My life in books

Haven is the third volume of collected issues of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s brilliant, beautiful, and disturbing graphic narrative, Monstress. Maika Halfwolf and her companions, Kippa the Arcanic fox-child and Ren the cat, are for the moment safe in Pontus, an independent city-state where refugees from all over the Known World have gathered. Pontus is protected by a magical shield, an artifact created by Maika’s ancestor, the Shaman Empress. But the shield was deactivated after the war, and it needs one strong in the Shaman Empress’ blood to reactivate it. The rulers of Pontus offer Maika a deal - permanent sanctuary if she will activate the shield for them. Maika continues to struggle against the blood and power cravings of the creature, Zinn, the Monstrum summoned - and beloved and loving in return - by her ancestor, that dwells within her.

As usual, Takeda’s art is breath-takingly beautiful, intricate, and evocative. Liu’s story continues to give us more clues into Maika’s past, the line of the Shaman Empress, and the mysterious mask, a fragment of which is in Maika’s keeping.. We also discover more about the Cumeae, and how deeply they are controlled by the Monstrum, siblings of Zinn, and their desire to bring about another war.

The complexity of the story and the worldbuilding behind it continues to wrap me up and carry me away to a fully realised other world with each installment I read. Also profoundly important to this story is the deep intention of the authors to make this a story that recognises the ones who are too often forgotten - the refugees, the damaged, the wounded, the victims of all the political games and the conflicts between the powerful who seek only more power, while the people who suffer in their battles want only to live in peace and happiness. And then, there’s the unavoidable fact that every person of importance in this story is a woman. Where so many other texts make women invisible, or limit the women who matter to the story to a rare handful, Liu and Takeda make virtually every plot point in this story turn on the actions of a woman. This in itself would make Monstress a very special text, but when there is so much more on top of this... I admit I’ve not exactly been an rabid consumer of graphic narratives, but this is easily one of the best I have seen.

I keep meaning to read more graphic novels, but somehow it's mostly during the Hugo season that I actually do, and that's because of the Best Graphic Story category. I've enjoyed several of the specific volumes I've read for the Hugos, but somehow I rarely follow up on the multi-part stories.

Monstress Volume 1: The Awakening, written by Marjorie Liu and illustrated by Sana Takeda, is another of those graphic novels that was enjoyable while reading - though also deeply disturbing - but I'm not at all certain I'll be continuing to read it (unless more volumes are nominated for Hugos in future years). Not because it isn't a good story, because it is. But after lots if attempts, I've come to understand that I shy away from reading graphic novels because it is physically difficult fir me, and few stories are compelling enough to override that.

Some of those who read these reviews know that I have severe multiple chemical sensitivities and am bedbound due to multiple disabilities. What this means is that I can't read anything printed on paper - it's too toxic for me, especially paper with lots of ink, like graphic novels. So everything I read must be electronic. But because I spend all my tine lying in bed, everything I read, I read on an iPad. Any other device is too heavy. And I have arthritis and poor eyesight. There's no reader out there that allows me to read graphic novels without a lot of pinching and swiping around each page to get all the important dialogue and visual detail. And by the time I've read a few pages, my fingers and my eyes hurt. So.... I tend to shy away from graphic novels. Nonetheless, I will do my best to read those nominated and not let my circumstances bias me against the medium. So.... On with my thoughts on Monstress.

Visually, Monstress is a stunning piece of work - intricately drawn, dense but never 'busy,' a feast for the eyes. Takeda blends artistic traditions to create marvellous images, though she is at her best with inanimate subjects - architectural designs and atmospheric backgrounds, clothing, machines, furniture, and so on. Her living characters seem curiously unfinished, rather like dolls.

The narrative is complex and disturbing, set in a post-war, almost post-apocalyptic world where two enemy civilisations, still opposed but not actively at war, appear to be recovering from a cataclysmic event. On one side, the human federation in which considerable power lies with the all-female sorcerer-scientist order of the Cumaea; on the other, the non-human Arcanes, rumoured to have access to powers or beings known as the monstrum.

The story focuses on Maika, an Arcanic, a former slave of the Federation, living with other escapees and dispossessed arcanics in a sort of demilitarised zone between the two nations. She possesses powers she cannot use at will or control, though they appear when she is in great distress. She is connected in some way to the catastrophic event that ended open warfare between humans and arcanics. And she is seeking the truth about her mother and herself, a truth that she believes can only be found among the Cumaea.

At the beginning of the story, Maika has allowed herself to be captured and enslaved by humans. She and several other Arcanics, all children, have been claimed by the Cumaea as slaves, but from almost the beginning it is clear that the Cumaea - like other humans - see the Arcanes as animals and so fit subjects both for torture by those who seek pleasure in the children's pain, and scientific experimentation by those who seek to know more about the Arcanes and their power.

The story is hard to read, even harder to look at. Takeda's brilliant artwork is often used to portray scenes of humiliation, torture, vivisection, and violence. In an afterword to the first issue, Liu talks about the genesis of the story in her grandparents' memories of war and xenophobic hatred and violence - based on timing, I'm guessing her grandparents would have been survivors of the invasion of China by Imperial Japan, or both. Malka is a refugee, an orphan, an escaped slave, an amputee, a victim of war and violence and racial hatred, and she carries within her the power to wreak vengeance, or to simply spread violence indiscriminately as survivors of trauma often do. She has the capacity to be a monster, and it stems from her suffering and pain. It's one hell of a story, relevant in all times of violence and war, about what these all too common pursuits of humanity can do to our souls.