Jul. 6th, 2009

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Green Grass, Running Water, by Thomas King

Imagine magical realism with all the satire and bite and planned absurdity of Monty Python’s Flying Circus at its very best. Add in the best of aboriginal storytelling tradition, from some highly unusual and unlikely narrators, and a skillful examination – no, make that evisceration – of the images that white settler culture has created of, about and around aboriginal peoples in North America. And a wealth of literary, mythological, religious and historical allusions and references. Oh, and don’t forget to braid all of this together with a perfectly realistic novel about four people from the same reserve in western Canada who are each, in their own way, on the brink of major changes in their lives, and how their individual pasts, their First Nations heritage and the assumptions and actions of the white people and institutions around them have brought them to this point.

Or, as another reviewer put it:
Imagine four Indian storytellers in the best oral tradition, only with frequent interruptions (“Who, me?” says that Coyote). If I tell you that their names are the Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye, you will begin to get the joke. Their stories are mashups of Native American and Western culture: Changing Woman, meet Noah. They rewrite the classics, rewrite Hollywood Westerns, rewrite Creation itself in the attempt to get it right this time. And while the novel works as a story complete in itself, the literary references, punning names, and recurring motifs are an English major’s Easter egg hunt.

Short chapters, some of them no more than a barrage of dialogue, keep the plot moving quickly. The novel does jump about: between history, myth, Hollywood, Melville, the Bible, and an actual plot, King is keeping a lot of balls in the air. Enjoy the juggling act and the wickedly dry sense of humor. You’ve never read a book about cultural (and patriarchal) oppression that’s this funny. Williamsburg Regional Library review
Then you’ll have some idea of what you’ll find in King’s Green Grass, Running Water (the very title makes reference to the terms in many treaties and agreements made between settlers and aboriginal peoples – “as long as grass grows and water runs” – that were in fact broken as quickly as ink dries).

It’s a book with the rare gift of making people of privilege see their unexamined racism, laugh at themselves – and thank the author for the pleasure of the lesson.

I’ve raved about Thomas King’s writing before, and I have every intention of doing it again, because I heartily anticipate reading everything he’s written. He’s just that good.

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Into the Dark Lands, Michelle Sagara West

Into the Dark Lands is the first book of Sagara West’s Sundered series, and is also her first published book. It is unquestionably a strong debut, and one that shows just how much of Sagara West’s themes and style were present from the beginning of her professional writing career.

The universe of the Sundered is one created and sustained within a vast Manichaean struggle between two powers, one of the Bright and one of the Dark. In the first confrontation of these powers, lesser beings – the Sundered – were created out the substance of each power, beings which fought against each other without either side gaining an advantage. Eventually, the two powers joined in direct conflict, merging somehow yet remaining distinct, and falling dormant within each other's embrace. The result of this was the formation of the physical world, in which both Bright and Dark were equally present.

The Sundered who survived the cosmic battle – also called Servants of the Bright or the Dark – went down into physical reality and continued their battle, both directly and through their offspring, mortal yet having some of the powers of their parents among the Sundered.

When the series begins, the battle has been raging in human lands for generations. The First Servant of the Bright, despairing of ever finding an end to the killing, has dared to enter a dangerous prophetic trance in the hopes of seeing some way to end the war without yielding to the Dark. She emerges with a faint chance, which she cannot share with any of her companions or children, one that demands great sacrifices with only the smallest hope of success. Yet as the First Servant of the Bright, she makes the choice to risk all.

The first novel begins the story of Erin, granddaughter of the Lady of Elliath, also known as the First Servant of the Bright – a young girl with enormous potential as a healer who is destined to be the instrument of that fragile hope on which the forces of the Bright will risk so much.

I found it quite enjoyable, although I have some reservations about the overall nature of the way out of eternal struggle foreseen by the First Servant of the Bright. It is shaping up to be a “Beauty and the Beast” kind of tale, with a violent and feared man “saved” by the love of a good woman. The overall gendering of Good and Evil – excuse me, Bright and Dark – in the novel is somewhat problematic, but it’s a well-told story and I’m willing to take a ride with Sagara West to see what she does next with this set-up.

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