Microreview [book]: The Untold Story by Genevieve Cogman

Genevieve Cogman’s The Untold Story continues the story of multiversal Librarian Irene Winters, as her longstanding conflict with Librarian traitor Alberich comes to a head, with revelations about the Library’s true nature.

How does one really review the 8th(!) book in a series and make that review intelligible to readers who have never read any of the books, and yet helpful to readers both old and new alike. This is the situation where I find myself talking about Genevieve Cogman’s The Untold Story, eighth in her Invisible Library novels. 

I’ll start by saying that the Invisible Library novels, which the first was published in 2016, were multiverse before the multiverse was the new hotness. Imagine a multiverse of worlds , aligned on an order-chaos spectrum a la Moorcock. Imagine these worlds taking cues from Earth cultures and societies.  Imagine two sets of superhuman beings--Dragons, representing order, and Fae, representing chaos, struggling for control and domination of these worlds.  Now imagine a third power, a third party, the Library, seeking to stabilize the worlds, and collect books from all of them at the same time.   

Irene Winters is one of these interdimensional Librarians. Her previous adventures have had her tangle with a traitor to the library (Alberich, more on him anon) deal with both Fae and Dragon politics (her first assistant is a Dragon, and her newest apprentice is a Fae) and visit a variety of worlds in places inspired by Venice, Vienna, New York, and more. Irene is rather good at being a spy and procurer of books, less so a diplomat (pity she is now a representative on a major treaty between the Fae and Dragons and Library). 

But as the series has gone on, Cogman has been teasing out Irene’s true background, and the background of the Library itself. This latest book, The Untold Story, is where that rubber hits the road. In the last book, it was determined that Alberich , the aforementioned traitor to the Library who has been trying to capture or kill Irene, and destroy the Library itself. With this knowledge, now, that the greatest traitor to the Library in its existence is her father...what indeed will Irene do with that knowledge?

The answers and path lead her into the heart of the library itself, and to the origins of the library, who and why it was built and what ultimately it was for. Cogman puts a lot of cards on the table here: a catastrophic meeting with Alberich, betrayals, secrets, lost history and Irene trying to make sense of it all, and only slowly revealing mysterious forces and actors at play. 

While revealing the plot would be grossly unfair and I won't do it to detail, what I can say about this novel is to address its themes, which are definitely a strong point of the novel, even more so than previous volumes in the series. What are stories? What do stories mean to us, and about us, and for us? Are we destined to be the players in our stories and what does that mean to be in a story? Even more than Irene's visit to Fae worlds, this novel is all about the eponymous Untold Story--but there are several at work here: Irene's true origins. Alberich's true nature. The origin, purposes and destiny of the Library. These stories and dissecting them and deciding what ultimately one's personal stories mean are strong narrative chords to the novel. A couple of characters in the novel are explicitly storytellers.

This is of course no place to start the series. Cogman does reference and ground the reader as well as one can, eight books into a series, and I suppose a reader starting here could make most sense of things. There is a lot of new concepts here that a new and seasoned reader alike will have to grapple with, so in some ways one could start here. However, given the denouement of the novel, I think the next book in the series is the real next point where a new reader can jump in, because the status quo definitely does not go back to ante by the end of this novel.

If I do have a criticism of the novel, it is this: While Cogman does continue her habit of taking Irene to strange and unusual worlds in the multiverse, the visit this time (to Constantinople) feels a lot less satisfactory than the Vienna, Paris, New York and others of previous visits. We also get a visit to Helsinki but that is even more limited in scope. In some ways this is offset by the giant set piece of going deep into the heart of the Library itself, but it was disappointing to me to find Constantinople as described to not only be very limited in the geography we see, but even the imagined geography (the whole sketched in suggestive details background writing thing) to be somewhat limited as well. I would have loved to have seen more of this alternate city and how and why it is alternate from the one we know.

Other than that, I found The Untold Story a very satisfactory entry in the series. It does all the things I expect in a Invisible Library novel: strong cold opening (a la James Bond ) with action beats, book geekery, snark, banter, and a light and entertaining tone throughout, even in the direst of circumstances. These books are comfort reads and listens for me, and I suspect, for a wide swath of Cogman’s readers besides me as well. The Big Reveals make sense, and once again, organically expands and illuminates Cogman’s multiverse. Given the state of that multiverse at the end of this novel, I am very curious as to where Cogman will take Irene, Kai, Catherine, Vale, and the rest of her cast of characters. 

---

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for stunning and interesting revelations about the nature of Irene, and the Library itself. 

Penalties: -1 The set piece in Constantinople does not quite work for me.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Cogman, Genevieve, The Untold Story (Book 8 of the Invisible Library) [Ace, 2021]

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

Microreview[Novel]: Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell

 Set in the same universe as Winter's Orbit, Everina Maxwell gives us another deceptively meaty (not like that) romance romp through space politics.

Cover design/art - Katie Klim and Michael Rogers

I think Everina Maxwell might like "opposites attract" dynamics. In Winter's Orbit, this was shy, dutiful diplomat and extroverted socialite prince. In Ocean's Echo, this has escalated slightly into what I would describe as "so lawful good it hurts (he feels guilty about that" and "sarcastic bastard fuck-up (self-aware, don't care)", which is, at least in my opinion, a god-tier pairing.

But! In a contrast with Winter's Orbit, where the arranged marriage plot dynamic forced the relationship aspect of the novel out into front and centre - even if it wasn't happening, it was a thing we had to focus on because it was a significant part of what was happening to both characters - Ocean's Echo actually saves that part for much later. A romantic novel where the romance is on the back-burner? Interesting indeed. Which isn't to say it's entirely absent, but up until around half way through the book, we mainly just get flickers of it on the periphery of the larger problems both characters are having to deal with, both internally and externally to their own brains.

This is primarily because a lot is going on for both of them. Tannal is the nephew of the legislator - the highest civilian power on Orshan. However, despite all her best efforts, he's living a dissolute life of partying, drugs and offering out his rare, powerful and somewhat illegal psychic gift of reading to criminals. That is, until she finds him and conscripts him into the army to be trained as a pilot and psychically linked to someone with the more common and socially acceptable brand of psychic gift. This would be Surit, whose shining record in the army so far is a testament to his determination to erase his mother's dabble into treason from people's memories, or at least enough to make captain get his other parent her pension back. Being saddled with a chaotic conscript isn't top of his to do list, but when he discovers some of the circumstances behind it, and that Tannal is being forced to sync their minds together permanently against his will, he has no choice but to take a moral stand. And that's just the start. Many hijinx ensue, including dangers military, political and space chaotic, with Tennal and Surit forced into the centre of the unfolding tensions.

Much of this is incredibly predictable even from early in the book, but at no point does it feel like that matters. Maxwell has let the narrative accept its own occasional silliness, and so the looming inevitability of some of the plot beats feels like a joke the reader is in on, rather than a problem.

It helps, on this front, that the book is really quite funny in other ways. Occasionally laugh out loud funny. It's difficult to take much of it at earnest face value when Tennal is there to undercut the tension with a quip or a spectacularly bad life decision, which he'll declare as such while doing it anyway. There's a wry humour running through a lot of the descriptions and events, but the best parts are all reserved for dialogue, and manage to inhabit the sweet spot overlapping genuinely funny and believable conversation, especially when what makes us laugh is the smooth-talking running out and a little snatch of something more mundane or more emotional sneaks out of the sides, or when Surit, the straight man to Tennal's comic, sneaks a little barb in of his own.

This dynamic they have is both incredibly tropey and incredibly fun. Yes it's introvert/extrovert, upper class/working class, opposites attract, thrown together by the winds of fate and learn that they need each other's strengths to succeed. There's trauma bonding, occasionally someone gets rescued by someone else, and plenty of times when neither of them say the thing they really ought to have said. So it's not exactly an innovative romance, but Maxwell manages to inject palpable chemistry between them, and both characters are sympathetic enough to sell it, and so it does work.

That they're both so sympathetic is more of a surprise. Tennal, fast-talking, charming, chaotic, funny, sarcastic, is less of a shock. It's a character type a lot of people like, and it's an easy leap for the reader from someone like that to see how maybe they have a softer side under the prickles that you just need to get to know them to find. But again, it's done well, and the slow unfolding of Tennal's fears and feelings about himself and his place in the world manages to be compelling without grating against the thread of his humour and bravado. He's not just a sarcastic bastard, but he's allowed to stay a sarcastic bastard once we learn more about him, which is critical to a lot of his charm. There's also a really nice balance between Tennal's interior perspective and Surit's view and the words of other characters in how they give the reader an evolving picture of Tennal's personality, with his internal monologue slowly coming to grips with things as we learn them or see them from outside of him. He gets a genuine growth arc without losing what made him fun, and that's great.

Surit, however, is the more surprising one, I believe. It's hard to write a lawful good character without straying into potentially boring. The more lawful good they are, the harder it becomes. Surit is painfully good. He's a stickler for the rules, he believes that the law will be just and fair, and he is committed to the highest standards of ethical behaviour in himself. Part of how you make that fun is by giving it a little twinkle, a glimmer of sense of humour, like there's a person underneath the procedures. But the major part of how you make that interesting is introducing someone so fixed and set in their black and white morality to a chaotic system - they have to cope without any easy answers and confront what they truly believe is worthwhile in the world. And that, as well as his growing appreciation for actually interacting with other people, is what makes Surit incredibly well-written - we get to see someone naively upstanding slowly begin to understand just how corrupt his culture is. And what he decides to do about that.

That chaotic system is also how the pair of them work well together - the constraints by which they need each other for the narrative to work don't feel artificial in the world Maxwell has created for them.

And it remains a fun world. Orshan is another planetary system in the same universe, bound together by the links in chaotic space and overseen by the Resolution, that holds Winter's Orbit. They have no connection beyond that in the text, but we can see small commonalities between them that imply a wider, joined up galaxy as we're told exists - Orshan, like Iskat before it, quietly shows us gender as performance through choices of material in personal adornment, and the same queer normative culture and approach to genetics in parenting. Both include a strong thread of real culture underlying their space future technology, in the arranged marriages of Iskat or the sports teams or personal religious shrines of Orshan. But what makes Orshan different is the neuromodifications - some people have the ability to "write" their will on unprotected minds, while others have the ability to read thoughts. While obviously necessary for the plot to progress, where this conceit really shines is in the strong thread running throughout asking about consent, coercion and the politics of what's acceptable to others - Maxwell appreciates the need to give us the cultural and interpersonal impact of the sci-fi mind-powers, and it's there that the world-building shines.

If there's any flaw with it, it's that it really is quite a silly book at times. If you're happy to read something that laughs at itself a little while being quite so silly, then it's a price worth paying, but it wouldn't be to everyone's taste, especially with the odd realisation like "it's less only one bed, more only one brain" that might come during the process of reading. Likewise, because it's willing to lean in on being precisely what it is, if you're not happy with tropey, here is not the place to look. But both are done knowingly and with joy, so I find it hard to fault either of them overmuch. Likewise, the romance aspect of the plot stays somewhat on the backburner for the first 40% of the plot, which has many good points in how the narrative and relationship dynamic is constructed in the first half, but does mean that when we escalate into romance, we go hard and we go fast (not like that).

There is also a lack of development of the mysterious body called the Resolution, who lurked like somewhat sniffy intergalactic police-diplomats on the edges of Winter's Orbit, and do exactly the same thing here. The story functions perfectly well as it is and with what it has, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to know more about the Resolution's place within the wider galaxy. We also got hints about the remnants and their origins that cry out for more exposition.

But on the whole, if the major flaw is being left wanting more, there are worse ways to end up. Ocean's Echo is a great follow up to Winter's Orbit, fitting into a very similar headspace and tone, while being a galaxy apart. If anything, I think it might be better than its predecessor.

--

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for a genuine golden retriever person having to grapple with the ethical problems of the world

Penalties: -1 for not giving us enough time with Tennal's exasperated sister

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Ocean's Echo Everina Maxwell [Little, Brown Book Group, 2022]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroform_tea

Love is a freely chosen yoke in "Three Thousand Years of Longing"

This perfectly executed visual feast disentangles the ties between desire, renunciation, the vertigo of choice, and the need to feel desired

When one encounters an impeccably beautiful work of art, the attempt to explain it feels like a desecration. Three Thousand Years of Longing is that kind of art that you're meant to experience more than understand. It does follow a plot, and the plot does make arguments, but to dissect those arguments risks losing sight of the experience. I can't properly communicate to you the emotional content of this story. What I can try to do is describe what happens in it, but I will fall short of conveying all it says. This is one of those films that leave you permanently changed, and the only way for that secret alchemy to happen is to go yourself to the theater and let it wash over you.

Our protagonist is Alithea, a proudly independent divorcée with no time for personal attachments, who one day stumbles upon a genie in a bottle and is offered the proverbial three wishes. This genie has spent far too long inside the bottle and is desperate for a human to make up their mind and request the full set of wishes. To his dismay, he's put before a challenge no genie has had to face before: Alithea is a literary scholar, versed in all the tropes used in genie tales. She knows that every wish comes with strings attached. Unfazed, the genie insists there must be something she wants more than anything in the world. But after a lifetime of consuming classic literature, she has every reason to reject the deal, and none to trust that the genie is being sincere.

How do they resolve this clash of interests? They tell each other stories.

There have been thousands of stories-about-stories, but this one makes the case that the ordinary act of desire is already an authorial move, a transmutation of the human will into an arbiter of the universe. Who do we think we are, to want reality to be different? But then again, what can we do in this life but want? It's not fantasy to agonize over which life we ought to wish for; it's the common business of day-to-day choices. If genie tales are an allegory of anything, it's of the inevitability of consequences. No matter which path we take, we'll find something unexpected, sometimes unwanted. That's not a curse; that's life. At first, Alithea doesn't understand that. When presented with the inescapable need to choose, she applies the wrong set of rules by trying to metagame her life. What at first resembles a typical wish-fulfillment story becomes a self-reflective exercise where Alithea tries to ascertain what type of story she's in, what the rules are, and therefore what endings are available to her. This is why it's so important for the movie to focus on the theme of wishes: they are the mechanism by which human beings steer their story.

However, as I've said many times in this blog, life is not a story. Alithea's clever attempt at metagame is headed nowhere, because it's pointless to live on the assumption that events are headed toward a clear ending, because we're always situated in the middle of events, and it's not given to us to know how many pages are left. The genie presents Alithea with a similar warning: she can't expect the literary conventions of genie tales to apply to her, because what happens to her is shaped by her decisions. In spite of the fact that life is not a story, each one of us is still, in some manner, the author. We don't walk along the lines of established tropes. We write life every time we act upon our wishes. The key is to be aware that there's no plot, and we can't see the ending from where we stand. As if to make us conscious of that limited perspective, the film gives several times the impression that it's ended, only to fade back in with yet more story to tell.

For a story about stories, this one is quite unconventional. It dances from one genre to another, and joyfully refuses to fit the three-act structure we're used to look for in the Western narrative tradition. The only contemporary film that is remotely comparable to Three Thousand Years of Longing is the fantastic Everything Everywhere All at Once, which succeds at the impossible narrative feat of playing with all genres, all tones, all styles and all modes of stories to encapsulate the elusive human experience of lamenting the road not taken. Three Thousand Years of Longing also uses a multitude of stories to express a complex truth from various angles, and the truth at the core of this story is that it's worthwhile to choose love, even if it's terrifying, even if we don't know how it will end, even if it exposes our vulnerable side, even if it demands we bet everything on it. The genie explains the rules of the game: you can't wish for eternal life, or resurrection, or world peace. That makes the stakes relatable to the rest of us: if we must be mortal, and we must be in this world as it is, what form of happiness is still possible?

Before we even watch the first scene, Alithea warns us in voiceover that, even though this story contains truth, it is disguised in symbols. So what's beneath the colorful parade that dazzles the eyes in this film? This is, of course, a love story, but it takes a long time to admit it is one. Without the trappings of fantasy, it's about a lonely woman who on a trip abroad meets a tall, dark, handsome stranger but dreads the uncertainty of opening her heart again. If we read this film as a love story, we can notice some familiar behavioral patterns. The genie needs someone to need him, which is the textbook definition of codependency, while Alithea pretends she needs nothing, which in interpersonal psychology is called a dismissive-avoidant attachment style. Put them together, and you obtain the frustrating mishaps that fill 95% of romantic comedies. This film wants to do something more mature than that. Both lovers must relinquish their flawed coping strategies before they can love wholeheartedly.

After the film presents this idea, all the other pieces fall into place. If you can be granted any wish, what happens if the target of your wish is a person? One could call that love. But to be complete, love cannot work like possession. I can wish for a new hat, and then I own that hat. Not so with a person. Owning someone is contrary to love. And here is where the master/genie dynamic becomes key to the story. When you love someone, you trust them to satisfy your needs, which is akin to the relationship we would have with a genie, except that the genie is magically forced to obey you. Your lover is only bound by their own love for you, which means that you fall under that same expectation. Preferably not to the degree that a genie is magically bound to; it's not healthy to go to the other extreme and forfeit your existence if you're not needed. That strange balance is what makes love, and I mean truly honest love between equals, look so daunting from the outside. No less than what you ask will be asked of you; no more than what you offer will be offered to you. You can't compel your lover's services, not without killing the love, but the love you feel compels you to serve.

And it's a joyful servitude we happily accept, isn't it? To exist for someone, to satisfy their every wish. But it's a servitude that can only be given, never demanded. That's the final lesson Alithea learns: she wants to be loved by a genie, and he's happy to be a genie to her, but she can't treat him like a genie, because that means killing the love. To use the rules of magic to command him to love her is to negate any truth there could have been in his love. She believes the genie will hide strings attached to anything he grants, but actually it's she who has strings attached to the act of asking. It's a tricky conundrum, and it's the human tragedy explored in each flashback told by the genie. We must be careful with what we wish for, because our wants can easily morph into demands, and love cannot survive under duress. It can't be love if you treat your beloved like a genie. Instead, we must risk the very real chance that our beloved may refuse our wish. We must risk the pain of abandonment. Some reject that risk, and stay preemptively abandoned. But if we each take that blind leap, if we mutually voice our heart's desire without making it into a requirement, then magic can happen.

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

The Wheel of Time Reread: The Shadow Rising

Welcome back, dear readers, to The Wheel of Time Reread. Today we’re going to talk about The Shadow Rising, the novel I’ve long considered to be my favorite in the series. The Wheel of Time is what could be affectionately (or derisively) called Big Fat Fantasy.

I first discovered The Wheel of Time somewhen between the publications of The Shadow Rising and the next book, The Fires of Heaven. I have strong memories of the Rush City Public Library, browsing the shelves, finding new epic fantasies to read, the comfort of Darrel K. Sweet’s cover art, going through a really primitive semi-online catalog to find and request new books that I was so excited to read.

They say that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve, and that feels right because even now when science fiction and fantasy has permeated the “culture”, it’s the age of discovery for kids who start to have more agency in choosing exactly what they want to read and diving into all the things on their own. That would be a much larger conversation to refine that idea and it’s one that many other people have had - so we should go back to The Wheel of Time.

The larger point here is that I was thirteen when The Shadow Rising was published and was either thirteen or fourteen when I started mainlining this series. The fact that The Shadow Rising is the longest book in The Wheel of Time was just gravy for me at the time. But, how does it hold up?

Well, let’s take a look at the map and the spot marked Here Be Spoilers, and find out.

If you reduce The Shadow Rising to the biggest and most significant moments it’s easy to gloss over just how long the opening of the novel feels. This seems to be a trend with the series, that after “The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass” and after the wind blows and it isn’t the beginning but “a beginning” Robert Jordan eases us back into the novel at a very leisurely pace.

It just so happens that I *like* spending time in this world - as much as the waiting periods can be a couple hundred pages of frustrating, though it’s interesting that the characters are also equally (if not moreso) frustrated about being stuck in Tear because Rand won’t say what he’s going to do. Narratively, it (mostly) works because it builds the particular concerns that Moiraine needs Rand to be moving towards the Last Battle and fulfilling what he needs to (and specifically, what *she* thinks he needs to) as well as the Black Ajah hunting that Egwene / Nynaeve / Elayne need to do and Mat’s need to be *somewhere* else and Perrin’s desire for the stability of not following Rand. Once there is a further Trolloc attack inside Tear, Jordan begins to move the pieces on the board and once the group splits - the story really kicks into the gear it needs to.

I considered ending this essay with my favorite part of the novel, but why bury that lede? Possibly one of my favorite aspects of the entire series, which I clearly love otherwise I wouldn’t spend so many words on it, is the time Rand spends at Rhuidean. There are these magical rings that Rand has to walk through, the same rings that the Wise Ones and the Clan Chiefs of the Aiel must walk through to be given glimpses of the past, of the truth of who the Aiel were and how they became who they are now. It is those glimpses that show us the Age of Legends and moments leading up to the Breaking of the World and the aftermath, of how the Aiel were tasked to save so much knowledge and so many artifacts but how much of that was lost in the generations upon generations upon generations. And how the fierce warrior culture of the Aiel we know is so far from the sworn to peace Aiel that served the Aes Sedai.

The Shadow Rising is packed with a lot more than I remember, even in the thirteen years since I’ve last read this book. I didn’t remember that THIS is the book where Nynaeve fights and defeats Moghedien, one of the Forsaken. That’s a Crowning Moment of Awesomeness. This is also the book where Rand meets / fights Asmodean, which is going to work out for him because the only person who can help Rand learn to control his power is another man and those are few and far between, so Rand gets his pet-Forsaken. Perrin becomes a “Lord” of the Two Rivers. Not really, but kind of really and truly. It’s a weird sub-plot but it sort of makes sense in a hand-wavy Ta’veren sort of way. A lot of these books can get waved away with a mutter of “ta’veren” and just accept it.

The battle for / rebellion of The White Tower is in The Shadow Rising and that’s really something I thought was in the next book. I both can’t wait for that scene in the show and dread it because the stilling of Siuan Sanche and Leane is just brutal and wrongheaded (though that it eventually leads to the quiet rebellion of Egwene in the Tower, which is another of my favorite bits is an ultimate mark in its favor) - but having The White Tower ineffectively led at best and under the control of the Black Ajah at best is just really a damn shame for the world. I just didn’t realize that was *this* book.

Which is a long way to say that despite the several hundred pages of inaction, when Robert Jordan pushes the story he really gives it a strong shove and if you’re inclined to like this sort of thing you’re inclined to love this book.

Here are some random final notes I took while I was reading. :

*The visit to Rhuidean is still absolutely thrilling. I love learning the history of the Aiel. I want more of this even if I don’t think I want an actual prequel novel or even novella. I just want more glimpses of the Age of Legends and how the Aiel became the Aiel. How the Tinkers were an early splinter off the Aiel, still following the Way of the Leaf but following a path trying to find the song (or songs) they were known for as Aiel serving the Aes Sedai. Then the warrior Aiel we know were a later splinter off to protect themselves while the Jenn Aiel continued to follow the Way of the Leaf AND who stayed true to their original mission of protecting the artifacts from the Aes Sedai and to find a home where they could be safe. How hard it is for Aiel to accept this (which is why only those chosen to lead are allowed to learn of this, to see and live that history through the ter’angreal rings at Rhuidean).

*I think I just appreciate the time spent in the Waste, in the Three-Fold Land, with Egwene learning.

*Mat and his spear and his trips through the ter’angreal doorways. Snakes and Foxes.

*Nynaeve and Elayne on a Sea Folk ship - the customs and learning that the Windfinders can channel.

*Ordeith means to scour the Two Rivers (as he did with Perrin's family farm and all his family) - obvious reference to the Scouring of the Shire.

*I don't remember being a big fan of the Perrin / Faile / Two Rivers plotline, but it is a nice anchor and reminder that all of this war (waves hands) has an impact on regular people and not just lords and prophesied heroes and magicians and dragons reborn. RJ is, overall, very good at that even when those common dead are unnamed and just burned out villages.

*At the Two Rivers there is a proper introduction to Alanna - she who will hold Lan's Warder Bond when Moiraine disappears.

*A little bit of background on the Tower of Ghenji and a glimpse of Birgitte and Gadal Cain, though neither are named. More on this MUCH later.

*I also don't remember how much Verin is acting against the Light up until she is discovered much later.

*Part of the game Faile plays with Perrin is super annoying - but remember Perrin and Faile are all of 20 years old and it's more of a kids game of relationships, but it's a pain to read.

*Verin recoginizing that Perrin's growing authority is very quickly going to change the nature of the Two Rivers - and also that he is ta'verening all over the place.

*The raw hate of Couladin and the Shaido Aiel

*Twice and twice he shall be marked.

*The idea that the ancestors of Cairhain let the Aiel have water three thousand years ago, which led to the friendship between the Aiel and Cairhain later, which led to the Avendesora cutting as a pledge of friendship, Laman cutting it down, the Aiel War and all of that leading to Rand being born during that war and carried off to the Two Rivers. Each step that needed to be taken to bring to where he would be,.

*Rand's insistence that he has to carry the load. Duty is heavier than a mountain.

*A quote:

"You knew my mother," he said. Egwene leaned forward as intent as he, and Mat shook his head.

Amys's hand paused on his face. "I knew her"

"Tell me about her. Please"

*Confirmation that Bors is Jaichim Carridan - High Inquisitor as he is threatened by Liandrin.

*Jain Nateal - a gleeman in the Waste (later revealed to be Asmodean) notes “Aiel? Not what I would have expected. I can still hardly credit it” which reads at first as a man who had never met the Aiel before but when you know that he is Asmodean you realize that he knows what the Aiel were during the Age of Legends and before the breaking. What Rand got glimpses of, Asmodean lived.

*Male A’dam - given to Bayle Domon to dump in the deepest part of the sea. Probably not going to end up well.

*Major showdowns in the Two Rivers - probably partial ta’veren stuff where Perrin ends up as the functional Lord of the Two Rivers - fights off waves of trollocs and sends the Whitecloaks running - this would have been a very different novel if the Whitecloaks actually helped to defend the Two Rivers and Perrin would have turned himself in (and likely been executed).

*There’s this whole thing with a Slayer in the world of dreams where the person looks like he could be a relative of Lan - but it’s Lord Luc in the real world, and that person looks like he could be related to Rand. Connections and only moderately important spoilers for the rest of the series.

Luc is the brother of Tigraine - the Daughter-Heir of Andor who disappeared to become Far Dareis Mai and eventually Rand’s birth mother. Luc eventually disappeared into The Blight.

Isam, which is also the word the trollocs were chanting, is cousin of Lan and is of the Malkieri royal family. They are some sort of an amalgamation where both exist in the same body and can change forms? I don’t fully understand and I don’t think we get a lot of answers until late in the series. But collectively, they are Slayer.

Alright. That’s it.

Next up, The Fires of Heaven, in which things happen (probably). Plus: the power of balefire, more battles with the Forsaken, Rand takes over another city, and Robert Jordan’s adaptation of Gandalf and the Balrog.


Previous Re-reads
The Eye of the World
The Great Hunt
The Dragon Reborn

Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, Hugo Award Winner. Minnesotan. He / Him

Microreview [book]: Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Its plot is thinner and its protagonist less vibrant, but Nona the Ninth still delivers the full Locked Tomb experience

So, unless you’ve been locked in a tomb (with no wifi signal) since 2020, I’m going to assume you know about Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series. Starting with Gideon the Ninth and continuing into Harrow the Ninth, the Locked Tomb is a series of (obligatory “spoilers start here” warning) wisecracking cosmic cultists, of necromancers and their swordhands and the (literally) soul destroying things they’ve done to keep their cursed empire safe from the vengeful ghosts of its own planets, and of the absurd number of poor emotional choices they have made while doing so. As far as we all knew, the Locked Tomb was to be a trilogy, ending this year with Alecto the Ninth. And yet, we were all of us deceived, for another book was made. Before we get to hang out with Alecto, first we must make time… TO MEET NONA.

…Nona? Who the fuck is Nona?

Well, yes. That’s the question, first asked in the epilogue of Harrow the Ninth and which provides much of Nona the Ninth’s central mystery. Six months after the dramatic climax of the previous book, Muir introduces us to the six-month old consciousness inhabiting Harrow’s body, by all accounts enjoying her life in a wartorn city in the apartment she shares with Camilla Hect, Palamedes Sextus (different person, same body) and Pyrrha Dve. Aside from being a six-month-old consciousness in a nineteen-year-old’s body, Nona has a whole bunch of other things going on. She heals absurdly fast, she’s completely incapable of reading or writing but can inherently understand all spoken languages, she detests eating human food  but sometimes thinks about how nice it would be to eat sand - and her hair grows really, really fast. Oh, and she’s also relentlessly chipper and optimistic, exuding a vibe that is somewhere between “born sexy yesterday” and “live laugh love” in the face of the pretty relentless misery of her surroundings. After the edginess of Gideon and Harrow, it’s a bold move to centre book three around a protagonist who could be outperformed on the edginess stakes by a Minions meme, but it’s the kind of bold move that The Locked Tomb is all about, and here we are.

Speaking of bold moves, Nona the Ninth plunges the reader into a story that jumps off from a fundamentally different place to its predecessor, and while it doesn’t use the reader’s likely confusion as a plot point in the same way Harrow the Ninth does, there’s still zero contextual hand holding if you don’t remember the finer details of that book. (Note: if you do need a refresher, this is a fantastic video recap which covers the key points and some of the meme highlights). The vibes of the setting are different: rather than being at the heart of the empire’s elite, Nona the Ninth’s city setting is – on first glance, at least – full of the ordinary people who make up the world of the Locked Tomb, albeit those living under the threat of annihilation. Even the book’s divisions lean into a more “slice of life” feeling: instead of acts, we have days, and the events of those days are summarised with a combination of whimsical and ominous statements: “Regarding Nona – Hot Sauce Is Watchful – the City Has a Bad Day – Nona Gets a Bedtime Story – Five Days until The Tomb Opens.” To hear Nona tell it, the blue light in the sky threatening planetary destruction is noteworthy but still less interesting than her day at school, where she looks after the teacher’s six-legged dog and is a tolerated low status member of the “cool kid” gang. Of course, plenty of things that happen to Nona which serve to give the reader information: not least her dreams, which we experience as intermissions where Harrowhark and John wander an empty post-apocalyptic environment and John talks about the world before the Nine Houses. She also has an extended family beyond Cam, Pal and Pyrrha which includes Coronabeth Tridentarius, now a high ranking member of the local Blood of Eden group, and while Nona doesn’t have many insights into “Crown” beyond how hot she is, she is at least in the room where more interesting discussions happen between the characters who are more than six months old.

Nona, if it wasn’t clear already, is a source of frustration for me as a character. It’s not that her characterisation is bad: she is perfectly designed to be loveable, the ultimate cinnamon roll doling out affection to characters like Camilla and Palamedes who, frankly, deserve to have someone telling them she loves them on a regular basis. And her role as an innocent sacrifice, happy to live for as long as possible while accepting that ultimately she will die for someone more “important” to return, fits perfectly and heartbreakingly within the broader religious symbolism of the series, and is especially well balanced with John’s sinister personal story and the reprehensible actions he has taken as a self-proclaimed God. On the other hand, Nona is passive, has very little critical insight and because her personal mystery is heavily implied to be tied up with her death, her presence feels like it serves as a brake on the story, rather than helping it to progress. We won’t get back to the main events until we solve whether Nona is Person A or Person B, and once that happens, it’ll be very sad that we no longer have the cinnamon roll, but we can get on with all this tomb unlocking business and maybe kill some more resurrection beasts, so what are we waiting for?

This serves to make the first half of Nona the Ninth feel slow, with a niggling sense that this is a narrative originally conceived as a single act of a bigger book, now stretched over a whole book by itself. Perhaps the reason that wasn’t originally the plan is because there wasn’t quite enough material here to go “oh, yeah, this is a whole book”, especially when shoved between a big Act 2 showdown and a hopefully even bigger finale? It’s nowhere near Victor Hugo levels of “let me stop the plot to tell you about day-to-day life in a nunnery”, but somehow even with the countdown to the opening of the tomb, the physical reminder of destruction hanging over the city, and Nona’s constant references to her own mortality, Nona the Ninth is missing some of the urgency and momentum that made Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth so utterly irresistible. Things do pick up significantly in the second half, as events around the war and the Blood of Eden presence on the planet come to a head and more familiar faces re-emerge (like, you’ll NEVER GUESS WHO – actually, no, you’ll find out in good time). By the end of the book, I was absolutely raring to go for Alecto the Ninth, but I was also missing the sense of pure emotional turmoil that I got from the previous books, especially Harrow the Ninth.

Regardless, the weakest of the Locked Tomb series is still a spectacular book, and as a piece of serial storytelling, I suspect Nona is going to look more impressive as part of the whole. While Nona’s saccharine sweetness is no substitute for the, uh, spice of Gideon and Harrow, it’s nothing short of an expert move to make a tonal shift work like this at all, and Nona’s story expands the world of the Locked Tomb in ways which I am excited to see pay off. Now it’s time to sit tight, scan the horizon, and wait to see how one or more fleshes might meet one or more ends in the final volume.

Adri (she/her), Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Reference: Muir, Tamsyn. Nona the Ninth (Tor dot com Publishing, 2022)

Microreview: Needle (inverted Frontier #3) by Linda Nagata

In Needle, Linda Nagata continues the story of Clemantine, Urban, Vytet, and the rest of the crew of The Dragon, as their inward quest to discover what has happened to the core systems of humanity leads them to perilous encounters in the star system of Tanjiri.

When last we left the crew of Dragon, they had escaped the very dangerous nanotech infused world of Verilotus (as detailed in the first and second book in the series, Edges, and Silver) and the entities they encountered there. They escaped the peril of that world (formerly seen in the novel Memory) and continued on their decades long quest toward the Hallowed Vasties, the former beating heart of humanity among the stars. Now, as decades pass and they reach their next target, the solar system Tanjiri, the question of what lies in this solar system is twisted and entwined with another: how to open and use the indecipherable titular Needle they obtained at Verilotus. The Needle, if accessed and used, could make and sculpt whole worlds and star systems...or destroy them. And much more. All the knowledge of the God like entity known as Lezuri is contained with it...if it could but be opened.

This is the story of Needle, the third Inverted Frontier novel from Linda Nagata.

If Edges was the story of a Call to Adventure and running right into a cliffhanger resolved in Silver, and confronting ancient nanotech and a god like figure, Needle by comparison is very much a novel of re-contact and the divergence of humanity, and what they brought with them, or didn’t, on their journeys. The non FTL pace of Nagata’s verse here means that it is years, decades between systems, and between novels, and significant time (months bordering on years) happens in the space within novels.

The Tanjiri system is the closest to the explorers of Dragon (and their small flotilla of other ships) as they continue to explore and discover the world of Nagata’s grand concept--the concept of an inverted frontier (hence the series name). This is a brilliant idea (that the folks at Stellaris should scoop up and put in as a DLC as soon as possible). The adventurers from, Deception Well and elsewhere(Urban being the prime mover of the expedition with his captured alien ship) started on the frontiers, the edges of where humanity had expanded to, and the novels are the rediscovery of what lies in the ruins and remnants in the core systems, the dangers, possibilities, and wonders within. What HAS happened to the decaying megastructures and amazing feats of construction, engineering and more in the “Hallowed Vasties”, the core systems of humanity who rose to building ringworlds and dyson sphere like objects...but now are radio silent and their structures (at least from telescopes) falling apart? What does it mean to explore the ruins of the past of one’s own ancestors and find those huddling (or hopefully more than huddling) within?

Imagine a group of adventurers from Britain in the 7th century AD, traveling to find out what has happened to Rome, with all the perils, dangers and more along that road to Rome. Or imagine, more science fictionally, if a comet wiped out the east and west coast of the US in 1880, and decades later, a group from Tulsa Oklahoma journey toward one of the coasts to find out what really happened and what remained. In each case, what was once the “frontier” is now where civilization still stands--but what has happened at the core, and what remains? Or Gustave Doré’s The New Zealander (1872), which depicts a ruined London and a visitor from New Zealand sketching the ruins.

 

The Inverted Frontier novels are a nanotech infused non-FTL space opera version of this core concept. This does lead to a style and direction that is much less frenetic than the solar system space opera of The Expanse, or the FTL verses of Gareth Powerll and Adrian Tchaikovsky. These novels, this world are much more measured pace in their approach, and much more of consensus (and breaking that consensus) approach to problems and opportunities in their adventures. The crew of the Dragon and the outrider ships (which are often versions of the crew) are much more Picard era The Next Generation (or more contemporarily, Pike era Enterprise) than, say, the original series Star Trek. Yes, they have secrets, concerns, and do things without permission, but there is a lot of debate and discussion, playing into the time scales that the novel is dealing with.

One of those discussions and a major factor in the book, is the creation, out of one of the main characters, an artificial personality named The Cryptologist, to investigate the aforementioned Needle. The creation, nature and the evolution of the Cryptologist brings together a lot of what makes Nagata’s writing work at it in its best--the speculation and far future nanotech and high technology needed to make her not just a ghost in the machine, but later (on her own initiative) get unsubstantiated into a body. It allows us to explore the ethics and considerations of having multiple versions of yourself, sometimes quite different than yourself, running around in one form or another. That last is already present as a feature of the verse, as Urban has several apparatchiks helping to run Dragon and its systems (and given the alien nature of the ship, he certainly needs them) but seeing the consequences of building one from the ground up, and the perils and promise of doing so, and the social considerations of doing so, are fascinating. Consider that the Cryptologist was made for a specific task. How does one navigate creating an artificial being that is designed to do (how difficult a thing)? And what happens when that being uses methods and procedures and avenues you did not intend, or want? What happens when the Cryptologist *grows*?

Nagata further enhances this unique new member of the crew developing and growing throughout the story with the story of Jolly. Jolly chose to join Dragon at the end of the Edges/Silver duology and is committed to the spirit and promise of exploration. He is much less experienced and younger than Urban and Clemantine, and thus provides an entry point of wonder and youth to the proceedings. It is no surprise, given the Cryptologist’s newness, that their stories intertwine. Their two stories sit front and center, giving sharp relief to the more experienced Urban, Clementine and Vytet.

Even as this social dynamic plays out (in some surprising ways as the plot goes on), the main action of the plot grabs the readers attention. At Tanjiri, Dragon encounters two very different human societies, one in the ruins of a megastructure with the most precarious of existences, and one seemingly in plenty and free from want--but yet near to but never touching the mysteriously lush planet and moon right next door. Nagata explores a lot with these two cultures--the nature of memory and remembering past wrongs (or not remembering them), how to build societies to external social and physical strictures, and what happens when those deprived are finally given power long denied them. All of this, combined with the mystery of what really is going on in this system, that Lezuri warned Urban about, provides the meat of the crackerjack plotting. I relished the landscapes, technology and the cultures of the societies that Dragon interacts with. And to go all Star Trek again, how the Dragon’s visit irrevocably alters and changes both of these cultures, especially since it is not intended. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, as The Dragon’s crew learns in this novel.

I had been a fan of the Nanotech Succession novels back in the day, and once again, I am very delighted by the return to that verse, centuries hence, in the Inverted Frontier novels. This book, unlike Edges and Silver, is a single standalone. Given how rich this novel is and how much it relies on the reaction to the events in those first two novels. I would not counsel starting here--since as much as Nagata packs in ties and grounding to the past, there is a LOT going on in this verse, even within the relatively limited world of Dragon and where it visits. So if you are interested in adventure in a far future high tech world, I commend you to start with Edges and come to here through that and Silver. (and then if you like, catch up with the earlier novels, particularly Memory, which will resonate directly with Silver). The Inverted Frontier novels continue to be some of my favorite space opera.

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The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10.

Bonuses: +1 for a strongly interesting new setting and set of problems for the crew of Dragon to explore

+1 for interesting ethics and ideas explored throughout

Penalties: -1 at this point, the novels no longer stand alone. 

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 very high quality/standout in its category

Reference:  Nagata, Linda  Inverted Frontier: Needle [Mythic Island Press, 2022]

Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

[Microreview]Novella: The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia

 A queernormative story of refugees, oppression and the legacies of empire, against the backdrop of a magical medical mystery.

Cover art by Elizabeth Story

The Bruising of Qilwa follows Firuz-e Jafari, a healer fled to the Free Democratic City State of Qilwa to escape the dangers to their people in their homeland, and particularly for those of their people who practice blood magic. In Qilwa, Firuz has found a clinic that will hire them - Sassanian heritage and all  - and so they masquerade as a practitioner of more acceptable magics, trying to eke out a sufficient existence to feed their family and find them a home outside of the dangerous slums. But when a mysterious new disease starts to show itself, they find themself unable to resist using blood magic to delve into it.

There are three major strands to the plot and themes of the book, the first of which is the medical mystery - Firuz works in a healer's clinic that particularly is willing to cater to those who can't pay in money (or sometimes at all), and so we get to see their daily experience of illness as it affects those on the margins of society, and those who have been forced into the direst of circumstances, many of whom are refugees like Firuz. This in and of itself is well-done, but it gets better when it's intertwined with magic - magic used in small ways, day to day, for small things and as part of a broader set of healing sciences. It's a super effective way of creating a world in which magic is incredibly normalised, and giving space for us to see it as an intrinsic part of Qilwan life, as well as Firuz's life, and that of Kofi (their boss). We don't get to see the schools that teach it, or learn much about it in the abstract, but this is all in favour of seeing it as a part of people's general experience, and how it touches on daily life, rather than magic as something apart. And particularly, in the case of the mystery, it may be the only way the healers will discover exactly what's causing the lethargy, strange bruises and other ailments that seem to be increasingly plaguing the clinic's patients. While the mystery is in many ways the main plot driver, it also dips in and out of focus, as we look at Firuz's life outside of their work, but it never feels forgotten or abandoned - because the plot is so rooted in Firuz's life, and how incredibly busy they are, juggling so many different responsibilities, it feels extremely natural in context for their attention to shift between whatever the current crises are as needed, which gives the story space to put certain things on the back burner for a little while, without seeming to drop them entirely. The work in the clinic is a touchstone the plot always returns to, and the ebb and flow of patients an easy way to introduce and reintroduce themes that affect the healers and their patients.

We also get to see the intersection of the clinic's patients' refugee status and their political position, as the powers that be, and the general populace, in Qilwa, seek to blame them for the spread of plague through the city, and the effect that has on how Qilwa legislates medical care, and tries to protect itself, or the parts of itself it cares about, further.

And this is the second strand, on refugees, and how the world looks at them, treats them and holds them to account for things beyond their control. The precarity of life in a hostile world for those fleeing for their lives. The standards they are held to, the barriers they have to cross. While I can think of many SFF stories in which one could argue that the protagonist or major characters are refugees in their contexts, I cannot think of many that choose to grapple with that as one of their major focusses, and so it is extremely welcome here, doubly so because, as the story progresses, we see that the political issues at play, both in Qilwa itself and in the refugees' homeland of Dilmun, have further complexities and histories to them than we might have seen at first.

Which is the third thread, though one only briefly explored, about empire and its legacy, and how different people experience those histories. About the changing shape of nations, cultures and communities, and how power can shift and change, how people can shape that power, and those changes, based on the histories they've experienced. In their afterword, Jamnia talks about how their background, how their parents were Persians emigrating from Iran to the USA, influenced the world they created - the multidirectional tides of oppression and persecution, pride in the history of one's culture and the awareness of what that culture may have done, the flawed and the good, and how the good cannot be disentangled from the flaws in the society that made it. And this thoughtfulness and awareness constantly shows through in the story, in how they portray the three cultures, Qilwan, Dilmuni and Sassanian, throughout the story. There's very little in the way of big paragraphs of exposition explaining each's relation to each. Instead, we learn their histories primarily through how the people in the story interact with each other in the present, and how those histories have left a mark on them and their own conceptions of the world - and how those can differ, even among those who are friends. Jamnia has the knack for creating a complex world told in short ways and little space, while never sacrificing that complexity, and it is a joy to behold.

All of this is set against a backdrop of an immersive, evocative city, of which we see little, but feel very clearly, even from the first moment. It is also a city, and presumably a world, which is quietly but constantly queer-normative - we see it in the casual mentions of pronouns and terms of address (when being politely introduced, our protagonist is styled "they-Firuz", and another of their colleagues "she-Malika"), in references to people's parents or friends or mentors or past loves. We see a teenager who wants to medically alter their body's gendered characteristics as they go through puberty, and how magic can have an impact on that. None of these are the primary purposes of the plot, but nor are they sidelined or backgrounded - they are an intrinsic part of the world of Qilwa, and again, they are done with a deft hand at creating complexity in swift strokes.

The Bruising of Qilwa manages to marry an interesting medical mystery plot with the feeling of a slice of life view into moving through a fantasy world as a refugee, giving us realistic-feeling politics, sympathetic characters (who have very sympathetic disputes, where both sides have a genuine point) and above all, a protagonist who, run ragged as they are, is striving extremely hard to do good in a world that is making their life as difficult as it can be. It's a fantastic book, and I'd be extremely keen to read more from Naseem Jamnia, whether written in this world or something new.

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The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 tension between protagonist and their brother is really well-managed, with both sides of the argument incredibly sympathetic

+1 being partly based (according to the author) on Anders and his clinic from Dragon Age 2

Penalties: -1 would have enjoyed seeing more of some of the other characters outside of Firuz

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 very high quality

Reference: The Bruising of Qilwa Naseem Jamnia [Tachyon, 2022]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroform_tea