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Faren Miller, Locus, March 2005 (Issue 530, Vol. 54, No. 3)
This month’s reading was full of unexpected pleasures, including two very different fantasies by natives of Toronto. While Cory Doctorow is a familiar name by now, I hadn’t encountered Caitlin Sweet before – but after finishing The Silences of Home (a prequel to her debut in A Telling of Stars) I ordered the first book pronto! Unlike traditional fantasy that spins slightly new riffs on familiar myths and legends, Silences invents its own legendary warrior queen with magical powers, then shows what really happened in the crucial years of her reign. Though the prologue and epilogue purport to come from a scribe in a much later era, humbled by the great task of chronicling the illustrious life of Queen Galha, the book itself would set that royal lady to whirling furiously in her grave.
The Queensrealm and the lands beyond are home to humans and humanoids whose various bodies of lore speak of great days of magic in the past and a potential reawakening of old powers. Two protagonists exhibit uncanny abilities not seen in many ages, but they don’t fit neatly into the scenario of Good and Evil destined to face each other in some grand Last Days, even when they do end up working on opposite sides. As the world’s most clear-sighted seers keep quiet about what’s to come, the true power-mongers – essentially politicians – try to manipulate uncanny forces for their own dubious ends. The results won’t be pretty.
The use and abuse of power may be the bones of this book, but there is plenty of choice meat on them. Settings are unconventional, richly imagined, and brought to life by an array of characters who reveal each group and culture from within. First we meet two selkesh brothers. Apparently evolved from “fish people” and something like selkies who make their home by tropical seas, they are far more human than their appearance suggests: one is a kind of naïf and dreamer with the long-lost ability to hear the “song” of truly distant lands across the sea, while the other is in the process of changing from a pesky little brother to a man of high ambition (which the report of distant music will feed until it breaks its bounds).
The next chapter jumps to the Queensrealm and a young woman, friend to the Queen’s daughter, about to embark on the journey that marks a coming of age – in this case to the land of the shonyn, a peaceful blue-skinned folk who live in something like an aboriginal Dream Time where there is no past, present or future, just the eternal Now. Her task resembles that of a missionary/diplomat sent overseas to convince the natives that her religion/political system is superior to their own, but she will have only one ambiguous success, a pupil whose attachment to her leaves him adrift between her world and his own.
These initial plot threads involving the physically human queensfolk, along with more exotic types, introduce both personal relationships and several kinds of political ambition (and skullduggery). But later events can’t be set in motion without a member of one further group which shows up in Book Two. The Tellers [Alilan] are a gypsy-ish people whose magic derives from the power of words. A good “Telling” evokes a scene of action with a cinematic/hallucinogenic conviction and clarity, so all who hear it seem to witness it. A modestly talented girl from these folk is torn between two suitors: one conventional beau, the other more of a loose cannon with disturbing skills – the book’s second “wizard,” though neither he nor the visionary selkesh comes from any conventional school of magic.
In the hands of a lesser writer, such a proliferation of characters, cultures and initially separate plot lines might seem self-indulgent or distracting, but Sweet knows what she’s doing. Her large cast of humans and Others (whether gilled, finned, blue-skinned, or quasi-satyrs with horns and hooves) is both distinctive and recognizable in their passions, flaws, motivations, and personal styles; by making them real to us, she fuels the book’s dramas of love and hate; political assassinations and raw murder; invasion, rebellion, revenge; innocence and the savage impact of experience.
The difference between the truth of Queen Galha’s reign and the adept spin-doctoring that turns it into accepted legend, then myth, adds a cynical fascination to what might otherwise seem a tragedy of errors with a mid-book climax whose consequences reverberate until the very end. As The Silences of Home passes from order into chaos, the title takes on various meanings, some heart-wrenchingly direct. Though it doesn’t end with complete disaster – after chaos, order is bound to reassert itself in some form – it avoids the standard tropes of closure: order restored and dangling plot threads neatly knotted or cut short in preparation for a sequel. Instead of the stylized doings of heroes and villains with their inevitable aftermaths, this fantasy feels remarkably like life.
Not long after writing that last line, I saw a New York Times review that criticized a new biography of Chaucer for praising the way The Canterbury Tales “represents the condition of life itself,” in its inconsistency and lack of firm conclusions. The reviewer called this a “meaningless” statement – but is it? Certainly not for genre fiction (a category broad enough to include even Chaucer). To oversimplify the familiar distinction, SF and fantasy deliberately skew reality while mainstream doesn’t. So a genre work that manages to get around the traditional stylization and tropes, introduce some genuine messiness, and still succeed is an impressive feat.
