The finalists for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer are Rivers Solomon, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Vina Jie-Min Prasad - whose work I’ve read, and who were on my nominations list - and Katherine Arden, Sarah Kuhn, and Jeannette Ng, whose work I have not read. So, I’ve gone looking for work by the latter three.
Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightengale
I have a confession to make. I have to work a bit to engage with novels that are strongly flavoured with a Russian or Eastern European influence. I’m not sure why, but it’s a thing I have. So Arden’s debut fantasy, set in feudal Russia, took a little time to grow on me. It is a story about bloodlines and magic. The central character, Vasilisa Petrovna, called Vasya, is the youngest child of wealthy boyar Pyotr Vladimirovitch and his now-dead wife Marina, the daughter of a mysterious and beautiful woman who appeared out of the forest, enchanted Moscow, and claimed the heart of Ivan I, .grand Prince of Muscovy. Like her grandmother, Vasilisa has a kind of magic - she sees spirits and other strange creatures of the field and forest.
It was the sense of family and a simple, daily life with its trials and joys that Arden conveys in the early part of the book that won me over, that and the fierce and joyful wildness that is Vasya. Pyotr Vlaidimirovitch loved his wife, loves his children, and hopes, within the bounds of the society he lives in, to see them happy. His children have their flaws - one is perhaps a bit too proud, another a touch too pious, but they care for one another. Sadly, this happy family starts to unravel when Pyotr is pressured into agreeing to two dynastic marriages - his own, to Anna, the daughter of his dead wife’s half-brother, the new Grand Prince of Muscovy, and his daughter Olga’s, to the Grand Prince’s nephew. Anna is deeply unhappy at the bargain, and longs only for the comfort of a convent life, for she, like Vasilisa, sees spirits, but to her, they are devils to be feared.
Meanwhile, the threads of destiny are beginning to weave a web around Vasya. She becomes lost in the forest and encounters a strange man who seems vaguely threatening. And while Pyotr is in Moscow, he has an unpleasant experience with a man who gives him a gift for Vasya, forcing him to swear that he will tell no living soul about this exchange, on penalty of losing his oldest son.
Fairy tales are of course filled with these things, by definition - is it, after all, in fairy tales that they began. That’s why retelling such tales is tricky - to be successful, the writer must keep enough of the tale for it to be recognisable, but make it new enough not to be overladen with too-familiar tropes. The weakness in this book is that it does perhaps rely too much on well-used staples of fairy tale lore.
But what kept me reading was Vasya herself, vibrant, bold, adventurous, different. Her love of wild things, her compassion, her resilience, her stubbornness, and her utterly solid moral compass. This was the first book in a trilogy, and I do think I shall read on, just for the joy of Vasya.
Sarah Kuhn, Heroine Complex
Ok, there is something to be said about a novel that begins with a livestreamed fight between demons in the form of pastries and a narcissistic superhero. So... I’ll start by saying this is a fun book, an interesting blend of satire, chick lit and superhero fiction.The superhero in question is Aveda Jupiter, otherwise known as Annie Chang, who has serious kickass fight moves (her own personal icon is Michelle Yeoh) and a slight tekekinetic ability gained during the first, massive incursion of demons in San Francisco, some years earlier. Fir some unknown reason, the appearance of demons triggered superpowers, mist of them relatively minor and not particularly useful, in a small percentage of the population! Although subsequent demon appearances have not repeated the effect. The narrator, Evie Tanaka, is Aveda’s childhood friend and personal assistant, the person who keeps the whole superhero business functioning, a combination of Batman’s Alfred and Superman’s Jimmy Olsen. Until Annie suffers an injury fighting demons and insists that Evie take her place so that no one discovers that superheroes are vulnerable. The problem is that Evie also has a superpower, one of very few powerful and dangerous ones, and it’s triggered by strong feelings. She works very hard to control her emotions so that she doesn’t hurt anyone, having once allowed anger at a cheating boyfriend to get out of hand, resulting in the destruction of an entire building. But when she appears as Aveda (thanks to a minor glamour cast by a friend who developed magical abilities as a result of the demon appearance), things get out of hand and she manifests her power, which is of course attributed to Aveda.
Being at the centre of the stage instead of behind the scenes, and having to learn new ways of dealing with her power, results in many changes for Evie, her sense of herself and her goals, and her relationships with Annie and the other members of the Aveda Jupiter Inc demon-fighting team.
I like the way that Kuhn uses the superhero genre to create a delicious satire on celebrity divaism. Between the portrayal of Aveda herself, the inclusion of gossip columns from a local celebrity news reporter, and Evie’s observations on the various benefits and social engagements that she has to attend while pretending to be Aveda, we get some very fine puncturing of pretentiousness that I think rings true for any form of social celebrity. Kuhn also takes on internet fannishness, showing how anyone, but particularly women, in the media spotlight can be showered with adulation one moment snd with disgust the next as some fake news story, or almost imperceptible physical imperfection (such as a zit) causes fans to suddenly turn on a firmer hero. The shallowness of public assessments of celebrities in both traditional and social media is a major point in Kuhn’s satire. Add to this some serious examination of the strengths and stresses of relationships between women (there are only two significant male characters, both playing supporting/sidekick roles), and the absurd nature of many of the demonic interactions, and you have an entertaining story with rewarding depths.
Jeannette Ng, Under the Pendulum Sun
Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeanette Ng’s debut novel, is a fascinating and multilayered exploration of faith and the nature of reality. Written in the style of a Gothic romance (which has little to do with romantic goings-on as we use the term today), it is much concerned with the nature of the soul, the limits of faith, the relation of sin and redemption, and the ransom theology of the sacrifice of Christ.
Set in an alternate Victorian era, it follows the journey of Cathering Helstone to the land of Arcadia - the otherworldly home of the fae, a place of magic, mystery, shadows and dangers. Her brother Laon, a Christian missionary to Arcadia, has seemed both troubled and remote in his letters, and Catherine has gained permission from the missionary society to join him - and to carry out a quest for them, to unravel what went wrong with Laon’s predecessor, the Reverend Roche. She is conveyed to Laon’s residence, a true gothic mansion called .Gethsemane, by Miss Davenport, a changeling who grew up in human lands and describes herself as Laon’s companion. Laon himself is away on business, and Miss Davenport warns Catherine that she must remain within the walls surrounding Gethsemane until Laon returns, for her own safety. Waiting for Laon’s return, she debates points of thelogy with the only fae to have been converted, the gardener Mr. Benjamin, and pores through Reverend Riche’s papers and journals.
At first the novel moves slowly, but with an exquisite blend of suspense and strangeness. These are the fickle, treacherous, sometimes benevolent, sometimes dangerous fae of legend, and their land, like them, is full of both strange beauty and ominous shadow. Ng excels at worldbuilding, and her examination of theology and philosophy, wrapt around with a rich set of subtle literary references from Bronte to Milton, and a host of Biblical allusions, is rather delicious - if you enjoy such things, which I do.
Both pace and tone however, change once Laon returns, with Queen Mab and her court following on his arrival. Catherine is disturbed by the changes she sees in Laon, and unnerved by Mab and the inhuman creatures of her court. The visit of Mab forces to the surface the darkest secrets in both Catherine and Laon. Mab and the other high fae delight in cruelty, and in wielding both truth and deceptions as weapons of chais and destruction. The effects of her toying with Catherine and Laon leads to some difficult revelations, and some may find their actions cross lines that are uncomfortable to contemplate. But while Catherine and Laon can be broken, as were the missionaries who came before them, they find a way through the pain to become more than they were. Even when the truth is a weapon, facing it can set one free.
Ng develops an entire theological cosmogony to make room in the Christian concept of the universe for the fae, one that draws on biblical and other legends, and it’s one that I find intriguing. It’s Catherine who searches it out - echoes of the tree of knowledge and other aspects of the story of Eden reverberate throughout the novel even as Ng rewrites the story as we know it. An ambitious and, in my opinion, successful, debut.
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