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starladyIn seventh grade, more years ago than I care to remember, I needed a book to occupy me for a week-long trip to Williamsburg, Virginia. I'd seen a really cool-looking book on the shelves of one of my local bookstores, and the day before I left I bought it.
It was The Broken Crown by Michelle West, and that has to be one of my best book-buying decisions of all time.
This was back in the Day before days when there was virtually no Internet, and it took me years to figure out that more books would be and were published and that the story told in TBC didn't start with that book. But we're living in the future now, and I can recommend the entire sequence of books to you just like this. And I do.
The Argument
I've said other places that most authors only have one or two themes in them. Michelle West's is unquestionably the end of the world, and what people will do either to stop it or to bring it about.
I'm going about this the wrong way, though. Michelle West is a Japanese Canadian author who also writes as Michelle Sagara and Michelle Sagara West. The Sagara books are The Chronicles of Elantra, which are also very good but are very different from the West books--if you like urban fantasy, definitely check Elantra out.
I don't really like "epic fantasy"--listing all the series I've bounced off, hard, that other people love would probably earn me a sporking, but thinking about it, I'd argue both that West's novels are epic fantasy, and that her books are qualitatively different from most conventional epic fantasy in their focus, which is first and foremost on the characters, and then on their cultures, and only finally on epic trappings such as battles and gods and games of thrones. Not that these things don't matter in her writing--there is a very large, truly epic plot going on in these books, and I love it to death--but the plot is revealed first and foremost through the characters' thoughts and feelings and emotional arcs.
So, yes. There are the trappings of epic fantasy in here--gods, demons, mages, seers, Bards--but they are never allowed to upstage the characters, and the end result is some very dense writing about fully imagined cultures populated by heartbreakingly human people (even when these people are demons, or gods, or the children of gods, or half-humans). The way West writes politics ought to bring many more well-known authors to tears, let alone cultures and its impacts on the people born into them.
At this point I should probably launch into talking about the books themselves. No spoilers beyond the dust jackets, I swear. In publication order, they are:
The Sacred Hunt:
Hunter's Oath & Hunter's Death
A good portion of this duology takes place in Breodanir, a country that lives in a very particular covenant with its god, and follows Stephen and his huntbrother Lord Gilliam of Elseth through their childhood and eventually on a journey that takes them to Essalieyan, the empire founded on the ruins of an old city of darkness, with implications for the entire world: the Lord of the Hells very much wants to break the covenant of man and return to the world, and He has chosen the imperial city of Averalaan as the place at which to do so.
Though the Breodani characters are hugely important for the overall plot, most of them haven't yet appeared again, but Hunter's Death in particular introduces a good chunk of the major Essalieyanese characters. Hunter's Oath also introduces Evayne a'Nolan, the seer who literally walks through time trying to hold the battle against the Lord of the Hells together, and I have to admit that she might be my favorite character. No, that's not true. There are so many awesome characters in these books--and so many of them are women--that it's literally impossible to pick.
The Sun Sword:
The Broken Crown, The Uncrowned King, The Shining Court, Sea of Sorrows, The Riven Shield, The Sun Sword
Sixteen years after The Sacred Hunt, this quintology in six volumes shifts the main focus to Essalieyan and its uneasy relationship with its southern rival, the Dominion of Annagar, and in particular what happens after a demonic coup in Annagar threatens the empire both politically and ontologically--though no less do the actions of a few rebellious Annagarian lords threaten their own country and culture, in ways they don't fully comprehend. Demons live forever, and play a very deep game.
I said that one of the things that makes these books stand out is West's almost pathological focus on culture, and in these books the comparative societies really snap into focus. Essalieyan is a land in which magic is rationally studied and controlled, with near-total gender equity (the exception being the dual monarchy which for ontological reasons is limited to men only), while Annagar has a hate/fear relationship with magic, is unabashedly patriarchal, and may or may not have any real grasp of the actual nature of the gods who, though they have withdrawn from the world, are still very much present in it through their mortal children and followers. Breodanir is more of a mix--men and women have distinct gender roles, but there's little implication that women not participating in the Sacred Hunt makes them any less strong, or less of people. And even in Annagar, women find their ways to wield what agency they have to devastating effect. (Diora, Teresa, I'm looking at you.)
The House War:
The Hidden City, City of Night (forthcoming 02.10), House Name (in manuscript), untitled fourth and fifth books
These books focus on one of the central characters of the whole sequence, Jewel Markess ATerafin, who over the course of Hunter's Death goes from street thief and half-trained seer to half-trained seer and contender for the rule of the single most important of the aristocratic Houses in the Empire.
Interestingly enough, from an internal chronology standpoint The Hidden City is arguably the earliest of the books; Hunter's Oath starts slightly earlier, but the real meat of its plot actually takes place only months before Hunter's Death (with which City of Night overlaps, actually). From things West has said on her blog and her LJ (she's![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msagara), I suspect House Name will take place sometime between Hunter's Death and The Broken Crown, while the last two books will bring us back into the present time of the story and then move it forward (The Sun Sword actually ends in present time, so to speak, but with all hints of the denouements of Jewel's story carefully suppressed). I love Jewel a lot, and she's only gotten more awesome as the books have progressed (oh man, the things that happen in Sea of Sorrows! Sea of Sorrows totally broke the whole story open for me; I literally had to sit back in my chair and contemplate how epic the entire plot actually is. It really, really is), and I can't wait for City of Night, either, because Hunter's Death may still be my favorite single book, because of all the awesome it packs in.
Thinking about it, while there are some pretty damn awesome male characters (Meralonne; Kallandras; Isladar; Valedan;...no, actually, most of them are pretty damn awesome), it's the women who really do consistently take center stage: Evayne a'Nolan, the seer trying to save the world; Jewel Markess ATerafin, who continually has to become more than what she's born to be; Diora en'Leonne, who plans revenge on an empire and on a god; Kiriel di'Ashaf, the half-human daughter of darkness who has to decide whether and how to own her own humanity. And unlike other epic fantasy series I could name (incredibly obvious shifty eyes are shifty! you know who I'm thinking of), most women in these books don't get or exercise their power by sleeping around! This should be much less remarkable than it is.
The other thing I really find interesting about these books, given the penchant of fantasy as a genre for conjoining certain sorts of plots in various configurations, is the nearly complete absence of romantic love as a motivational factor for these characters. I actually thought for a long time that love itself was absent from them, but it's not true; instead, characters are driven by loves that are far more complicated and painful than even romantic love can be, and usually is. Nothing in West's world is ever simple, even love.
Where would I recommend starting? It's an interesting question. As I said, I began with The Broken Crown, and only circled back to The Sacred Hunt in the long wait between books 3 and 4 of The Sun Sword--and due to the vagaries of bookstores, I actually read HD before HO. In some ways Hunter's Oath is undoubtedly the weakest of the books, since it jumps around in time and sets up so much that isn't paid off until HD, or even later, or not yet. But it's not a bad place to begin, though I'd recommend The Hidden City and TBC as equally valid starting points, too. THC is also still widely available even in chain bookstores, which is another point in its favor. And I think that reading THC and CoN, then The Sacred Hunt and finally The Sun Sword, would also be a good way to go.
Speaking of chain bookstores, I should mention that West is a current employee, and former manager, of Bakka Phoenix Books in Toronto, Canada. The store is on LJ at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bakkaphoenix, and Chris, the current manager, is happy to hook international customers up with signed books. Not only is it an awesome way to get a signed book, but ordering directly from BP supports West twofold.
I think that's it from me, really. Go forth and read! They are awesome books, and here are links to check them out on Amazon and on Powell's.
Hunter's Oath: Amazon | Powell's
Hunter's Death: Amazon | Powell's
The Broken Crown: Amazon | Powell's
The Uncrowned King: Amazon | Powell's
The Shining Court: Amazon | Powell's
Sea of Sorrows: Amazon | Powell's
The Riven Shield: Amazon | Powell's
The Sun Sword: Amazon | Powell's
The Hidden City: Amazon | Powell's
City of NIght: Amazon | Powell's
And because I love these books that much, I am even going to share a picture of my dorky younger 90s self reading The Broken Crown on that very trip to Williamsburg I mentioned above. Note the white sneakers, white socks, and unibrow.
It was The Broken Crown by Michelle West, and that has to be one of my best book-buying decisions of all time.
This was back in the Day before days when there was virtually no Internet, and it took me years to figure out that more books would be and were published and that the story told in TBC didn't start with that book. But we're living in the future now, and I can recommend the entire sequence of books to you just like this. And I do.
The Argument
I've said other places that most authors only have one or two themes in them. Michelle West's is unquestionably the end of the world, and what people will do either to stop it or to bring it about.
I'm going about this the wrong way, though. Michelle West is a Japanese Canadian author who also writes as Michelle Sagara and Michelle Sagara West. The Sagara books are The Chronicles of Elantra, which are also very good but are very different from the West books--if you like urban fantasy, definitely check Elantra out.
I don't really like "epic fantasy"--listing all the series I've bounced off, hard, that other people love would probably earn me a sporking, but thinking about it, I'd argue both that West's novels are epic fantasy, and that her books are qualitatively different from most conventional epic fantasy in their focus, which is first and foremost on the characters, and then on their cultures, and only finally on epic trappings such as battles and gods and games of thrones. Not that these things don't matter in her writing--there is a very large, truly epic plot going on in these books, and I love it to death--but the plot is revealed first and foremost through the characters' thoughts and feelings and emotional arcs.
So, yes. There are the trappings of epic fantasy in here--gods, demons, mages, seers, Bards--but they are never allowed to upstage the characters, and the end result is some very dense writing about fully imagined cultures populated by heartbreakingly human people (even when these people are demons, or gods, or the children of gods, or half-humans). The way West writes politics ought to bring many more well-known authors to tears, let alone cultures and its impacts on the people born into them.
At this point I should probably launch into talking about the books themselves. No spoilers beyond the dust jackets, I swear. In publication order, they are:
The Sacred Hunt:
Hunter's Oath & Hunter's Death
A good portion of this duology takes place in Breodanir, a country that lives in a very particular covenant with its god, and follows Stephen and his huntbrother Lord Gilliam of Elseth through their childhood and eventually on a journey that takes them to Essalieyan, the empire founded on the ruins of an old city of darkness, with implications for the entire world: the Lord of the Hells very much wants to break the covenant of man and return to the world, and He has chosen the imperial city of Averalaan as the place at which to do so.
Though the Breodani characters are hugely important for the overall plot, most of them haven't yet appeared again, but Hunter's Death in particular introduces a good chunk of the major Essalieyanese characters. Hunter's Oath also introduces Evayne a'Nolan, the seer who literally walks through time trying to hold the battle against the Lord of the Hells together, and I have to admit that she might be my favorite character. No, that's not true. There are so many awesome characters in these books--and so many of them are women--that it's literally impossible to pick.
The Sun Sword:
The Broken Crown, The Uncrowned King, The Shining Court, Sea of Sorrows, The Riven Shield, The Sun Sword
Sixteen years after The Sacred Hunt, this quintology in six volumes shifts the main focus to Essalieyan and its uneasy relationship with its southern rival, the Dominion of Annagar, and in particular what happens after a demonic coup in Annagar threatens the empire both politically and ontologically--though no less do the actions of a few rebellious Annagarian lords threaten their own country and culture, in ways they don't fully comprehend. Demons live forever, and play a very deep game.
I said that one of the things that makes these books stand out is West's almost pathological focus on culture, and in these books the comparative societies really snap into focus. Essalieyan is a land in which magic is rationally studied and controlled, with near-total gender equity (the exception being the dual monarchy which for ontological reasons is limited to men only), while Annagar has a hate/fear relationship with magic, is unabashedly patriarchal, and may or may not have any real grasp of the actual nature of the gods who, though they have withdrawn from the world, are still very much present in it through their mortal children and followers. Breodanir is more of a mix--men and women have distinct gender roles, but there's little implication that women not participating in the Sacred Hunt makes them any less strong, or less of people. And even in Annagar, women find their ways to wield what agency they have to devastating effect. (Diora, Teresa, I'm looking at you.)
The House War:
The Hidden City, City of Night (forthcoming 02.10), House Name (in manuscript), untitled fourth and fifth books
These books focus on one of the central characters of the whole sequence, Jewel Markess ATerafin, who over the course of Hunter's Death goes from street thief and half-trained seer to half-trained seer and contender for the rule of the single most important of the aristocratic Houses in the Empire.
Interestingly enough, from an internal chronology standpoint The Hidden City is arguably the earliest of the books; Hunter's Oath starts slightly earlier, but the real meat of its plot actually takes place only months before Hunter's Death (with which City of Night overlaps, actually). From things West has said on her blog and her LJ (she's
msagara), I suspect House Name will take place sometime between Hunter's Death and The Broken Crown, while the last two books will bring us back into the present time of the story and then move it forward (The Sun Sword actually ends in present time, so to speak, but with all hints of the denouements of Jewel's story carefully suppressed). I love Jewel a lot, and she's only gotten more awesome as the books have progressed (oh man, the things that happen in Sea of Sorrows! Sea of Sorrows totally broke the whole story open for me; I literally had to sit back in my chair and contemplate how epic the entire plot actually is. It really, really is), and I can't wait for City of Night, either, because Hunter's Death may still be my favorite single book, because of all the awesome it packs in. Thinking about it, while there are some pretty damn awesome male characters (Meralonne; Kallandras; Isladar; Valedan;...no, actually, most of them are pretty damn awesome), it's the women who really do consistently take center stage: Evayne a'Nolan, the seer trying to save the world; Jewel Markess ATerafin, who continually has to become more than what she's born to be; Diora en'Leonne, who plans revenge on an empire and on a god; Kiriel di'Ashaf, the half-human daughter of darkness who has to decide whether and how to own her own humanity. And unlike other epic fantasy series I could name (incredibly obvious shifty eyes are shifty! you know who I'm thinking of), most women in these books don't get or exercise their power by sleeping around! This should be much less remarkable than it is.
The other thing I really find interesting about these books, given the penchant of fantasy as a genre for conjoining certain sorts of plots in various configurations, is the nearly complete absence of romantic love as a motivational factor for these characters. I actually thought for a long time that love itself was absent from them, but it's not true; instead, characters are driven by loves that are far more complicated and painful than even romantic love can be, and usually is. Nothing in West's world is ever simple, even love.
Where would I recommend starting? It's an interesting question. As I said, I began with The Broken Crown, and only circled back to The Sacred Hunt in the long wait between books 3 and 4 of The Sun Sword--and due to the vagaries of bookstores, I actually read HD before HO. In some ways Hunter's Oath is undoubtedly the weakest of the books, since it jumps around in time and sets up so much that isn't paid off until HD, or even later, or not yet. But it's not a bad place to begin, though I'd recommend The Hidden City and TBC as equally valid starting points, too. THC is also still widely available even in chain bookstores, which is another point in its favor. And I think that reading THC and CoN, then The Sacred Hunt and finally The Sun Sword, would also be a good way to go.
Speaking of chain bookstores, I should mention that West is a current employee, and former manager, of Bakka Phoenix Books in Toronto, Canada. The store is on LJ at
bakkaphoenix, and Chris, the current manager, is happy to hook international customers up with signed books. Not only is it an awesome way to get a signed book, but ordering directly from BP supports West twofold. I think that's it from me, really. Go forth and read! They are awesome books, and here are links to check them out on Amazon and on Powell's.
Hunter's Oath: Amazon | Powell's
Hunter's Death: Amazon | Powell's
The Broken Crown: Amazon | Powell's
The Uncrowned King: Amazon | Powell's
The Shining Court: Amazon | Powell's
Sea of Sorrows: Amazon | Powell's
The Riven Shield: Amazon | Powell's
The Sun Sword: Amazon | Powell's
The Hidden City: Amazon | Powell's
City of NIght: Amazon | Powell's
And because I love these books that much, I am even going to share a picture of my dorky younger 90s self reading The Broken Crown on that very trip to Williamsburg I mentioned above. Note the white sneakers, white socks, and unibrow.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-05 02:04 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-05 02:10 (UTC)Seriously, they really are awesome.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-05 03:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-05 03:02 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-05 03:13 (UTC)Oh man, less than a month until City of Night...(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-05 23:50 (UTC)love the picture of your yougner self :DD
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-05 23:55 (UTC)Still a geek, mind you, but I don't wear white socks or white sneakers anymore, thankfully. XD
Yes you should read the books they are awesome!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-08 22:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-09 17:52 (UTC)However, the problem with Hunter's Oath as a starting point is that, in many ways, it seems to me that the entire book is merely a prologue to Hunter's Death. A necessary prologue, certainly, and I enjoy it a great deal, but it doesn't have a real ending of its own and much of it is background on Breodanir. My one attempt to get someone else hooked by beginning with this one wound up with her complaining that she felt like the sections with Evayne were parts of an entirely separate book that had been inexplicably put into a book about Gilliam and Stephen. I didn't see it that way, but having read some of the others first, I had the advantage of knowing how those sections fit into the overall story.
I don't feel I can fairly evaluate The Hidden City as a beginning point, because I had already read all the others multiple times before I read it and I think it gave me a very different reading experience than if I were new to the world. I also have concerns about the fact that The Hidden City is part of a series that will eventually move forward to events after The Sun Sword, which could result in confusion in readers who had not read that series.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-09 20:30 (UTC)However, the problem with Hunter's Oath as a starting point is that, in many ways, it seems to me that the entire book is merely a prologue to Hunter's Death.
I'd have to agree pretty much completely, though I think my own reading experience was warped by having read Death before Oath. (OMG, the section with Vexusa explained so much, it was really satisfying.) West talked a bit about having to set up things for books way down the storyline in HO & HD on her most recent blog post, which was interesting. Have you read Lirael and Abhorsen by Garth Nix? They stand in a similar sort of relationship to each other, and Lirael has some of the same structural weaknesses, I think.
I do think The Hidden City is a decent alternative--the scenes with Rath and Meralonne around the 2/3 point explain the stakes quite explicitly, and more clearly than I recall being done in either The Sacred Hunt or the first few Sun Sword books. And as long as people don't wait to read The Sun Sword before reading the last three books of The House War, it shouldn't be too disorienting. But, yes, I'd agree that in some ways THC is different from the rest in possibly misleading ways. Right off the top of my head, I gnashed my teeth at the lack of dates in the book, though of course I could work what year AA it took place in without too much trouble.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-09 20:43 (UTC)Thinking back on it, I think The Hidden City is also the only book so far in which Evayne does not appear at all. It's kind of surprising - her presence has been one of the threads tying all the other books together until then, so her absence is notable.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-09 20:49 (UTC)Yeah, that's another interesting difference. It's also almost entirely from one character's perspective, which is also unusual. I wonder a lot what the next book is going to be like, given what happens to Rath in Hunter's Death.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-05 17:19 (UTC)OMG, I think I owned the same jacket as you're wearing in the photo.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-05 23:36 (UTC)It's actually through reading Bakka Phoenix' LJ that I've come to get a grip on this. The situation is somewhat better in Canada for independents, since they don't have the inventory tax that Reagan imposed on bookstores, but yeah, I definitely wanted to plug the independent bookstore. Particularly since there are none left near me.
I said to someone on DW that I hadn't thought of these books as epic fantasy until I sat down to write the post, and it's true. But they are epic, and pretty amazing.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 18:39 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 20:59 (UTC)I think you'll like them. Hunter's Death in particular is just amazing. And I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on them, too.
Sagara is simply stunning
Date: 2010-05-24 21:18 (UTC)I discovered the works of Michelle Sagara West only early this year and have devoured all of them in the last few months.
I don't think there is anyone else in the fantasy world who writes the way she does. So many scenes, so many encounters, so many diaglogues have such a deep, engaging and intense drama about them and her writing is almost poetic verse. Her Japanese blood shines here. :)
-Tarun Elankath