a fantastic memory and dictates conversations mentally, rather than dictating it with ink. One day, she receives a locket from a mysterious force. The locket contains a picture of a woman who looks suspiciously like her yet isn’t. This propels her on a quest to investigate who exactly the woman in the locket is, while in the background, an increasingly illuminating light is shed on the world around her, as the reader gets a better and better glimpse of its dark underbelly.

That sounds simple enough. But there’s one thing I didn’t mention: the protagonist’s dialogue and thoughts are not included in the novella (with the exception of one chapter). We hear the person she’s talking to, and it's implied what she says through how the characters respond to her, but it’s never written out. To say that there’s a learning curve to the writing style is an understatement. Not only is the character initially portrayed in the story as a cipher whose background is explored by other characters' responses to her - many of whom she has just met – but the history of the fantastical world is unraveled in this fashion, too. Thus, the first half of the novella feels like solving an unsatisfying puzzle. But in the second half, things come together at the same time the story becomes propulsive and is an improvement of a read.

Thematically, this style works because the novella is about how the people who don’t have their guard up are the sum of what those in power instill into them. It proffers that we’re not the sum of our individuality, but instead a stew of ideas that come from forces outside of us. Which is why its clever for a character’s story to center around not what she says, but what those around her tell her. However, in terms of craft, it’s a little less satisfying. Reading one half of a conversation is bound to be confusing if the dialogue was written organically, and Polansky understands that, modifying his style accordingly. Thus, characters speak a little more artificially to get their message across, by sometimes repeating what the protagonist said but as a question, or overexplaining things more so than seems human, to cover for the gap in dialogue. It works the best for the novella’s idea, but I can’t deny that it’s clunky at times.

Despite the dialogical limitations, it’s amazing how much character development Manet is given, despite the book barely containing a word she says or thinks. Manet lives in a world of porous humans, but she’s able to act more like a sponge than most, thanks to her memory. While most of the story's cast would’ve been swayed or even forgotten what they were fighting for halfway through their journey, Manet plows through her investigation with tenacity. But with society largely opposed against her lifestyle, her grasp of individuality is flimsy. In Spider-Man, Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility,” – but The Seventh Perfection showcases great power struggling to shift the status quo that can move you into a place worse than where you started. Great power is a burden when a massive collective is tricked into thinking you’re using it for evil. Sometimes a fight against the societal current seems so bleak, that the most responsible thing is to submit and not use your power at all.

The Seventh Perfection is an exhausting read, both in terms of its themes and the level of work it demands to fully understand it. But by exerting yourself through a vigorous read, the benefits of absorbing the story feels so much more satisfying and potent. It might even be potent enough to chew on and savor the themes, rather than throw them away if they took the form of a trite, mediocre story. Reading the book is like a one-way conversation, in which you, the reader, are silent while the book is speaking to you. And hopefully, just like Manet, you will absorb important information without having to write down any notes.

 The Math

Baseline Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +2 For being wholly original.

Negatives: -1 For having a writing style that, while unique, often necessitates clunky dialogue.
-1 For a confusing, slow start that throws you a little too deep into the deep end.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

POSTED BY: Sean Dowie - Screenwriter, stand-up comedian, lover of all books that make him nod his head and say, "Neat!

Polansky, Daniel. The Seventh Perfection [Tordotcom, 2020]

Nanoreviews: Elysium, Hammers on Bone, A City Dreaming

Brissett, Jennifer Marie. Elysium [Aqueduct Press, 2014]

I wonder if reading the publisher's description would have reset my expectations for Elysium. Pun intended.
"A computer program etched into the atmosphere has a story to tell, the story of two people, of a city lost to chaos, of survival and love. The program’s data, however, has been corrupted." That's the description from Aqueduct's website and might have helped center how I read the novel. Elysium is disjointed, meeting the fractured nature of the program. One section has the characters as male and female with one set of names. The next has the same characters, but gender flipped with slightly altered names. The next they are father and daughter. The next they are different again.

This builds the sense of unease as we can't quite figure out why the narrative / computer program is broken and what that means for the story Brissett is telling. I often struggle with non traditional narratives and it is only at the very end that I finally began to understand the story of Elysium and how everything fit together. I have the sense that a second reading of the novel would be much more rewarding than the first, but the problem is that I don't actually want to read Elysium again. There's only so much time.
Score: 6/10

Khaw, Cassandra. Hammers on Bone [Tor.com Publishing, 2016]

Hammers on Bone is noirish detective novel with Lovecraftian overtones that become more overt as the novella progresses though they do not dominate the story. There is a lot to like here and I appreciated how Khaw treated the morality of the the protagonist, John Persons as well as how the story becomes increasingly creepy and disturbing the deeper into the investigation Persons gets. The thing is, I struggled to really connect or care much about how this was all going to turn out.

Part of my problem, I think, is because I read Hammers on Bone back to back with Ruthanna Emrys' forthcoming novel Winter Tide. Even though they are really only similar in the sense that both novels touch upon Lovecraftian mythos, reading them so close together has connected them in my mind. I'll admit that this isn't fair because the two novels are so stylistically different that comparing them is really without merit. I bring it up because I fully acknowledge that one of the reasons I didn't appreciate Hammers on Bone as much as I might have is that it isn't the book it isn't supposed to be. That's not fair, but that's also the reason I can't rate it higher.
Score: 6/10

Polansky, Daniel. A City Dreaming [Regan Arts, 2016]

Though I have no idea what it would feel like to drop acid, I imagine the literary equivalent would be Daniel Polansky's A City Dreaming. This is a bizarre, non-linear novel of linked vignettes which build the overall atmosphere of this sideways New York City filled with impossible magic and even more impossible creatures. This is what A City Dreaming is, and if you struggle with non-linear novels which bounce around as a series of scenes and prefer a much more straight forward narrative (as I do), you'll likely struggle with this one. I know that a novel is not for me when I have to wonder if taking drugs is perhaps the way to better appreciate a novel. This is not a flaw of the novel. It has everything to do with how and what I respond to in fiction. Of course, this does not change that I failed to engage with or appreciate A City Dreaming.
Score: 5/10


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Writer / Editor at Adventures in Reading since 2004. Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2015, editor since 2016. Minnesotan.