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The Mirror Empire — Kameron Hurley

Published on September 11, 20141 Comment

Cover of The Mirror Empire

The Mirror Empire
Kameron Hurley
540 pages
published in 2014

Kameron Hurley’s debut novel Gods War had an impact many other writers would envy her for, only equalled by the buzz generated by Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice last year. It wasn’t just an accomplished debut novel, it also helped revitalise science fiction at a time when it started to grow a bit stale again. Expectations are therefore high for Hurley’s new novel, The Mirror Empire, the first in a new series and the first fantasy novel she has published. Would it be as good and inventive as her previous series, would she be as good at writing fantasy as science fiction?

Halfway through Mirror Empire I finally realised what it reminded me off: Steven Erikson’s Malazan series. Not so much in setting or plot, but rather in complexity and willingness of both authors to throw all sorts of interesting ideas into their novels, ideas you may not expect in what at first glance seems to be a standard epic fantasy series. Where they differ is that Hurley is much better at inclueing the reader about who all these people are and how everything fits together, where Erikson had a magnificent disdain for the reading, leaving them to sink or swim on their own. Hurley is … more forgiving but still requires you to pay attention. This is not a novel to read with your brain in standby.

Luckily Hurley has provided a cheat sheet, in the form of her promotional blog tour she undertook for The Mirror Empire. As you may know, her first publisher went into a spot of trouble that almost sunk her writing career until she got taken on by Angry Robot. Though I do have the feeling she severily underestimated how well know and popular she actually is, I can’t fault her for deciding that she needed to pull out all the stops to promote what might be her last chance at kickstarting her writing career. Hence the blog tour in which she talks about The Mirror Empire, why she wrote it as she did and the choices she made. If you haven’t read the novel you may therefore want be careful with reading those posts, because they do reveal a lot about the story, but it’s a boon to refresh your memory afterwards.

I started The Mirror Empire last Sunday when I read a large chunk sitting in my garden, then basically read it in fifteen-tweny minutes chunks on my commute, finishing it today, on Thursday. It read incredibly fast, pages flew by, chapters were read in minutes. Normally that’s the sign of a shallow book, something you don’t need to pay too much attention to read, but that’s not true here. Because I also found that I needed the time between commutes to think about the story, while going about my day, letting it bubble in my subconscious. As Hurley’s blog tour shows, there was a lot of thought put into this novel and I needed the time to process that.

The worldbuilding I especially was impressed with. The Mirror Empire takes amongst three different societies: the Dhai, Dorinah and the Saiduan, on one continent of one world. The latter two seem variations of well known pseudo feudal, medievaloid fantasy societies, but the Dhai are something else: vegetarian pacifist cannibals living in the middle of a wilderness filled with ambulatory predatory trees and other dangers. Their towns and temples are protected by various barriers as well as the talents of their priests or jistas, those who can draw on the powers of the various satellites that circle the world. As these, in their complicated years and decades long orbits draw closer or further, their powers become greater or lesser. The most elusive of the satellites is Oma, not seen for 2,000 years but whose rise always is accompanied by great and violent change. No points for guessing which satellite is starting to rise at the start of the novel.

But we don’t know that at the start of the novel, which begins with the main protagonist, Lila, losing her mother in a raid by a warband of Dhai. She escapes only because her mother, a bloodwitch able to work magic through the use of, well, blood, throws her through a gate to another world, where Lila is raised as a temple drudge for the Temple of Oma. Meanwhile in Saiduan the country is under attack from a relentless horde of invaders, invaders who seem to step out of tears in the sky, while in Dorinah the empress there entrusts her captain general with an important task: to ethnically cleanse all the Dhai slaves in the empire. All pieces of the same puzzle and to the reader it becomes relatively quick clear that’s what’s happening is no less than an invasion of a dying parallel world, where the Dhai are not cuddly pacifist cannibals, but aggressive conquerors who’ve taken over most of their world and now want to do the same to this world.

None of the characters in The Mirror Empire fit the traditional heroic mold. Lila is disabled with bad leg and asthma, while e.g. the Dorinah captain general, Zezili Hasaria, is more than happy to follow her empress’ orders for genocide, until driven by necessity to go against them. The closest the book comes to a true heroically good character is Ahkio, the kai or leader of the Dhai who tries to keep to the traditional virtues of his people even in the face of this existential crisis.

Which brings me back to the Dhai society, which not only distinguishes some five different genders (as well as people who don’t fit any of them) but which is also egalitarian and based on a radical form of consent, where even a simple touch on the arm needs to be consented to. This is something that’s genuinely new to me; I don’t think I’ve seen this before in either fantasy or science fiction.

In general, as the blog tour shows, Hurley has put an incredible amount of thought in gender and gender relations and how to create societies that aren’t the tired old medievaloid creatures of lesser novels. There are the five genders, female passive, female assertive, male passive, male assertive, and ungendered which do not map entirely on our own notions of gender, as they’re built around specific roles these genders play in Dhai society as well as temperament and are fluid as people change over time and change their identity. Ahkio for example identifies as male passive, more conservative, more traditional and reserved, whereas if he’d identified as male assertive he’d been more individualistic and liberal.

The Saiduan too have a flexible gender system, acknowledging a third gender, the ataisa, inbetween male and female, but whereas with the Dhai gender is self identified, in Saiduan it’s enforced much more by society. That’s one of the ways in which Hurley is great at worldbuilding, by creating those subtle but fitting distinctions between societies while still seeing the similarities. What’s also interesting is that describing these gender systems and societies Hurley has created puts them much more in the foreground than they are when reading the novel. Most of the time you accept them like you’d accept the details of any fantasy world, as you accept that the people here ride dogs or bears, rather than horses.

There is one place though where these gender concerns are foregrounded, mainly in the subplot surrounding Anavha, husband to Zezili, the Dorinah captain general. Dorinah society is a matriarchal one where men fill the same role as women historically in our world, appandages of their wives, with nothing more to do than to look pretty for them and be there to fullfill their sexual needs and give them children. His chapters are in your face and uncomfortable and hard to read: it’s not that often you have this role reversal in a fantasy novel and have it shown up so starkly. His story is what’s going to stick in some people’s craws, if anything is.

For me personally though, I’ve only scratched the surface of what makes The Mirror Empire great and I can’t wait for the sequel. Already this is a worthy candidate for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and certainly a much better novel than Gods War.

Dutch sf on the Skiffy and Fanty Show

Published on September 3, 2014Leave a comment

The Hugo nominated podcast The Skiffy and Fanty show has done a podcast about the state of Dutch science fiction and fantasy:

Literary festivities, multicultural wonders, and invading Dutch peeps, oh my! We’ve got a special World SF-themed episode for you all. Tiemen Zwaan, Marieke Nijkamp, Martijn Lindeboom, and Thomas Olde Heuvelt (a Hugo Nominee!) join us to talk about Dutch SF. We tackle the publishing world, literary conventions and festivals, fandom, the pressures of the market, and the Dutch “character” in SF — and more!

Worldcon has inspired me to get more involved with Dutch sf fandom and Dutch sf writing, which has always stood in the shadow of the Anglo-American sf tradition both for me personally and in general. It has always been cheaper and less of a risk to translate English sf than to take a gamble on a local author. Over the decades there have been a couple of course, but currently there seems to be a genuine renaissance of Dutch sf and fantasy, with Thomas Olde Heuvelt being the first Dutch writer to be nominated for a Hugo Award, not just once, but twice. I’m currently reading the Dutch version of his novel Hex, which will be translated and published by Tor next year and it’s excellent.

What I found most interesting about the podcast was the too slight discussion of what would be the specific character of Dutch science fiction, which focused on how the Dutch have less interest in solitary heroes and more in cooperation and compromise, etc. Personally I’m skeptical about that, I think the real difference is in language use and attitude. You can’t be as bombastic and hyperbolic in Dutch as you can in English because it quickly start sounding childish. There’s also a certain casualness in how people talk that’s lacking in UK and US cultures, with proper middle class people talking on a much more informal level than their counterparts abroad. We’re a fairly equalised society, without many of the overt class symbols that you have in the US or UK. Which is not to say those class differences aren’t there of course, but they’re much more subtle.

What I need to do now is to find more worthy Dutch science fiction and fantasy writers. Suggestions are always welcome.

LonCon3: books bought

Published on August 25, 2014Leave a comment

Of course I bought books at LonCon3, almost forty of them in fact. Below I’ll discuss them briefly.

Books from the Womens Press

Ian Sales has been extolling the virtues of the Women’s Press science fiction line for a while and one dealer had a whole stack available. Apart from the Joanna Russ Adventures of Alix, there’s Doris Piserchia’s Star Rider, Carol Emshwiller’s Carmen Dog, Lorna Mitchell’s The Revolution of Saint Jone and Rosaleen Love’s Total Devotion Machine.

Doris Piserchia DAW books

This led me in turn to look for more Doris Piserchia books, she being one of those writers who had been regularly published by DAW in the seventies and early eighties and then just sort of disappeared. Another Ian Sales rediscovery, I found about half a dozen of her novels at the con. As the bloke standing next to me at the stall, who turned out to be Kev McVeight, Piserchia is a seriously weird but interesting writer.

Critical books

I also bought a couple of critical books, two of Paul Kincaid and Andrew M. Butler’s Solar Flares, the blog version of which is still listed on my blogroll.

Books from Gollancz

Browsing the Gollancz stand I found myself standing next to Paul McAuley, one of my favourite writers for several decades now and I got the chance to talk to him a bit. I told him about reading Fairyland on the same Den Haag tramline as was featured in the book. I got the Jaine Fenn novel to help me get to 25 pound and the free tote bag…

Small press books

Ticonderoga Publications is an Australian small press whose Steve Utley collections I noticed when they sparked a hazy memory of reading one of his short stories in one of Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best collections. I ended up buying both of his collections as well as a Justina Robson collection. The Nina Allan novella I got from TTA.

other books bought

Actually, I could’ve bought a lot more books than just this.

Books from the LonCon3 library

But unfortunately there also was the free library so I got a half dozen more.

UPDATE: almost forgot, I also bought all of Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman novels because she’d dropped the price on the first two for LonCon3.

Blood Trail — Tanya Huff

Published on July 24, 2014Leave a comment

Cover of Blood Trail

Blood Trail
Tanya Huff
304 pages
published in 1992

What do you call urban fantasy when it moves to the countryside? Because that’s what happens in Blood Trail as Vicky Nelson, ex police officer turned private dick and her vampire partner Henry Fitzroy trade the familiarity of Toronto for the charming wonders of the Canadian countryside. Vicky had met Fitzroy in the first novel of the Blood series, Blood Price, now in the second — as seems to be de rigeour in urban fantasy — she gets involved with werewolves. But these aren’t your average, shirt ripping, feauding with vampires werewolves: these are sheepfarmer werewolves, leading a quiet existence near London, Ontario, just another Dutch-Canadian family. Until somebody starts killing them, somebody who seems to know that they’re werewolves.

Which is when they call Henry Fitzroy, who first met the Heerkens wolf clan during WWII, when he was a member of the British secret service and they were in the Dutch resistance. Because the wer could obviously not involve the police without their secret getting known and since they’re mistrustful of outsiders anyway, Henry was their only option. And Henry of course in turn wanted Vicky to come along and use her investigative talents. Meanwhile, back in Toronto detective Mike Celluci, Vicky’s ex-colleague and still occasional love interest is convinced Henry is hiding something. Of course not knowning he’s a vampire, it may just be jealousy that’s driving his investigation…

The plot driving Blood Trail is on the slight side; though Huff does her best to mislead, it’s clear quickly who the killer is and what their motivations are. Motivations which, in their religious origins are a bit cliched to be honest, even for a novel first published in 1992. But then the plot isn’t the real point of this novel and series anyway, but there just to provide a scaffolding for the continuing adventures of Vicky, Henry and Mike and their relationship to each other. It’s a classic love triangle, with Vicky and Henry lusting after each other but wary of consumation, while Vicky and Mike dive in the bed whenever they’ve had a good fight.

There’s always an erotic charge to vampirism of course, what with all those aristocratic men drinking the blood of various sultry beauties, not always involuntarily. In Blood Price Huff already had Henry drink Vicky’s blood, but at the time it was for a purely practical reason, to enable him to defeat the big bad. Since then they neither had sex nor had Henry fed again on her, though both wanted it; the circumstances hadn’t been right. All part of that slow dance of attraction between the heroine and vampire in novels like this; less common perhaps is having Henry not only feed, but share the bed with Tony, a young streetwise protege of Vicky’s. This sideplot was never really followed up here, nor had Vicky much of a response to this.

With Vicky and Mike things are much more casual, colleagues turned lovers, though not in lover. Or at least that’s what they’re telling each other. Because Mike doesn’t know what and who Henry really is, his inexplicable to Mike relationship with Vicky makes him suspect. Which is why Mike comes butting in on her investigation: suspicion fueled by jealousy. Mike in general is a bit of a bull in a chinashop, very different from the urbane Henry.

Central to Vicky’s relationship with both men is her progressivily worsening disability, her blindness at night and at low light. She’s still trying to come to terms with it, while not wanting it to define her or admit to her weaknesses, especially not in front of either Herny or Mike. I found this to be the most realistic part of Vicky’s character.

What Blood Trail also does well is the nature of the werewolf pack. It’s clear that the werewolves are not quite human even apart from being able to turn into wolves; the relations between the members are wolf like already and they seem slightly less bright, more impulsive than “normal” humans. Their murderer uses those qualities against them and it’s only Vicky, Henry and Mike’s outsider perspective that enables them to track him down.

Blood Trail does suffer somewhat from being a series book, with slow moving subplots and the slow moving evolving relationships between the three main characters. Read on its own it’s therefore not quite satisfying; you want to have read the previous novel. As popcorn reads these books are great, but don’t expect anything profound.

The Dark Griffin — K. J. Taylor

Published on June 15, 2014Leave a comment

Cover of The Dark Griffin

The Dark Griffin
K. J. Taylor
369 pages
published in 2009

One of the things I’ve been trying to do more of these past five years or so has been to try out more new to me authors. K. J. Taylor is one of these authors, an Australian fantasy writer whose Black Griffin looked interesting when I was browsing the Amsterdam library shelves. I had no choice but to like a writer who said of herself: “a lot of fantasy authors take their inspiration from Tolkien. I take mine from G. R. R. Martin and Finnish metal”. A bit of research online discovered that she isn’t even thirty years old, published her first book at twenty in 2006 and has had seven books published since. Which makes her on a par with Elizabeth Bear with regards to productivity (and here I have trouble writing a blogpost sometimes…)

The Dark Griffin is the first in a fantasy trilogy, which in turn was followed by another trilogy. You may suspect therefore that this is pretty much a setup book and you may be right. What this is, is an origin story, both of the titular dark griffin (literally, as the book starts with his birth) and his ride, Arren Cardockson. As the story starts Arren is the only Northerner griffin rider in the city of Eagleholm, of far humbler origins than his fellow griffineers. His parents are freedmen, ex-slaves, while all other griffin riders are aristocrats. Nevertheless and despite the occassional tension, he feels well supported by the city’s elite. Even more so when lord Rannagon, one of the leaders of the griffiners and master of law, suggest a way for Arren to get out of his money problems.

The reason Arren has money problems is because Eluna, his griffin killed a man during a raid on a smuggler that he lead as part of his duties as overseer of the city’s market. Though he was lawfully killed, Arren still owns compensation to the killed man’s family, which he can’t afford. Luckily lord Rannagon has a solution: go and capture the wild black griffin that’s been slaughtering cows in a remote village several days travel away and sell it to the Arena for profit. They like big, wild griffins, because they can pitch them against condemned criminals and make a killing.

As experienced fantasy readers you and I would of course smell this as a trap, but Arren is nineteen and headstrong and determined to prove that even if he was raised a Northerner he can still be a goof griffineer. Completely assimilated and in any case in love with Flell, lord Rannagon’s daughter, Arren has no reason to mistrust him. So off he goes on his quest, Eluna being eager to make up for her mistake.

Naturally it all turns into a disaster; nobody sane would attempt to capture a wild griffin alone, as we saw in the first chapter, when a group of griffineers had enough problems putting down the black griffin’s mother. Arren manages to capture the griffin, but at the cost of Eluna, who died saving him from his attack. Getting back to Eagleholm he sells the griffin to the Arena, where it’s named Darkheart and promises to become the star attraction. Meanwhile Arren is now an ex-griffineer and gets to experience how the city treats normal Northerners, as slaves and barbarians who are not to be trusted.

Arren undergoes the full Monte Cristo treatment, losing everything, his griffin, his title, his home, his possessions and finally his honour as he attempts to steal a griffin. Thrown into the Arena himself, he meets up with his nemesis and together they manage to escape as they both swear vengeance against the city that has so mistreated them.

As I said, The Dark Griffin is an origin story, setting up the rest of the series. What will be interesting to see is the direction Taylor takes the rest of the series in. The easy route would be to make Arren into an antihero or outright villain and make this a revenge story, or make it a personal conflict between him and Flell. But throughout the story Taylor has shown little seeds that could make this into something bigger, in the way Northerners are treated. Arren could escape most of that treatment because he was a griffineer and his status protected him. In turn he himself denied his heritage because he had internalised the values of the city’s elite, who see Northerners as backward and barbarian; once he fell from grace it turned out they saw him the same way.

That’s a lot more sophisticated view of race and class relations than we usually see in fantasy, which often operates on a good king/bad king level of understanding. That’s not to say that it’s perfect, as Taylor doesn’t quite set up this racial tension well enough for me in the early parts of the story to make the speed with which Arren is ostracised entirely believable. It’s also the question if Taylor will follow through on this; she wouldn’t be the first Australian fantasy author to disappoint me.

If Taylor doesn’t through, what remains is a perfectly servicable fantasy story, nothing that special, though I like the use of griffins as creatures of magic rather than something more familiar like dragons. It has some rough edges, but good light entertainment.