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Ruthanna Emrys: Deep Roots
Jul. 28th, 2018 12:17 amDeep Roots is the second volume in Ruthanna Emrys’ fascinating and intensely readable series inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos. These books are told from the perspective of the last on-land members of the sea people who once lived in Innsmouth, before the US government kidnapped and interned them in a concentration camp in the desert where all but two - brother and sister Aphra and Caleb - died from lack of the ocean and the conditions required to make the change to their near immortal sea-dwelling form. Emrys begins from the assumption that everything we think we know about these people is wrong, based on twisted propaganda spread by those who hated and feared them.
In the first novel, Winter Tide, Aphra, who is a student of the ancient magics known to her people (and others), formed a confluence, or chosen family, comprised of an unlikely group of people with the ability for pursuing magic and a commitment to trying to rebuild the land community of the sea people: her brother Caleb; his lover DeeDee, a black woman recruited by the FBI as an informant, seductress and spy; Charlie, a gay man who is Aphra’s friend and student in the magical arts; Neko, the daughter of the Japanese couple who adopted and cared for Aphra and Caleb when when the internment camp they and the few other dying sea people were held in was repurposed to imprison Japanese Americans during WWII; Catherine Turnbull, a mathematician and scholar of magic who had been the host of one of the time-travelling, body-borrowing, and rather arrogant Yith; Audrey, a woman of mixed heritage, part ‘ordinary’ human (the people of the air), part descendent of a third human subgroup, subterranean dwellers called the people of the earth; and, on the periphery of this family, Ron Spector, Charlie’s lover, and an FBI agent working in a branch of the bureau established to investigate magical threats to the USA.
In Deep Roots, Aphra and her confluence have been following leads and rumours of other sea people who may have survived the genocidal actions of the government, ‘mistblooded’ descendants of he few who left the Innsmouth community and married into families of the people of the air. Having learned of a woman, Frances Laverne, and her son Freddie, who live in New York City, they travel to the big city, only to discover that Freddie - who could be Aphra’s only chance to bear a new generation of sea folk - has become involved with a community of Mi-Go and other humans.
Lovecraft’s Mi-Go are, alternatively, the origin of the Abominable snowman myth, or other-dimensional aliens, winged and clawed, technologically advanced, who take human minds and place them in cannisters which they can then transport across space. Emrys has taken the latter description as her starting point. Her Mi-Go - who are more properly referred to as the Outer Ones - see themselves as benefactors, travellers who set up communities on many worlds, recruit followers - or travel-mates, as they refer to them - from the indigenous populations, and offer them the same experiences they themselves spend their lives pursuing, the exploration of and communication with minds across the vastness of space. While the Outer Ones can travel in their own bodies, other races must be separated mind from body in order to travel, their minds placed in devices that the Outer Ones can carry with them as they travel. The process is reversible, but many who join the Outer Ones find themselves less and less inclined to return to physical form.
The Outer Ones have a long and not particularly positive relationship with Aphra’s people, not least because the mind-body separation process is more dangerous to the people of the sea and those who travel with the Outer Ones are likely to be unable to return to their bodies and remain healthy - thus, those lost to the Outer Ones are lost forever. Also, The Outer Ones and the Yith, with whom the people of the sea have a strong and positive relationship, are enemies at a deep philosophical level - the Yith are firm believers in non-interference, the Outer Ones often try to ‘save’ species they fear are on the verge of extinguishing themselves, often by interfering with the political and cultural life of the planet.
Aphra is drawn into contact with the Outer Ones because she hopes to extract Freddie Laverne from their fellowship, seeing him as a possible father for the children she must have fir her race to continue growing. At the same time, the FBI is drawn into the unstable mix because of all the disappearances reported by families of those who have joined the Outer Ones.
Aphra learns that the majority faction among Outer Ones are considering taking action to intervene in human affairs because of the tensions of the Cold War and their fear that the human race will destroy itself. Part of this manipulation involves discrediting Aphra, her confluence, and the sea people with the FBI branch involved with magic and non-human activities - a nit too difficult task, considering the extreme paranoia of the FBI and the existing distrust between the two. Yet the only chance for humanity to maintain control of its own destiny is for Aphra to convince the FBI agents that they must help her in putting the faction that favours non-intervention in charge of the Outer One’ colonies on Earth.
Emrys does a wonderful job of subverting the racist tropes of Lovecraft’s work, while keeping the real sense of potential menace - locating it in the institutions of a racist society instead. The novel ends in an uneasy truce between the surviving sea people and the government, with Innsmouth beginning to live again, though after some degree of compromise with the very people who once destroyed it. So eager for the next installment.
In the first novel, Winter Tide, Aphra, who is a student of the ancient magics known to her people (and others), formed a confluence, or chosen family, comprised of an unlikely group of people with the ability for pursuing magic and a commitment to trying to rebuild the land community of the sea people: her brother Caleb; his lover DeeDee, a black woman recruited by the FBI as an informant, seductress and spy; Charlie, a gay man who is Aphra’s friend and student in the magical arts; Neko, the daughter of the Japanese couple who adopted and cared for Aphra and Caleb when when the internment camp they and the few other dying sea people were held in was repurposed to imprison Japanese Americans during WWII; Catherine Turnbull, a mathematician and scholar of magic who had been the host of one of the time-travelling, body-borrowing, and rather arrogant Yith; Audrey, a woman of mixed heritage, part ‘ordinary’ human (the people of the air), part descendent of a third human subgroup, subterranean dwellers called the people of the earth; and, on the periphery of this family, Ron Spector, Charlie’s lover, and an FBI agent working in a branch of the bureau established to investigate magical threats to the USA.
In Deep Roots, Aphra and her confluence have been following leads and rumours of other sea people who may have survived the genocidal actions of the government, ‘mistblooded’ descendants of he few who left the Innsmouth community and married into families of the people of the air. Having learned of a woman, Frances Laverne, and her son Freddie, who live in New York City, they travel to the big city, only to discover that Freddie - who could be Aphra’s only chance to bear a new generation of sea folk - has become involved with a community of Mi-Go and other humans.
Lovecraft’s Mi-Go are, alternatively, the origin of the Abominable snowman myth, or other-dimensional aliens, winged and clawed, technologically advanced, who take human minds and place them in cannisters which they can then transport across space. Emrys has taken the latter description as her starting point. Her Mi-Go - who are more properly referred to as the Outer Ones - see themselves as benefactors, travellers who set up communities on many worlds, recruit followers - or travel-mates, as they refer to them - from the indigenous populations, and offer them the same experiences they themselves spend their lives pursuing, the exploration of and communication with minds across the vastness of space. While the Outer Ones can travel in their own bodies, other races must be separated mind from body in order to travel, their minds placed in devices that the Outer Ones can carry with them as they travel. The process is reversible, but many who join the Outer Ones find themselves less and less inclined to return to physical form.
The Outer Ones have a long and not particularly positive relationship with Aphra’s people, not least because the mind-body separation process is more dangerous to the people of the sea and those who travel with the Outer Ones are likely to be unable to return to their bodies and remain healthy - thus, those lost to the Outer Ones are lost forever. Also, The Outer Ones and the Yith, with whom the people of the sea have a strong and positive relationship, are enemies at a deep philosophical level - the Yith are firm believers in non-interference, the Outer Ones often try to ‘save’ species they fear are on the verge of extinguishing themselves, often by interfering with the political and cultural life of the planet.
Aphra is drawn into contact with the Outer Ones because she hopes to extract Freddie Laverne from their fellowship, seeing him as a possible father for the children she must have fir her race to continue growing. At the same time, the FBI is drawn into the unstable mix because of all the disappearances reported by families of those who have joined the Outer Ones.
Aphra learns that the majority faction among Outer Ones are considering taking action to intervene in human affairs because of the tensions of the Cold War and their fear that the human race will destroy itself. Part of this manipulation involves discrediting Aphra, her confluence, and the sea people with the FBI branch involved with magic and non-human activities - a nit too difficult task, considering the extreme paranoia of the FBI and the existing distrust between the two. Yet the only chance for humanity to maintain control of its own destiny is for Aphra to convince the FBI agents that they must help her in putting the faction that favours non-intervention in charge of the Outer One’ colonies on Earth.
Emrys does a wonderful job of subverting the racist tropes of Lovecraft’s work, while keeping the real sense of potential menace - locating it in the institutions of a racist society instead. The novel ends in an uneasy truce between the surviving sea people and the government, with Innsmouth beginning to live again, though after some degree of compromise with the very people who once destroyed it. So eager for the next installment.
