Cold Magic.
Jul. 30th, 2012 10:57![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyElliott, Kate. Cold Magic. New York: Orbit Books, 2010.
While I don't quite consider these books "epic fantasy" according to my own idiosyncratic definition (those doorstop paperbacks, okay, those are just central for me), Elliott has written what may be the most successful epic fantasy sequence by a woman, The Crown of Stars books - but I have been given expert advice not to start there, and anyway "an Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy adventure with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendents of troodons, and a dash of steampunk whose gas lamps can be easily doused by the touch of a powerful cold mage" sounded pretty darn awesome.
And it is PRETTY DARN AWESOME. You can read my review below, or read this awesome tumblr review. Hint: I suggest reading both.
I think Elliott has done some really cool, and really noteworthy, things with this book. First of all, this is a really alternate history, going all the way back to the 200s BCE (in terms of the Rome/Carthage conflict) and back even further, in that the intelligent descendants of troodons live in the Americas and have founded a city in the Antilles with assorted radicals, rabble-rousers, and free-thinkers. BRB SHEDDING TEARS OF JOY.
The plot of the book follows Cat Hassi Barahal, whose family's contractual obligation to the cold mages of Four Moons House throws her into the company of one of their most powerful and proudest scions, one Andevai. Cat soon learns that as well as saving her own skin, she must keep her beloved cousin Bee from the clutches of Four Moons as well. The important point about the plot is that it moves along at a lightning pace and is MADE OF AWESOME. The important point about Cat and Bee is that they are both MADE OF AWESOME, as you would expect from two daughters of a house of spies and mercenaries. And, among other things, I really loved their close relationship and how well they work together as well as how much they love each other. CAT AND BEE FOREVER.
You will have perhaps gathered from my capital letters that I really loved this book. I totally did. For one thing, I stand in admiration of the alternate history Elliott has achieved here, because imperial Rome is one of my scholarly interests, and Elliott gets her alternate history very, very right. The central thing she manages to do--well, she does two very notable things. One is, because Cat and Bee are Phoenician and thanks to their queens two thousand years ago the Romans did not take over the Middle Sea and domesticate it into Mare Nostrum (nor, because of this, did they ever conquer Egypt, though when I see Elliott at Sirens in October I am going to ask her why her world lacked Alexander the Great), they have a very profound anti-Roman skepticism that just doesn't exist in our world. Everyone who wrote anything down missed the Romans after they were gone from western Europe, because the Romans thoroughly transformed the entire Mediterranean--they remain the only people who have ever unified Europe in its entire four thousand years of recorded history--and this is a big part of why, I know, we in general and I in particular are so sentimental about the Romans and their empire: we just don't have any sources to contrast with the upper-class writings that are all that have come down to us from the ancient world. There are hints in books like The Golden Ass that maybe security in the countryside was dicey, and scholars scour the Gospels and Acts for indications of the extent of the Roman presence in rural Judaea, but Judaea was weird (monotheists, LOLWTF) and even the Greeks agreed that the Romans had their uses. But in Elliott's version, alternate views are not only possible but are quite common (Cat's father penned a book called Lies the Romans Told), and there are still Romans around! Actual Romans! I love it, though my own deep sympathies for Rome clashed oddly with Cat's inherited suspicion of them.
The other thing follows from this and is really more like two things. In the first place, it took me a while to realize that one of the biggest divergences in Elliott's book is that there is no large-scale monotheistic religion: no Christianity, and no Islam. Everyone is still cheerfully polytheist, although as befits rational people of the nineteenth century (for those curious about the conversion factor, the book takes place in the equivalent of our 1810 CE) Cat and Bee harbor doubts about whether the gods actually exist. Thus, ancient ideas of kinship, hospitality, and clan structure are still in full force, and they are not the same kinds of ideas that are familiar to us from less alternate Regency novels, and as a historian who does study the period, I do think Elliott gets it largely right. The other thing is that a central ingredient of Elliott's worldbuilding is the collapse of the empire of Mali three hundred years prior and the exodus of Malian refugees to Europe and the Mediterranean to join with Celtic druids to form the mage Houses that are so opposed to progress and science. And, as befits a world with a history that isn't our own, ancient rather than modern ideas of what we think of as "race" are still in force, which makes Elliott's entire cast of characters variously and broadly chromatic - every major character is chromatic, and skin color simply is not a basis on which people are judged except as a mark of ethnic origin. This is also really refreshing, and again, I do think Elliott manages to get the ancient ideas about "race" and "ethnicity" largely right.
The final thing that I adore about this book is the way that it is unabashedly and obviously anti-monarchical and pro-science--shades of Philip Pullman indeed, but this is a rare enough political stance in fantasy that I treasure every instance of it. I've had discussions with several SFF writers about this, one of whom opined that monarchy is the predominant form of government throughout history and therefore monarchism in fantasy isn't a priori objectionable. I disagree, and for that reason I was really glad to see that printing presses and rifles and rights are important elements in the plot (shades of Fly By Night, actually, another of my favorite books). Bring on Cold Fire!
While I don't quite consider these books "epic fantasy" according to my own idiosyncratic definition (those doorstop paperbacks, okay, those are just central for me), Elliott has written what may be the most successful epic fantasy sequence by a woman, The Crown of Stars books - but I have been given expert advice not to start there, and anyway "an Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy adventure with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendents of troodons, and a dash of steampunk whose gas lamps can be easily doused by the touch of a powerful cold mage" sounded pretty darn awesome.
And it is PRETTY DARN AWESOME. You can read my review below, or read this awesome tumblr review. Hint: I suggest reading both.
I think Elliott has done some really cool, and really noteworthy, things with this book. First of all, this is a really alternate history, going all the way back to the 200s BCE (in terms of the Rome/Carthage conflict) and back even further, in that the intelligent descendants of troodons live in the Americas and have founded a city in the Antilles with assorted radicals, rabble-rousers, and free-thinkers. BRB SHEDDING TEARS OF JOY.
The plot of the book follows Cat Hassi Barahal, whose family's contractual obligation to the cold mages of Four Moons House throws her into the company of one of their most powerful and proudest scions, one Andevai. Cat soon learns that as well as saving her own skin, she must keep her beloved cousin Bee from the clutches of Four Moons as well. The important point about the plot is that it moves along at a lightning pace and is MADE OF AWESOME. The important point about Cat and Bee is that they are both MADE OF AWESOME, as you would expect from two daughters of a house of spies and mercenaries. And, among other things, I really loved their close relationship and how well they work together as well as how much they love each other. CAT AND BEE FOREVER.
You will have perhaps gathered from my capital letters that I really loved this book. I totally did. For one thing, I stand in admiration of the alternate history Elliott has achieved here, because imperial Rome is one of my scholarly interests, and Elliott gets her alternate history very, very right. The central thing she manages to do--well, she does two very notable things. One is, because Cat and Bee are Phoenician and thanks to their queens two thousand years ago the Romans did not take over the Middle Sea and domesticate it into Mare Nostrum (nor, because of this, did they ever conquer Egypt, though when I see Elliott at Sirens in October I am going to ask her why her world lacked Alexander the Great), they have a very profound anti-Roman skepticism that just doesn't exist in our world. Everyone who wrote anything down missed the Romans after they were gone from western Europe, because the Romans thoroughly transformed the entire Mediterranean--they remain the only people who have ever unified Europe in its entire four thousand years of recorded history--and this is a big part of why, I know, we in general and I in particular are so sentimental about the Romans and their empire: we just don't have any sources to contrast with the upper-class writings that are all that have come down to us from the ancient world. There are hints in books like The Golden Ass that maybe security in the countryside was dicey, and scholars scour the Gospels and Acts for indications of the extent of the Roman presence in rural Judaea, but Judaea was weird (monotheists, LOLWTF) and even the Greeks agreed that the Romans had their uses. But in Elliott's version, alternate views are not only possible but are quite common (Cat's father penned a book called Lies the Romans Told), and there are still Romans around! Actual Romans! I love it, though my own deep sympathies for Rome clashed oddly with Cat's inherited suspicion of them.
The other thing follows from this and is really more like two things. In the first place, it took me a while to realize that one of the biggest divergences in Elliott's book is that there is no large-scale monotheistic religion: no Christianity, and no Islam. Everyone is still cheerfully polytheist, although as befits rational people of the nineteenth century (for those curious about the conversion factor, the book takes place in the equivalent of our 1810 CE) Cat and Bee harbor doubts about whether the gods actually exist. Thus, ancient ideas of kinship, hospitality, and clan structure are still in full force, and they are not the same kinds of ideas that are familiar to us from less alternate Regency novels, and as a historian who does study the period, I do think Elliott gets it largely right. The other thing is that a central ingredient of Elliott's worldbuilding is the collapse of the empire of Mali three hundred years prior and the exodus of Malian refugees to Europe and the Mediterranean to join with Celtic druids to form the mage Houses that are so opposed to progress and science. And, as befits a world with a history that isn't our own, ancient rather than modern ideas of what we think of as "race" are still in force, which makes Elliott's entire cast of characters variously and broadly chromatic - every major character is chromatic, and skin color simply is not a basis on which people are judged except as a mark of ethnic origin. This is also really refreshing, and again, I do think Elliott manages to get the ancient ideas about "race" and "ethnicity" largely right.
The final thing that I adore about this book is the way that it is unabashedly and obviously anti-monarchical and pro-science--shades of Philip Pullman indeed, but this is a rare enough political stance in fantasy that I treasure every instance of it. I've had discussions with several SFF writers about this, one of whom opined that monarchy is the predominant form of government throughout history and therefore monarchism in fantasy isn't a priori objectionable. I disagree, and for that reason I was really glad to see that printing presses and rifles and rights are important elements in the plot (shades of Fly By Night, actually, another of my favorite books). Bring on Cold Fire!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-30 18:21 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-31 06:22 (UTC)