Life is a Carnival

Carnival, by Elizabeth Bear

This was one of the best books I read last year (yes, I’m still writing about last year’s books, even though we are well into this year). Elizabeth Bear has rapidly become one of my “autobuy” authors, which means that I will buy whatever she writes without hesitation of even looking at the blurbs on the cover, let alone reading a review, because I have been so delighted with everything I’ve read from her thus far. And Carnival is the book I read first.

The main characters are Michaelangelo Kusanagi-Jones and Vincent Katherinessen, two ambassadors – who are actually rather more than just ambassadors – from an Earth-dominated and highly patriarchal Coalition managed by cybernetic systems, sent to the independent, matriarchal colony planet of New Amazonia, on a covert mission to investigate and acquire the colony’s new and secret energy technology, while apparently returning priceless art “appropriated” from the colony by the Coalition.

They arrive the day before the New Amazonian festival of Carnival, and in the process of carrying out their own various overt and covert missions, some of which are a secret not only to their own government but also to each other, they run headlong into shifting social undercurrents, political instabilities and power struggles in the colony that will lead them to question old alliances and form new ones.

The idea of Carnival – a time when everyone wears masks and social order is turned upside down – is particularly meaningful within the scope of the novel. Certainly, almost everyone we encounter wears at least one, and often more than one mask – duplicity, secrets within secrets, misunderstandings, deceptions and mistaken perceptions are found everywhere. And questions of social order and the distribution of status and power in both societies – that of Old Earth and the Coalition, and that of New Amazonia, are highlighted both in the conversations between the Coalition ambassadors and their New Amazonian hosts, and in the perceptions and misconceptions they have about each other.

Bear also explores a third major theme of carnivals everywhere, that of the farewell to the flesh, in a crucial encounter between Katherinessen, Kusanagi-Jones (ironically enough, members of a society where vegetarianism is the norm), and an alien society who is the key to the resolution of multiple and overlapping strands of intent and action. In this encounter, Bear provides us with that very welcome sort of alien society, one that does not organise itself or make acceptable decisions according to the same kinds of values and systems that humans do.

Of particular interest to me – in a novel that touches on a great deal that is of particular interest to me – is Bear’s look at the gendering of power in different cultures. More than simply continuing the traditional Battle of the Sexes theme that sets a patriarchal society in conflict with a matriarchal one to uncover the flaws in essentialist ideas of who men and women are and what they can do, Bear looks as well at essentialist ideas of gay and straight. Both Kusanagi-Jones and Katherinessen are gay men – an anathema in their own society. However, the matriarchal culture of New Amazonia envisions gay men as “gentles” – men who lack the aggressive, violent, confrontational urges of “stud” men, which is the only reason that they have permitted these two men as ambassadors, given that the coalition has no women ambassadors to send. It is a remarkable skewering of essentialist ideas about gender to watch the women of New Amazonia being disabused of the idea that gay men, being “gentle,” are somehow constitutionally less dangerous than other men.

Carnival is a rich and complex novel. Behind the strong plot and multi-dimensional characters and fine technique lie sophisticated examinations of three of the great branches of philosophy – politics, ethics and aesthetics – and the ways that various political, ethical and aesthetic systems, when adopted by a society, shape and define what that society choses and values, and sometimes nurture and sometimes damage that society. And above all it is about the very flawed people who variously try to uphold, challenge, subvert, adapt to, change, or use to their own advantage the systems that operate in their own society and the societies of others, with a particular emphasis on how this relates to governance and gender. Ultimately, it asks deep questions about the exercise of power in societies, the importance of the consent of the governed, the responsibility of the governors, and the ethical grounds for revolution – bloody or bloodless. But unlike this paragraph, the book is not at all dry or theoretical, in fact, it is quite the opposite.

Crossroads

Spirit Gate: Book I of Crossroads, Kate Elliott

This is the first book I’d read by Elliott, and I quite enjoyed it, even though it left me with many unanswered questions – although that’s to be expected from the first book in a projected seven-volume series. A great deal happens in this book, but I had a very strong sense, even as it reached its conclusion, that we’ve just finished with the prologue. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make it difficult to wait for the rest of the series to be written so I can find out what’s going on.

The novel opens in a land called the Hundred, which for centuries has been protected by mystical guardians and patrolled by the Reeves, a kind of police force mounted on giant eagles. But there is a darkness spreading throughout the land. The Guardians have vanished, the Reeves are under a slow attack both from without and from within as their numbers dwindle and corruption enters in, and the future seems dire. Into the story comes the first of the key protagonists, Joss, a Reeve who is sent to investigate and restore order in the southern border area of the hundred, where bandits are threatening to cut off trade between the Hundred and the empire of Sirniaka.

Meanwhile, far to the southwest, we are introduced to Mai, a young woman whose people are living under an occupation force from the eastwardly-expanding Qin empire, and her husband Captain Anji, soldier and member of the imperial family, who are forced, by political unrest in which Anji could become an unwilling and endangered pawn, to flee east, beyond the lands controlled by the Qin – toward the southern borders of the Hundred.

The worldbuilding is very detailed and rich in cultural and political complexities. Anji, Mai and Joss are all well-developed and sympathetic protagonists, with very different perspectives, and are supported by a wide and varied cast of multidimensional secondary characters. The pace is somewhat slow for most of the book, but, as I said, this is just the first volume, and there is a great deal of foundation to be laid before the plot can advance. I am curious to see what Elliott is building on this deep and broad foundation.