My life in books

Kynship, Daniel Justice Heath.

Once, the whole of the Eld Green was the home of the Folk – the tree-born Kyn, the earth-dwelling Gvaerg, the Tetawi, descended from ancient animal spirits, the clever builders of the Ubbetek, the reclusive, spider-like Wyrnack, the Beast-folk and the Ferals. Then there was an opening of the walls between the worlds, and the Eld Green experienced the coming of the Humans, who have pushed the Folk out of the great plains and forests that were once their home, driving them into a small stretch of forest and mountain; yet even so, the Humans are not satisfied. They want all the land, all the resources, all the power.

It’s easy to see parallels between the setting and backstory of this novel – the first in a trilogy – and the European conquest of the Americas, and it is hardly surprising to see them, as Health is a member of the Cherokee Nation and scholar of Indigenous literary traditions, with an interest in telling stories rooted in the Aboriginal experience. As one reviewer comments, "...Justice helps decolonize the genre and brings us a story that is vital to Indigenous survival and resistance." (Qwo-Li Driskill, Walking with Ghosts: Poems)

One of the things that has struck me most about Kynship is that the story is told from the point-of-view of non-humans, who are confronted with humans as alien oppressors. While I’m sure there are other fantasy and science fiction works that give us this perspective – requiring us to identify with the oppressed Other, rather than observing the oppressed Other through the mediation of a human ally – it’s certainly not a common perspective. In Kynship, the humans are the invading aliens, and the story is experienced through the eyes and minds of non-human protagonists. Most other conquest stories I can think of are about non-humans oppressing other non-humans, non-humans oppressing humans, or, more common in recent years, humans siding with oppressed non-humans against other humans.

Of course, Heath is too good a writer to make the racial divisions in his world quite so cleanly defined. There are members of the Folk who have left the old ways and want to assimilate into Human culture; there are Folk who want to give way, keep retreating until they find some place the Humans won’t follow; there are Humans who live and work among the Folk, intermarrying with those of the Folk who are more humanoid than not; and so on. But the simple fact that, as humans reading this book, our point of view is made explicitly non-human, and in opposition to humans, adds layers of meaning to the work.

And non-human they may be in appearance, but the protagonists of Kynship, Tarsa, the she-Kyn warrior and apprentice wyrwielder, or sorcerer/shaman, and Tobhi, the Tetawi scout and guide, are engaging and sympathetic characters, and the society they live in is a complex one, on the verge of decisions that could mean survival or extinction.

I was impressed, and plan to read the remaining volumes as promptly as I can. One can hope that the Kyn fare better against those who would steal all their land than the Indigenous peoples of Earth have done.