Title: Od Magic
Author: Patricia A. McKillip
Published: 2005
Genre: Fiction > Fantasy > Mythopoeic
Rating: ★★★★
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TITLE: The Lucifer Chord
AUTHOR: F.G. Cottam
GENRE: Horror
PUBLISHED: September 1, 2018
RATING: ★★

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

During this pandemic, I discovered the soothing power of horror. As the pandemic swallowed up the globe and life became increasingly uncertain, horror provided me with a safe space in which to immerse myself in the terror I knew was bubbling inside me, but which I could not direct in any way that I could control. I could not control a virus, or a government seemingly hellbent on ripping my country apart, but I could control my engagement in a horror story, regardless of its medium. It also helps that I’ve been lucky enough to discover some truly excellent examples of the genre. I've had the pleasure of reading Sylvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, Jonathan Sims’ Thirteen Storeys, and Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians.

It was with these hopes that I picked up F.G. Cottam’s The Lucifer Chord. It follows researcher Ruthie Gillespie, who’s just been hired to write an essay on musician Martin Mear, guitarist and frontman of the (in)famous band Ghost Legion. There are plenty of salacious rumours surrounding Mear, not least the fact that his supposed death in 1975 may have had something to do with his interest in the occult – an interest that, so his diehard fans claim, granted him and his band their meteoric rise, and which might allow Mear to return from the grave. Ruthie’s determined to figure out the truth, but as she begins researching Mear, she realizes that perhaps there is some truth to the legends after all.

Stories of musicians dabbling in the occult isn’t really anything new, but it’s something that tends to attach itself most frequently to musical virtuosos and prodigies, and, strangely enough, to players of stringed instruments, usually the violin and, in more recent years, the electric guitar. The composer Giuseppe Tartini, for instance, was said to have cut a deal with Satan that led to his creation of the Devil’s Trill Sonata, the work for which he is most famous. Niccolo Paganini is also supposed to have made a deal with Satan, said to be the reason behind his incredible virtuosity on the violin.

In more recent musical history, a few rock musicians and their bands have been associated with the occult. Some, like AC/DC, rejected the notion entirely, while others latched onto the association for their own reasons. Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, for instance, made use of a particular chord progression that became one of Black Sabbath’s signature sounds – and which, apparently, was also a signature sound of the fictional band in this novel. The chord progression was well known even in medieval times, when it was dubbed the “devil in music” by medieval composers. It’s quite clear that this chord is the source for this novel’s title.

Another source of inspiration for this novel are the rock stars who went further than just riding the hype of being associated with the occult. The most well-known example is Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, whose interest in the occult was so deep, he attended seances, bought rare books and artifacts at auction, and even bought Boleskine House, which was where occultist Aleister Crowley lived during the last year of the 1800s and into the early years of the 1900s. Page had bought the property hoping the atmosphere would help provide musical inspiration, though in the end he wasn’t in residence at Boleskine for very long. In the years since, Page’s involvement with the occult has led to some interesting legends being told about him and the band, most notable of which are the deaths of John Bonham and Robert Plant’s son Karac, who are whispered to have been victims of Page’s demonic dealings. As the reader progresses through the novel, it becomes very clear that the author drew heavy inspiration from the legends surrounding Page for the character of Martin Mear – perhaps a little too heavily, some readers might argue, though there are many others (myself included) who are not too troubled by the similarities.

Now, while all of this makes for an interesting backdrop for a horror novel, the rest of the novel doesn’t quite live up to the hype of its concept. Let’s begin with the protagonist, Ruthie Gillespie. Aside from the subject matter one of the very first things that piqued my interest in this novel was the choice of a female protagonist who was also a researcher: fascinating, especially for a reader who is accustomed to the tropes of eldritch horror and who has a familiarity with the protagonists in stories derived from Lovecraft’s works. Unfortunately, Ruthie’s not quite as interesting as she ought to be. I attribute this to the fact that she comes across as rather flat; she has emotions, sure, but they all seem rather dulled and muted. It’s difficult for the reader to feel invested in her, because she reads so much like a cardboard cutout being moved by the author across the stage of the story. A part of me thinks that Ruthie is experiencing a bout of depression, which can manifest as dulled emotions, but I have read novels that have featured characters with depression, and they do not strike me as being quite as uninteresting as Ruthie. This has led me to suspect that while it might indeed be possible to attribute Ruthie's flatness to depression, I may also be trying to make excuses for the poor characterization.

Another thing I did not appreciate very much is how Ruthie’s relationship with Michael Aldridge is written. As I’ve said before, I have no issue with romance as a plotline in anything I happen to be reading, but it has to be executed well, and fit well into the story. Unfortunately, the romance between Michael and Ruthie isn’t quite done as well as I might like, and is, I think, one of this novel’s major problems.

First, it may strike the reader that the connection between Michael and Ruthie comes completely out of left field. This is due to the fact that there is a novella prequel of sorts, titled The Going and the Rise, that explains how Michael factors into Ruthie’s life. If the reader picked up The Lucifer Chord after reading The Going and the Rise, they might not take much issue with Michael’s appearance in the story and his connection to Ruthie. But for readers who have not read the novella, nor were aware there was even a novella to begin with, they might wonder just who this person is and what his past is with Ruthie. For my part, I was able to figure out that there was a prequel novella to The Lucifer Chord before I’d started it, and got to read it before starting the novel.

But even with that head start, there’s no denying the fact that their romance, as a whole, chafes at me as a reader because it strikes me as the kind of romance written by the type of writer characterized as the “white male cishet writer in your creative writing class”, to quote a meme made of such men. It begins in The Going and the Rise: Michael is introduced as a married man with a daughter, and he’s just bought a parcel of land on the Isle of Wight where he intends to build a vacation house for himself and his family. In an attempt to find out more about the history of the location, he contacts Ruthie, whom he finds immediately attractive. There’s a spark between them, despite the fact that he finds Ruthie’s fashion sense a bit outré and that she’s younger than him, but he does his best to not be attracted to her, though throughout the novella he does think of her as attractive, and may have even had a fantasy or two about her. But his primary sin in all of this is that he doesn’t tell Ruthie that he’s married until he absolutely has to. By the time this is revealed in The Going and the Rise, there are much bigger things happening and neither Ruthie nor Michael have time to really hash things out between them.

Now, there has been plenty of ink spilled about how a certain class of male author tends to write women in fiction. The awful sex scenes are more notorious, of course, but even when there is no sex graphically described, or even female body parts graphically described, they still have absolutely no idea how to write a scene and make it romantic. Take a look at this excerpt:

‘I’ve lived to tell the tale.’

‘On the contrary. You’ve lived because you’ve kept it to yourself. It’s my heartfelt wish that you go on living.’

‘Heartfelt?’

‘It was never just lust, Ruthie. I’ve had feelings for you since the afternoon we first met on the seafront at Ventnor and I think you knew that then and I’m sure you know it now.’

There is something about Michael’s words in this scene that the author must have thought was romantic, even tender, but to me, as a woman, it just sounds downright predatory and controlling. Those are “red flags,” as my friends and I would say, and had she been a real person we would have advised Ruthie to back away from Michael, and fast. Then again, given that Ruthie is barely characterized in a way that resembles an actual living, breathing person, and instead reads and functions as more like a cardboard standee instead of anything resembling a protagonist and complex character, I suppose that point is moot.

Another failed aspect of this novel is the writing style. Take a look at the following excerpt:

Ruthie spent the next couple of days preparing for the interview she wasn’t at all confident she’d get. Doing that was the best way of readying herself for it if she did. She didn’t want to embarrass Jackie Tibbs, the school friend who’d tipped her off about the research job, with a show of ineptitude in front of Jackie’s boss. If she got an audience with Carter Melville she’d arrive well informed. This preparation also distracted her from dwelling on recent events in her private life. She’d a tendency to that she kept rediscovering was as painful as it was futile.

Aside from the rather flat statement of facts and actions, that last sentence tripped me up when I got to it, requiring more passes than I think is appropriate before I finally comprehended it. This and many other similar statements abound throughout the novel, catching the reader at unawares and destroying any sense of immersion. It makes one wonder whether or not an editor actually took more than a cursory look at the manuscript, because I rather get the feeling it could have used a lot more polishing before making it to final print.

I also wonder if an editor’s steadying hand could have reined in the story’s structure itself. There is a clear sense of a story arc going on, but its overall structure is weakened by constant switches in character point-of-view, as well as introduction of plot elements like ghosts and cults and demons in a manner that leaves one wondering: “Where in the world did that come from?” It’s clear the author is trying to tie this novel in with the other novels he’s written before, but since it’s never made clear in the novel’s blurb, nor in any of the online material about the novel, that it’s connected to other books, many of these elements only make sense to those who’ve read those other books – which might not be the case for a great many other readers who come to this novel thinking it’s a stand-alone. For that matter, the willy-nilly introduction of those other elements feels more like a desperate attempt to raise the stakes, to make things more “spooky” by implying the possible involvement of restless ghosts, or a demon-summoning cult, or an immortal businessman who might be the devil himself – or all of the above. Hence, it starts to feel like the author is throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks, instead of taking a more careful approach to his craft. Again, I think a more conscientious editor would have curbed this tendency, but now I wonder if there was one at all.

Overall, The Lucifer Chord is a novel that seems interesting but turns out to be quite the letdown. Though the concept upon which the novel is founded will likely draw readers in, the rest of it just doesn’t function as it ought. The protagonist reads like a cardboard cutout of a person; the romantic subplot reads like something written by that “white cishet man in your creative writing class” type of person one sees so many memes made about; and while there’s a plot arc, the rest of the story itself just goes all over the place and makes one wonder if an editor looked this manuscript over before sending it to print. I also wonder if there is any other author who’s written a story around a similar concept as this one, and I find myself wishing that is the case, as well as hoping they’ve done much better than this – though I suppose, given how this novel has turned out, doing better won’t be very difficult, given how low this novel set the bar.

TITLE: The Unspoken Name (The Serpent Gates #1)
AUTHOR: A.K. Larkwood
GENRE: Fantasy
PUBLISHED: February 11, 2020
RATING: ★★★

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

Some say that “style is everything,” but I like to think that isn’t true. Style is important, sure, but there’s more to something than just its style. When I’m reading a story, the style in which it’s written is a hook and an enticement to keep going, but there’s more to stories than just style: things like characters, plot, worldbuilding, and themes.

Still, there’s no denying that style goes a long way towards making sure that all those other elements are presented in their best light. Much like the correct application of varnish or beeswax can bring out the inherent beauty of a piece of wood, writing style can mean the difference between an absorbing read, or a bland one.

This is something that comes into play in the novel The Unspoken Name, first in The Serpent Gates series by A.K. Larkwood. It tells the story of Csorwe, a young woman who has lived most of her life as the Chosen Bride: an oracle, but also a sacrifice for a god known as the Unspoken One. Raised in the House of Silence, she has always known her fate, and she wants nothing more than to meet it with the same calm and dignity as those who have gone before her.

But, on the day of her sacrifice, she is offered a choice: go meekly to her death, or flee it and forge a life of her own. The decision Csorwe makes, in that moment, ripples out into the world, shaping not just her destiny, but the destinies of others as well.

Right from the get-go, the issue with writing style becomes very apparent. Past the first chapter, the writing just does not grab me, does not hold my attention for very long. It feels distant and almost apathetic, instead of scintillating and vibrant. To be sure, it functions well enough to convey a story, but it’s certainly not something that grabbed me and held my attention, so to speak. This is a quality that is difficult to convey in quotes, because it would take reading at least the first two or three chapters to really get a feel for it, but it is there, and it affects the rest of the novel in a way that is guaranteed to make readers put the novel down and not pick it up again.

This means, therefore, that any reader who wants to read the novel through needs to work a little harder to find and hang onto the things that are actually interesting. Now, there is nothing wrong with books that make the reader work a little harder for payoff, but the work needs to at least be interesting, and the payoff needs to be worth the effort. Sadly, that’s not quite what is delivered here, and four elements of the novel become victims of the writing style.

The first victim of this is the setting. Initially, the setting strikes one as quite interesting, promising the reader great delights ahead. Take the following excerpt, for example:

Gradually, her sight returned, and she gazed out at the Maze, as if by gazing she could make sense of it. They stood on a ledge above the place where a steep valley dropped away, down and down, out of reach of light. Pillars and arches of rock massed in the darkness, like misshapen brides, veiled and wreathed with mist. Fragments of sky like pieces of eggshell were visible in places, though not the places one usually saw the sky.

...

At times they stopped, and Csorwe slept. Once they saw a far-off mazeship passing through: the hull of polished maze-oak, and the sail canopies belling above the hull like a growth of mushrooms. Up close, it would have been the grandest and brightest thing Csorwe had ever seen, but the mists of the Maze dulled its pennants, and it passed in oblivious silence.

Unfortunately, things only go downhill from there, as the wonder in the prose peters out into a certain flatness that seems to mute the wonder one senses in the above excerpt. One would think it difficult to call a setting “drab” when it portrays multiple worlds connected to one another via planar gates, and where the relationship between magic, mortals, and the gods follows some interesting transactional rules, and yet that was precisely what I was thinking as the story progressed, the wonder of the Maze of Echoes worn off after the second chapter. I was uninterested in discovering more about this world and in learning about how magic worked within it vis-a-vis the many cultures and gods that appeared to exist within it.

The second victim of the writing style is the characterization. While reading the first chapter one might find it easy to latch onto Csorwe and her plight, rightly assuming that something fascinating is on the horizon for her, but the subsequent chapters dull all of that promise. There are moments when she is interesting, but they are few and far between, especially in the first half of the novel. To say this is a pity is something of an understatement, especially given that Csorwe is the protagonist and therefore ought to be one of the anchors on which this entire novel is grounded.

It is actually two of the secondary characters that stand out: Talasseres “Tal” Charossa, and Oranna. Tal is the sort of character I would normally dislike, but given that he’s the only one of two characters that elicit any kind of feeling except “blah” in me while I’m reading this novel, that makes him a standout – as does the fact that he is a lot more complex than the reader is initially led to believe. The same can be said about Oranna, whose role in the novel turns out to be rather larger than one might think at first. She is not necessarily a character I dislike, but she’s a lot more complicated than that; it’s hard to describe her in the simple terms of “like” and “dislike”. The fact that neither of these two characters is the protagonist, and yet somehow manage to outshine said protagonist, is not a very good sign of how said protagonist is portrayed.

The writing style’s third victim is the plot: both the main plot and the romance subplot that I have seen so frequently lauded in other reviews. I am the sort of reader who’s quite happy to have a plot slowly unfold for me, to follow multiple digressions before being led back to the main storyline at hand – provided, of course, the author is good at handling those plots and keeping them coherent. I am also the kind of reader who doesn’t mind a romance in any novel I happen to be reading – provided that it’s handled well, and doesn’t cause any other aspect of the novel to suffer. Unfortunately, while the author appears to have no problem keeping multiple plot threads going in a way that’s easy to grasp, and appears to be able to write a romance quite well, the writing style makes both the main plot and the romance seem mildly insipid for three-fourths of the novel, only becoming really interesting in the latter fourth.

Finally, the writing style’s fourth victim is the novel’s themes. Csorwe’s story is one about making a choice: whether to simply accept one’s duty, or to flee from it, and accept the consequences of that decision later. It is also about making choices for others: whether one ought to force them on someone else because one thinks one’s perspective is right, or if it would be better to simply let them be, even if one disagrees with the other person’s decision. It asks questions about the kind of power a person is allowed to wield over another, as well as how that power ought, or ought not, to be used. But, as with the setting and the characters and the plot, any exploration of these themes is dulled by the way the entire novel is written.

As might be obvious by now, there’s truly something wonderful in this novel. The world, the characters, the plot, the themes – all have immense promise. But sadly, they are all smothered by the writing style, which muffles and dims the parts that ought to be memorable and striking. There are stories, of course, that suit such dry and deadpan delivery, but that style does not serve this novel well at all. Where the reader ought to be drawn in close to the characters, ought to inhabit the setting, ought to be moved by the plot or ponder upon the themes, they are instead set back at a distance, observing everything with dispassion. This is not exactly something I want to feel from a fantasy novel, and I’m sure there are plenty of other readers who would agree.

Overall, The Unspoken Name is a novel with immense potential, but one that is hampered by a writing style that dulls its brilliance, thus creating an undesirable distance between the reader and the novel’s other key elements. This will likely put off many readers who will not see the novel through to the end – and unfortunately, they may have the right of it.

TITLE: A Desolation Called Peace (Teixaclaan #2)
AUTHOR: Arkady Martine
GENRE: Science Fiction
PUBLISHED: March 2, 2021
RATING: ★★★★★

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

This is the second book in a series. As such, there may be spoilers for the first book, though there are no spoilers for the book being reviewed. Please read the first book before reading this review.

First contact stories are a mainstay in science fiction – indeed, for those who aren’t immersed in the genre, it’s probably the one that is most immediately recognizable as scifi. It has also remained remarkably popular over the years: from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds to the blockbuster films of the twenty-first century, first contact stories still hold a great deal of appeal. Which, of course, begs the question: why?

I suppose part of the reason is the desire to believe that humans are not the only sentient species in the universe. Humans are social creatures; reaching out and building connections is part of what makes us who we are. And as our species began to look beyond the confines of our planet and realized there was so much else beyond it, we naturally wondered if there were others out there who, like us, were staring into the great void and asking the same questions we were. One sees this in films like Arrival, which is based on Ted Chiang’s novella Story of Your Life, and Contact, which is based on the Carl Sagan novel of the same name. In both movies (and their respective source materials), humanity reaches out to communicate with entities from elsewhere in the vast black, seeking to know, to understand – to connect.

Arkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace, the second book in the Teixcalaan series, is, at its core, focused on that desire to connect. After the tumultuous events of the first novel, Mahit Dzmare has returned to Lsel Station, trying to find a semblance of normalcy after everything that has happened and everything she’s done. But her actions in Teixcalaan come back to haunt her when Three Seagrass, her liaison during her brief time as Lsel Ambassador, comes over to bring her to Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus, who has been assigned to deal with the alien threat Mahit warned Teixaclaan about when she was last in the City.

However, the novel does not open with any of the familiar characters. Instead, it opens with a Prelude told from the point of view of the aliens themselves:

To think—not language. To not think language. To think, we, and not have a tongue-sound or cry for its crystalline depths. To have discarded tongue-sounds where they are unsuitable. To think as a person and not as a wantful voice, not as a blank-eyed hungering beast, not as a child thinks, with only its own self and the cries of its mouth for company. …

...

These bodies, singing in the we, singing together of the flesh of bodies who are not we but have built starflyers and energy cannon. Bodies who are meat and cannot sing! Bodies who think language, who cry with their mouths and leak water from their eyes, who are clawless but vicious in their own hunger to reach out. Who have touched so much of the void-home already, and dwell in it, and have come so very close to the jumpgates behind which are all of our blood-homes, new and old. …

The first thing that the reader will realize is that these aliens are very much not the “humans in rubber suits” kinds of aliens one might see in shows and films like Star Wars and Star Trek. The way these particular aliens think of language and individual identity is clearly very different from the way humans think of those things–and, in a way, threatening, especially if the reader is coming directly off the first novel, where language plays such a vital role.

But in opening the novel with the aliens, instead of with Mahit or Three Seagrass or even with Nine Hibiscus, the author does something very interesting. Most first contact stories begin with the characters the storyteller wants the reader or viewer to sympathize with the most – and usually, that means the humans. Instead, by opening the novel with the aliens and putting the reader “in their heads”, so to speak, alters the reader’s perspective of these aliens. Instead of viewing them as an unknowable disaster waiting to explode upon Lsel Station and the Teixcalaan Empire, the reader must instead view them as misunderstood, but without diminishing their potential as a threat. These aliens are, well, alien, but it is still possible to sympathize with their fear of something they don’t understand (because they do not understand humans any more than humans understand them), and their desire to protect their homes from something they perceive as a threat.

This won’t be the last time the reader has to step into the aliens’ shoes, though, because there are other chapters throughout the novel that do the same thing: a good reminder, in my opinion, because after the prelude the focus is back on the Teixcalaanli and Stationer characters the reader might find more relatable than strange aliens, and those characters might not be inclined to view the aliens in a sympathetic light.

Which brings us to the four narrators of the novel: Mahit Dzmare, Three Seagrass, Eight Antidote, and Nine Hibiscus. The reader will be familiar with Mahit, of course, but the other three are less familiar: Nine Hibiscus because she is entirely new, and Three Seagrass and Eight Antidote because they haven’t really been narrators up until this point.

Of these three new narrators, the first one the reader meets is Nine Hibiscus. She is portrayed as an exceptional example of the Teixcalaanli military, with notable (if somewhat controversial) honors under her belt – honors which are supposedly why she’s been made Fleet Captain for this war (though it is, of course, more complicated than that). In some ways, the military leader sent to confront the alien threat is a stock character in a lot of first contact stories, but unlike some of the more hawkish types seen in those stories (and even in this one), Nine Hibiscus is more deliberate, more circumspect. Even when other military leaders around her insist that she attack the aliens, she doesn’t do so right away because she is unwilling to send people into the maw of an enemy she doesn’t understand. This is an aspect of her character that I find absolutely fascinating, and a delight to read. She does not charge in half-cocked, and has a care for the people who she sends out against the enemy. This doesn’t mean, of course, that she doesn’t act if she has to; she does, and she often does so decisively. But every decision is deliberate, made with careful consideration and input from people she trusts. It’s refreshing to read about a military leader who does such things.

Eight Antidote is an equally interesting character. I admit that I rarely have patience for preteen and teenage characters (which is why I’ve largely steered clear of young adult novels except those written by very specific authors), but Eight Antidote is engaging to read about. While his character serves a very specific function (tying the reader back to the politics and machinations in the heart of the Empire), he is also just a child trying to navigate a complex and complicated world, while also trying to decide what kind of leader he will become. He understands, after all, that once he becomes Emperor he will be in a position to shape the Empire in his own image, and he is trying to figure out what that image will be. Eight Antidote’s questions about who he is and who he will become, and how those will shape the destiny of an entire empire, are intriguing not only because of how they will potentially shape his character further down the line, but also because of how it comments upon Teixcalaanli culture as a whole.

I also like to think that Eight Antidote’s age allows him to ask these questions as plainly as he does, because he can see things more clearly and with less of the obfuscating layers of nuance that adults, but especially Teixcalaanli adults, tend to see everything through. An adult, after all, would have more complex and more complicated questions and answers, while Eight Antidote is able to perceive and ask and learn these things in a more straightforward manner, cutting to the heart of things in a way an adult might have difficulty doing, if they can do so at all.

Three Seagrass’ portrayal was not quite what I expected, but I still find it interesting. She is portrayed as impulsive and a bit more manic than I remember her being in the first book – but then, the reader is seeing her through Mahit’s eyes. Her personality is implied in the way Ten Azalea interacts with her in the first novel, but it’s only in this novel that the reader gets a more complete sense of who Three Seagrass really is because this is the first time she’s actually functioning as a narrator. And as I have said, while the portrayal is surprising, it’s also quite intriguing, since she functions as something of a foil to Mahit, who strikes me now as more taciturn than I remember her being – or at least, more taciturn as seen through Three Seagrass’ eyes. After all, since Mahit was the sole narrator of the first novel, the reader is privy to all of her thoughts and feelings; it’s not made clear how the other characters might perceive her in turn. Of course, Mahit’s taciturnity might be a result of the events in the first novel and not so much a quality inherent to her, but it’s interesting to see the contrast nevertheless.

While each of these narrators, and Mahit herself, have their own, individual storylines and concerns, they all come together in a manner that is wonderfully coherent and lucid. This, despite jumping back and forth between the warfront and the Empire (for Eight Antidote’s storyline), and navigating the novel’s primary first contact story vis-a-vis the more personal subplots, such as Nine Hibiscus’ political intrigues with others in her fleet, and of course Mahit and Three Seagrass’s relationship, which is a continuation of what happened in the previous novel. It is to the author’s immense credit that she switches between points-of-view, narrators, locations, and plotlines without losing the story’s overall forward momentum or losing the reader at any point.

This is not to say the plot is completely predictable, because it isn’t. Rather, when plot twists happen (and they do), they do not come completely out of left field, as it were. Instead, the foreshadowing is done in such a manner that they do not completely spoil the twists, but instead lay down the logic for them. I have read books wherein plot twists were foreshadowed too much and therefore spoiled, or foreshadowed too little and therefore did not make any logical sense when I encountered them in the story. This novel manages to ride the fine line between the two, and I am delighted that it manages to do so very well.

While the four aforementioned characters might be said to be the novel’s protagonists, there is actually a fifth protagonist in this novel, one that might not be immediately obvious to the reader: language. Unlike the aliens, who in the Prelude make it clear that language is for “blank-eyed hungering beasts” and for children, our species believes language is what makes us who we are. We use it not only to convey, but to comprehend, to make sense of everything within and without ourselves. The problem, though, is that oftentimes language cannot even begin to encompass the things we try to use it to represent. “Love” is the easiest example. Most people know what it feels like, are familiar with its range and subtleties, and we each have our own, unique experience of it. But we have such a hard time putting it into words. Artists, philosophers, writers, even scientists: they have all tried to describe that four-letter word, and none of them have got it quite right. It’s all approximation.

This is even trickier when attempting to do translation. If language is a matter of approximating emotions and ideas in the hopes that one will be understood, then translation is attempting to render an approximation into another approximation, which is guaranteed to be imperfect because most languages are not one-to-one equivalents of each other. Add on to this further complicating factors such as culture and personal history, and, well— One can see the quagmire, I am sure. Seen in this light, it seems almost unsurprising that we as a species are constantly at each other’s throats; we barely make sense to each other, even when we try.

But that’s the thing: we still try. It hurts, of course; we cannot perfectly convey what we think and feel to each other, so we leave ourselves open to not being seen as we wish to be seen, to not being understood as we wish to be understood. That is painful. But we still try regardless, try to fill in the gaps until we reach a point where it’s possible to understand – not perfectly, but close. It’s why so much of art and literature and philosophy and, yes, science, exists at all: because we all have something about ourselves – an idea or an emotion – that we want everyone else to understand. The novel frames it thusly:

Language is not so transparent, but we are sometimes known, even so. If we are lucky.

“If we are lucky” indeed. Sometimes we are. Sometimes we aren’t. But we try anyway, try to make ourselves understood to others – and to understand others, in turn. And when the desire to understand and to be understood in turn is genuine, borne from a true desire to comprehend, a connection occurs. If language is what makes us human, then to know another, and to be known by another, that moment connection, is one of the greatest accomplishments of our species.

Overall, A Desolation Called Peace is an incredible continuation of the story begun in A Memory Called Empire. While it overtly seems like a completely different novel from its predecessor, in fact it builds upon the themes and concerns of the first novel: in particular, the idea of connection and communication. While language is a clumsy tool for such comprehension, it matters that we keep trying to reach out to others, keep risking the pain of being misunderstood and imperfectly comprehended, on the chance that we get lucky, and are known. That chance, no matter how small, is worth it, but we need to work at it, to be open to the opportunity to reach out and understand another, for it is only when we do so that we, as individuals and as a species, are at our best.