Review: Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

Jun 172024
 
Locus: To quote Tom Clancy (or was it Jeff Bezos?), it takes ten years to become an overnight success. I suspect Vajra Chandrasekera can relate. He spent a decade working on his craft, with short fiction published in various genre magazines and anthologies. Then, last year, Chandrasekera published his first novel, The Saint of Bright Doors, which immediately caught fire, drawing plaudits and praise from critics and fans. Fast-forward to the present day, and the novel has been nominated for multiple prizes (the Hugo, the Nebula, the Lammy) and recently took home the Crawford award. I featured The Saint of Bright Doors on my Locus ‘‘Year in Review’’ essay and spoke ecstatically about the novel on The Writer and the Critic podcast. What makes it such an astonishingly good debut is Chandraesekera’s boldness – the imaginative, radical manner in which he fuses science fiction and fantasy, social realism, and surrealism. But if The Saint of Bright Doors is an experimental novel in (mostly) conventional storytelling clothing, Rakesfall bares it all, a full-frontal deconstruction of narrative and genre.
The patchwork, ‘‘fix-up’’ quality of Rakesfall means it never settles into a narrative groove. The setting, the voice, and the structure regularly change, forcing the reader to pause, to re-evaluate what’s happening. But while I might have been bewildered, I never felt lost. If anything, my mind was all abuzz, striving to keep hold of the threads, the intricate web, that ties these lives, these realities together.
What propels the narrative isn’t so much the dramatic set pieces (though the novel isn’t short on those; several of the chapters set in the far future are genuinely jaw-dropping) but the constant flood of ideas and new ways of thinking and perceiving the world. Chandrasekera reconceptualises Hindu and Buddhist beliefs such as akasha or the Akashic Record. He reframes Sri Lanka’s history of European colonialism as a play with a distinctively postmodern vibe. He brilliantly breaks the narrative to tell us a fable about Heroes, Wasps, and Kings and deliberately leaves out the moral (because ‘‘this is history rather than a story’’). He depicts a far future where tech lords and multinationals have devastated the Earth and have now colonised digital space, including the singularity. And undergirding this flurry of invention is a voice that is sometimes plain, sometimes wry and knowing, but more often than not overwhelmed with grief and anger. And even here, when the story is at its most vibrant, there’s an awareness, a recognition that a novel this playful, erudite, and caustic has its limits when recalling the histories, the stories, and the beliefs of those who died for the sake of Empire, progress and profit. Rakesfall may not seem as polished as The Saint of Bright Doors, but in my mind, it cements Chandraesekera as one of the genre’s most important, most vital voices.

Starred Review: ASUNDER by Kerstin Hall

Jun 142024
 

Publishers Weekly: In this dazzling and eclectic fantasy from Hall (Star Eater), a scrappy, foul-mouthed medium wrangles with an impressively imagined cohort of skin thieves, smugglers, and shape-shifters—as well as her own inner demons. At 17, Karys Eska ran away from an abusive father and sold her soul to the god Sabaster to become a deathspeaker, one able to communicate with the deceased. When, years later, a job gone wildly wrong leaves her stranded in a sea cave, a stranger saves her life. Feraine Taliade turns out to be a diplomat from a neighboring country who survived an assassination attempt that left him badly wounded. Karys tries to use her powers to save him—and by fluke instead attaches him to her as her shadow. At first merely awkward, the situation quickly proves perilous; the assassins now pursue Karys as she sets out in search of a magic that can separate her from Feraine. Along the way, the pair become emotionally attached, but the odds that both of them will survive a powder-and-potion-induced separation are slim. Adding to the danger, Sabaster grows increasingly persistent in summoning Karys to his underworld, where he aims to make her his bride. Though extraordinarily complex, the plot never loses focus or pace. With elements of gut-turning horror, adventure, and romance, this is a powerhouse.

Review: THE EVER KING audiobook by LJ Andrews

Jun 122024
 

AudioFile: Lucy Rivers and Will Thorne energize each other as dual narrators of this steamy fantasy-romance blending pirates, fae, and Vikings. Erik rules Ever Kingdom, but that rule is compromised by the man who murdered his father and trapped Erik in the underwater world called the Ever Realm. When Livia, the daughter of the man responsible for trapping Erik, accidentally breaks the Ever Realm open, Erik rages out to avenge his father’s death–but not if Livia can capture his heart first. Rivers provides a captivating portrayal of headstrong, passionate Livia. The sensual encounters crackle with erotic tension as Livia’s voice catches and becomes increasingly breathy. This engaging dark fantasy-romance is best listened to with headphones. J.M.M. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2024]

Starred Review: Sheine Lende by Darcie Little Badger

Jun 072024
 

Bookpage: A prequel to acclaimed YA author Darcie Little Badger’s 2020 debut Elatsoe (which features Shane’s granddaughter, Ellie, as the protagonist), Sheine Lende is a powerful and deeply moving tale of family, grief, cultural identity and magic. As a Lipan Apache woman herself, Little Badger combines the myths and legends of her tribe with fantastical elements to tell a story that, while fictional, rings true. The universe the book occupies is almost identical to our own, except in Little Badger’s version of reality, the ancient folklores that have informed cultural beliefs and practices since time immemorial are made manifest in the real world—but they exist alongside representations of true and historic modes of systemic oppression used by the U.S. government against indigenous peoples like the Lipan.

This is not to say, however, that Sheine Lende is all darkness. Though frequently consumed by anxiety, doubt and grief, Shane is a vibrant character who continues to find joy in her family, friends and the world around her. And on a larger scale, Little Badger never portrays the Lipan Apache tribe as downtrodden or defeated. Much to the contrary, Sheine Lende presents a family and a people who have had atrocities small and large, but who, despite it all, turn toward the light.

 

Review: RAKESFALL by Vajra Chandrasekera

Jun 052024
 

Booklist: “[T]his is how she and I have spent our long and convoluted journey through time: joined at the hip, joined at the death, haunting each other, carrying each other.” Chandrasekera follows two entwined souls through an endless cycle of reincarnation and destruction in this slipstream novel, a poetic saga about identity and memory, colonialism and revolution, connection and commitment. It begins with a hauntingly enigmatic analysis of a TV show starring teenagers Annelid and Levert and set during a “war which is now over but never over.” Annelid is possessed by a demon in the jungle, and Leveret, a newly made revolutionary, is murdered. Though the show, watched by fans in the far future, ends with Leveret’s death, their story continues in the many nonlinear lives and worlds into which they reincarnate. These worlds, from ancient legends to a ruined, abandoned Earth, are woven from South Asian culture and populated with corrupt politicians and kings, revolutionaries, demons, living corpses, old gods, posthumans, artificial intelligences, and more. Chandrasekera employs multiple narrative forms and storytelling styles in this often difficult to parse but impossible to forget surrealist experience.

Review: THOSE BEYOND THE WALL by Micaiah Johnson

Jun 032024
 

Reactor:  Those Beyond the Wall, Micaiah Johnson’s second novel, can be read as a standalone, or you can read it as a followup that’s something of a mirror image to The Space Between Worlds, her 2020 debut. Space was set mostly inside the walls of Wiley City, where an unlikely survivor named Cara found an unusual way to make a life among the privileged. Beyond is set in the nearby desert community of Ashtown, under the sometimes-deadly glare of the sun. That sun is far from the only deadly thing in Ashtown.

Both places are changed by a technological innovation that allows people to move between worlds. Each person exists, or existed, in every world, though their lives are different—sometimes more different, sometimes less. There are catches, because there are always catches. It’s not an easy experience, seeing the other yous that might have been.

This book isn’t about technology, though. (Johnson is very aware of the fine line between magic and science.) It’s about revolution, and it’s about Mr. Scales, one of the many runners who serve Nik Nik, the emperor of Ashtown. Technically, Scales is a mechanic, but like her fellows, she’s also a killer. She has been other things, and lived other lives, but at this moment, in this life, everything goes to hell when she watches a friend die horribly. There is no killer. Helene X just folds in on herself, bones breaking and reversing, as Scales tries to hold her together.

The threat that causes these terrible deaths—because of course there are more—affects primarily people in Wiley, but trouble in Wiley quickly becomes trouble for Ashtown. In the city, a scientist named Adam Bosch understands better than most what is happening. When Scales and her colleagues bring him to their emperor, a whole host of events are set in motion.

The question of who is killing the mangled dead is less of an issue than the matter of how to stop it. This is the catalyst for Johnson’s story, but its engine, its heart, is Scales, who gradually turns her attention to the pre-existing, systemic issues that affect everyone in Ashtown. The people of this world need to put a wall between themselves and the entitled, brazen enemy that would destroy them. But there is an existing wall that isn’t doing Ashtowners any good.

Starred Review: THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST by Premee Mohamed

May 302024
 

Shelf Awareness: A woman forced into heroism races against time and sinister magical forces to save her family in the perfectly paced and deliciously threatening dark fantasy novella The Butcher of the Forest by World Fantasy Award winner Premee Mohamed (And What Can We Offer You Tonight).

“It was not yet dawn when they came for her,” the story begins, setting an ominous tone that only intensifies as men drag villager Veris Thorn before the Tyrant, her realm’s merciless conqueror. His two children have vanished into the Elmever, a parallel magic world that invisibly opens from a nearby wood, and he has heard that only Veris has ever brought a child back from it alive. He orders her to retrieve his children or “your village will be razed… and we will roast your people alive… and eat them.” Veris slips into the Elmever with only three tokens to guide her and a single day to retrieve the children. She must face poisonous magic; half-rotted undead beasts bent on devouring her; and elder beings who want her deepest self, all to save the children who will one day oppress her people in place of the Tyrant–if Veris can bring them out in one piece.

Mohamed puts a chilling twist on the fairy tale of the stolen child. Veris, a commoner in her late 30s with little power beyond her wits and experience, makes for a captivating heroine whose vulnerability and fear give the narrative the gasping tension of a horror movie. Butcher of the Forest is short, sharp fantasy at its finest.

Review: THE TAINTED CUP by Robert Jackson Bennett

May 202024
 

New York Times Book Review: “The Tainted Cup” is a thoroughly satisfying delight from start to finish. If you, like me, enjoy an animating nonsexual relationship between a brilliant, eccentric woman and a devoted and highly competent man, this book is a cornucopia. Bennett pulls off his own feat of engineering in splicing genres together so effectively, marrying the imaginative abundance of a fantasy world to the structure, pace and character dynamics of detective fiction.

Starred Review: ASUNDER by Kerstin Hall

May 172024
 

Library Journal: The old gods are dead, and the new ones are horrific. Karys Eska is bound to a new god, and the price for her ability to speak to the dead is, on an unspecified day, to be snatched away to a realm of terrors. When she attempts to rescue a dying stranger from uncanny creatures, she accidentally merges Ferain with her shadow. If Eska learns how to free him, he’ll make her wealthy. But they soon discover that the creature attack didn’t happen by chance, and forces will pursue them across nations to ensure their deaths. Along the way, both learn that they can’t outrun their pasts, but maybe some parts are worth holding on to. Hall (Second Spear) weaves a fascinating tapestry of mythology and divine politics that she underscores with deep, complicated relationships. Nearly every character struggles with trust, unequal power dynamics, and the expectations of class and nation, despite also having an intense desire for connection. The novel’s charming interludes between deadly situations are few but powerful.

VERDICT This compelling mix of horror, found family, and intricate mythology will appeal to those who loved Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys and The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin.

Review: THOSE BEYOND THE WALL by Micaiah Johnson

May 142024
 

New York Times Book Review: Where “The Space Between Worlds” was a structured book, unfolding its plot the way a scene would on a painted fan, “Those Beyond the Wall” is more tightly focused on character and voice, revolutionary ethics and practice. It’s about apartheid as a violent premise that requires violent resistance, not as a parade of suffering to be solved with pity and charity by those who profit from it. It’s a book that forces its characters and its readers to reckon with two questions: What side of the wall are you on, and what side of the wall do you want to be on?

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