Three Very Different Fantasies

[bibliogramma]

Karin Lowachee, The Gaslight Dogs

This is a powerful story about a young woman, Sjenn, who bears a gift that is intended to be used for the protection of her people. She is stolen away from her own culture and forced to make her gift serve the ends of her people's enemies. Her confusion, alienation, and struggle to survive, maintain her identity and return to her people are all part of an engrossing personal story.

This is also a brilliant examination of colonialism and forced assimilation. Heavily influenced by Lowachee's experiences living in the Canadian North, and clearly based in part on the history of Canada's indigenous northern peoples with white imperialist nations, it shows hard truths about the processes and impacts of the colonial project.

As in her earlier works, which exposed the horrifying effects of war on children, including those forced to become child soldiers, without being in any way didactic or sacrificing the art of storytelling, Lowachee has given us a reading experience par excellence - fully realised and compelling characters, a well-developed and intriguing secondary world, and a riveting story. At the same time she makes us think about the questions of power inequities between peoples, and about what history looks like from the perspective of those who have been deprived of their voice by a dominant culture.

One warning - this is the first volume of an intended trilogy, and so Sjenn's story is incomplete and many questions about the workings of the worlds she lives in remain to be answered. I am hoping that Sjenn's people will escape the fate so many indigenous peoples have faced.

for those interested, there is a good review by Jaymee Goh on tor.com.


Jo Walton, Among Others

I suspect that anyone who reads heavily in the science fiction and fantasy genres who has not heard of this amazing book has been living under a rock at the bottom of the sea on Europa for the past year.

Among Others is told in the format of a personal narrative, the diary of a young girl who has survived traumatic events and has now been taken away from the places and people she knows among her mother's relatives, and placed in the custody of her long-absent father, who promptly sends her to boarding school. The personal, cultural and social gaps between a working class Welsh girl and her mostly upper class English schoolmates, between a withdrawn and bookish girl in love with science fiction and fantasy and the "mundanes" around her, are part of why Mori is constantly "among others." But Mori is also the daughter of a power-mad witch, and she and her twin sister have the power to see the magic and the otherworldly beings that are invisible to most humans - here again Mori is and has long been living among others. (Even further, because the world of humans and the old dwelling places of the fairies are intertwined, it can also be said that human society itself is unknowing conducted among others.)

This book is so rich on so many levels - it's the story of a young girl growing up, dealing with disability and grief and the consequences of a dysfunctional family. It's about the battle between light and dark, the drive for power-over vs the nurturing of power-together. It's about the nature of perception and the power of belief. About finding one's identity and one's own inner power. About the loss of connection and intention in modern society, about the hollowness of work done without emotional investment. About the callous destruction of nature in the service of yet more sterile progress. About the necessity of magic. It is also, in a marvelously self-referential way, about how alternative fiction feeds the minds and souls of people who want to think about and explore all these things, and more.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.


Kirill Yeskov, The Last Ringbearer (translated by Yisroel Markov)

And speaking of those who have been deprived of their voice by a dominant culture, this very interesting work turns The Lord of the Rings on its head and tells the story of how a society seeking to move toward scientific enlightenment and democratic rule is almost destroyed by a hidebound culture in which power is limited to the few and progress has been stifled, keeping the people in ignorance and thralldom. Following the maxim that history is told - and usually distorted greatly - by the victors, Yeskov takes as his fulcrum the themes of nature vs, industry and magic vs, science that are woven through The Lord of the Rings and valorises the side that Tolkien demonised. A fascinating look at how changing perspective changes everything.