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I’ve burned out on epic fantasy in the last couple years. Pretty much everything I’ve tried has struck me as too grimdark, too bland, too dull, too imitative, or good but not appealing to me. I can’t remember the last epic fantasy where I made it to book three, and I often didn’t even make it to chapter three. But this book made me remember why I used to like epic fantasy, and I grabbed book two of this one before I’d even finished book one.
It has a fairly typical plot – an evil and expansive empire is trying to take over the world, and a motley band of people are trying to stop it – enlivened by likable characters (about half female, in many roles), strong storytelling, and super-awesome-cool worldbuilding. It’s a war story and contains non-graphic torture, rape (present but not pervasive), and killing. But the inventive exuberance of the worldbuilding made it a really fun read. It felt like the author was enjoying the hell out of telling the story, and that sense of playfulness came through overall even though a lot of the actual content was fairly dark.
The characters are actually more important as the worldbuilding as far as I’m concerned, because I can think of a lot of authors who do great worldbuilding but I don’t read their books because I don’t care what happens on that supercool world. However, I’m going to talk mostly about the worldbuilding because it’s so different and fun.
Giant bug warning! If you are deeply freaked out by bugs to the point where you don’t even want to hear about fantasy bugs, stop reading here. Also, never read this series. I personally do not like many bugs in real life and cannot even look at photos of gross bugs, but I really enjoyed these bug-based books and did not find the bug descriptions squicky or unpleasant.
In this world, the square-cube law does not apply and giant bugs walk the earth. Early humans were no match for praying mantises the size of Clydesdales and so forth, so they survived by mystically aligning themselves with the Platonic ideals of specific insects to attain insect-based powers.
Thousands of years later, the giant bugs are still around, but all humans are various types of insect kinden, which means they’re basically human but have powers, attributes (or at least common stereotypes or cultures), and sometimes physical alterations based on their insect. The powers are called Arts; with some races all of them have them, but in others only some or most members can access them, or there’s some Arts that are universal but others that are more rare, etc. For instance…
Fly kinden are three feet tall, stereotyped as being feckless thieves, and can materialize temporary wings to fly. (The temporary wings is a common trait, and a power I’ve never come across before.) Scorpion kinden are gigantic, white-skinned, and have tusks and talons. Ant kinden are telepathic within their group, are supposed to be good soldiers (as opposed to being good duellists) and have city-states that are in a constant state of war, and have different colored skin depending on where they’re from. Moth kinden have white eyes, can see in the dark, use magic, and used to rule the world before their slaves, the Beetle kinden and others, started building machines and overthrew them. These are all just broad outlines; the kinden have way more complexity than that, and it’s clear very early on that the personality trait stuff is a combination of outsider stereotypes and cultural values, not “all Fly kinden are actually, inherently dishonest.”
So, the insect kinden: how fucking cool is that? I spent the entire book in a perpetual state of “Yes, yes, tell me more about Butterfly culture! Details on the Slug people please!”
The last big bit of worldbuilding is that all people are either Apt or Inapt. This generally divides by kinden, but there’s exceptions. Apt means you can use machines and tools, but cannot use or comprehend (or even, often, believe in) magic. Inapt means you can use magic, but cannot use or comprehend machines or even many tools. This is basically a literalized metaphor for worldviews in terms of historical eras: imagine a person from a society that has just discovered the use of fire interacting on otherwise equal terms with a person from an Industrial Revolution society. If you try to logically define what constitutes a “machine” based on what it does or how it’s constructed, it doesn’t make sense; you have to just roll with what’s considered a “machine” in the world of the book.
If you can roll with the premise, it gives a very different flavor to the standard tech/magic divide. The steampunk element is really enjoyable. Guns are all called something-bows, like nail-bows, air-bows, etc. One character is making a gun that works by pumping compressed air, walking vehicles seem more common than wheeled ones, and there’s a bit where a character is discussing some improvements he came up for a machine, and when I realized what he’d invented, it was SO COOL – a very old-school “ah-ha” moment that I hadn’t had in a while. If you like the Steerswoman series, you are liable to like this.
So, the actual story! Chapter one is more of a prologue, in which a small band of friends fights a losing battle to save a city from the invading Wasp army. Nearly twenty years later, one of the few survivors, now a fat, middle-aged Beetle kinden scholar named Stenwold Maker, has been trying in vain the entire time to get other city-states to believe that the ever-encroaching Wasps are going to take over the world. To this end, he’s been training young people as spies.
Most of the story involves a few of those young people when they go on their first mission, which comes about prematurely and for which they are seriously unprepared.
My favorite is Cheerwell “Che” Maker, Stenwold’s niece who is an absolute sweetheart with an inferiority complex due to being a lousy fighter, unable to use her Art to fly (which is not common for Beetles, but she really want to), overweight and clumsy, not the best at complex plotting or smooth social interaction, and generally an ugly duckling. This is exacerbated by having been brought up with my other favorite, her foster sister Tynisa, a Spider kinden who is gorgeous, a brilliant swordfighter with an alarming taste for blood, and very comfortable twisting men around her finger to extract info (and murdering them, if called for.)
Spoilers below. Feel free to discuss the events of this book in comments. ( Read more... )
I have been warned that the series gets more dark and tragic as it goes along, but does not do the thing where people trying to do the right thing are shown by the author to be naïve morons. If you’ve read the series, please don’t spoil me beyond that, or for any specific events beyond this book. I have not been spoiled for it and want to stay that way.
It has a fairly typical plot – an evil and expansive empire is trying to take over the world, and a motley band of people are trying to stop it – enlivened by likable characters (about half female, in many roles), strong storytelling, and super-awesome-cool worldbuilding. It’s a war story and contains non-graphic torture, rape (present but not pervasive), and killing. But the inventive exuberance of the worldbuilding made it a really fun read. It felt like the author was enjoying the hell out of telling the story, and that sense of playfulness came through overall even though a lot of the actual content was fairly dark.
The characters are actually more important as the worldbuilding as far as I’m concerned, because I can think of a lot of authors who do great worldbuilding but I don’t read their books because I don’t care what happens on that supercool world. However, I’m going to talk mostly about the worldbuilding because it’s so different and fun.
Giant bug warning! If you are deeply freaked out by bugs to the point where you don’t even want to hear about fantasy bugs, stop reading here. Also, never read this series. I personally do not like many bugs in real life and cannot even look at photos of gross bugs, but I really enjoyed these bug-based books and did not find the bug descriptions squicky or unpleasant.
In this world, the square-cube law does not apply and giant bugs walk the earth. Early humans were no match for praying mantises the size of Clydesdales and so forth, so they survived by mystically aligning themselves with the Platonic ideals of specific insects to attain insect-based powers.
Thousands of years later, the giant bugs are still around, but all humans are various types of insect kinden, which means they’re basically human but have powers, attributes (or at least common stereotypes or cultures), and sometimes physical alterations based on their insect. The powers are called Arts; with some races all of them have them, but in others only some or most members can access them, or there’s some Arts that are universal but others that are more rare, etc. For instance…
Fly kinden are three feet tall, stereotyped as being feckless thieves, and can materialize temporary wings to fly. (The temporary wings is a common trait, and a power I’ve never come across before.) Scorpion kinden are gigantic, white-skinned, and have tusks and talons. Ant kinden are telepathic within their group, are supposed to be good soldiers (as opposed to being good duellists) and have city-states that are in a constant state of war, and have different colored skin depending on where they’re from. Moth kinden have white eyes, can see in the dark, use magic, and used to rule the world before their slaves, the Beetle kinden and others, started building machines and overthrew them. These are all just broad outlines; the kinden have way more complexity than that, and it’s clear very early on that the personality trait stuff is a combination of outsider stereotypes and cultural values, not “all Fly kinden are actually, inherently dishonest.”
So, the insect kinden: how fucking cool is that? I spent the entire book in a perpetual state of “Yes, yes, tell me more about Butterfly culture! Details on the Slug people please!”
The last big bit of worldbuilding is that all people are either Apt or Inapt. This generally divides by kinden, but there’s exceptions. Apt means you can use machines and tools, but cannot use or comprehend (or even, often, believe in) magic. Inapt means you can use magic, but cannot use or comprehend machines or even many tools. This is basically a literalized metaphor for worldviews in terms of historical eras: imagine a person from a society that has just discovered the use of fire interacting on otherwise equal terms with a person from an Industrial Revolution society. If you try to logically define what constitutes a “machine” based on what it does or how it’s constructed, it doesn’t make sense; you have to just roll with what’s considered a “machine” in the world of the book.
If you can roll with the premise, it gives a very different flavor to the standard tech/magic divide. The steampunk element is really enjoyable. Guns are all called something-bows, like nail-bows, air-bows, etc. One character is making a gun that works by pumping compressed air, walking vehicles seem more common than wheeled ones, and there’s a bit where a character is discussing some improvements he came up for a machine, and when I realized what he’d invented, it was SO COOL – a very old-school “ah-ha” moment that I hadn’t had in a while. If you like the Steerswoman series, you are liable to like this.
So, the actual story! Chapter one is more of a prologue, in which a small band of friends fights a losing battle to save a city from the invading Wasp army. Nearly twenty years later, one of the few survivors, now a fat, middle-aged Beetle kinden scholar named Stenwold Maker, has been trying in vain the entire time to get other city-states to believe that the ever-encroaching Wasps are going to take over the world. To this end, he’s been training young people as spies.
Most of the story involves a few of those young people when they go on their first mission, which comes about prematurely and for which they are seriously unprepared.
My favorite is Cheerwell “Che” Maker, Stenwold’s niece who is an absolute sweetheart with an inferiority complex due to being a lousy fighter, unable to use her Art to fly (which is not common for Beetles, but she really want to), overweight and clumsy, not the best at complex plotting or smooth social interaction, and generally an ugly duckling. This is exacerbated by having been brought up with my other favorite, her foster sister Tynisa, a Spider kinden who is gorgeous, a brilliant swordfighter with an alarming taste for blood, and very comfortable twisting men around her finger to extract info (and murdering them, if called for.)
Spoilers below. Feel free to discuss the events of this book in comments. ( Read more... )
I have been warned that the series gets more dark and tragic as it goes along, but does not do the thing where people trying to do the right thing are shown by the author to be naïve morons. If you’ve read the series, please don’t spoil me beyond that, or for any specific events beyond this book. I have not been spoiled for it and want to stay that way.
