Cold Fire.
Aug. 9th, 2012 10:22![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyElliott, Kate. Cold Fire. New York: Orbit Books, 2011.
After I finished Cold Magic I tore right into this book, which follows Cat and Bee as they struggle to stay one step ahead of the Cold Mages trying to possess them and, even worse, the Wild Hunt, which comes for people like Bee and dismembers them and leaves their heads in a well. Their journey takes them among radicals and trolls across the sea to the city of Expedition, which corresponds to the city of Santo Domingo in our Dominican Republic, much as Cat and Bee's beloved Adurnam corresponds to our Southampton. The correspondence is almost entirely irrelevant, however, since all of the intervening history is different.
Expedition is a free city founded by refugees from the Malian Empire and exists by treaty with and sufferance of the Taino Kingdom, which claims most of what we know as the Antilles. I've done a teeny bit of the research on this, too, and from what I can tell Elliott does a good job of inventing plausible alternate futures. (I'd like to ask her about the haplogenetic issue, just out of curiosity.) Expedition society is smartly and vividly painted - the food descriptions kept making me hungry - and the polyglot culture is fascinating. Cat washes ashore there with little more than the clothes on her back and her determination to save Bee from the Wild Hunt, having learned who her biological father is. No sooner does she walk ashore does she encounter her erstwhile husband Andevai, the cold mage, working as a carpenter.
As usual, I loved Cat and Bee like burning, and I also really liked what Elliott did with some of the structural elements of the plot - there are things here that are resolved that I would have expected be left to the third book, but having resolved them, Elliott is in a place to use those developments to throw the readers for a total loop. Indeed, my one minor complaint might be the sheer number of things that happened in the climax, but this is minor. I also really like what Bee is becoming, and there's something about it--women, dragons, battleaxes--that keeps tickling my memory, but I still don't know what it is. This book also gets more into the trolls and their culture, which was also awesome. The trolls have been making me think of Dinotopia, but it's clear that they are descended from carnivores, unlike the majority herbivore saurian society of Dinotopia.
I actually stopped reading this book 2/3 of the way through because it was too good and I didn't want it to end. But eventually I started reading it again and I realized that the conversation thatholyschist and I were having in the comments to my review of Cold Magic, which I had thought was interesting but essentially a tangent, is actually a very important question that is at the heart of the calculus Cat is trying to make in this book: empire or not? Revolutionary war or the desire to protect people from hardship and death?
Because in this book we are really introduced to the magnificent alternate!magical!Napoleon himself, Camjiata by name, and my hat is off to Kate Elliott because he is one of the most compelling characters, and best antagonists, that I have encountered in books. I love Camjiata! Even when he is making Cat's life difficult, he is compelling, admirable, abominable, with an enviable certainty of himself and his destiny and charisma that boils off the page. I've never really heard a good defense of the argument that we, moderns living in the early years of the 21stC, should be rooting for the British and the aristocratic oligarchies of old Europe against France in the Napoleonic Wars, and crucially, Elliott's Camjiata is an improvement on our world's Napoleon in a number of ways: no squabbling relatives installed on the thrones of Europe, no obsession with begetting a male heir (or even any heirs at all), and principles that are less misogynist and more egalitarian than our Napoleon's. But he's not an ideologue, either, as this conversation with Andevai indicates:
So, a couple of points further to the empire discussion. One, I'm not convinced that empires and rights are incompatible, or that empires are predicated on slavery and patriarchy. In other words, I don't believe that the nation-state is the ideal political form or even that nation-states do better at protecting the rights and lives of their people than empires do. And while I want to do anything but ignore it, I also think that excoriating the Romans for slavery and patriarchy, and ignoring the fact that few if any ancient societies were free of those institutions, is bad historical practice. Pre-modern, agrarian societies are profoundly unequal, with steep social hierarchies. Legal codes can ameliorate these inequities, but only to an extent. It's the early modern, and the beginnings of social, economic and technological formations that give more wealth and social capital to larger portions of society, in which the possibility of equality the way we think of it becomes thinkable. All these issues are much more pointed in Elliott's world, because there are actual Romans still around, and I'm sorry to say that Cold Fire confirms that the Romans are profoundly anti-democratic and anti-popular, and in Elliott's world there are alternate ideologies floating around, and so yeah, let's totally excoriate the Romans, and the mage Houses, and all the other old powers of Europa who don't want change.
And it's for that reason that I actually question Cat's implicit assumption that she can and should decide the destiny of Europa, or that she has the right to protect people from making their own choices and exercising their own agency. Revolutions are bloody, by and large (or at least, the early modern revolutions that cracked Europe's order were) (although, having imprisoned Napoleon on Elba, it took another hundred years after Waterloo for the old order to finally commit suicide). But it may be, as my roommate N and I (she's teaching a class on war and revolution this summer) were discussing yesterday, that the old order of Europe was so bad that the violent, repeated, and frequently failed early modern revolutions were fully necessary to break it open. Everyone dies eventually (I'm not sure Cat knows that, really), and there are things that are worth dying for.
All of which is to say, unlike Cat, I'm cautiously in favor of Camjiata and his invasion of Europa. Even if his empire doesn't do what he promises, it still seems better to me than the repression and de facto slavery of the petty princedoms and tyrannies of Europa at present. (I also like that as readers it's possible for us to understand Camjiata differently than Cat does, even though the book is entirely from her perspective.) The final thing is that, as I realized yesterday while I was running, the issue of empire or not is also tied into the emotional dilemma Cat has to deal with in this book, which is being bound against her will versus being bound by choice. It makes a difference, as Cat realizes.
The unstable element in all of this is the spirit world, of course, and Cat's sire (and what he does at the end of the book, OMG), and her awesome brother Rory, and what Bee is becoming. I can't wait for Cold Steel.
After I finished Cold Magic I tore right into this book, which follows Cat and Bee as they struggle to stay one step ahead of the Cold Mages trying to possess them and, even worse, the Wild Hunt, which comes for people like Bee and dismembers them and leaves their heads in a well. Their journey takes them among radicals and trolls across the sea to the city of Expedition, which corresponds to the city of Santo Domingo in our Dominican Republic, much as Cat and Bee's beloved Adurnam corresponds to our Southampton. The correspondence is almost entirely irrelevant, however, since all of the intervening history is different.
Expedition is a free city founded by refugees from the Malian Empire and exists by treaty with and sufferance of the Taino Kingdom, which claims most of what we know as the Antilles. I've done a teeny bit of the research on this, too, and from what I can tell Elliott does a good job of inventing plausible alternate futures. (I'd like to ask her about the haplogenetic issue, just out of curiosity.) Expedition society is smartly and vividly painted - the food descriptions kept making me hungry - and the polyglot culture is fascinating. Cat washes ashore there with little more than the clothes on her back and her determination to save Bee from the Wild Hunt, having learned who her biological father is. No sooner does she walk ashore does she encounter her erstwhile husband Andevai, the cold mage, working as a carpenter.
As usual, I loved Cat and Bee like burning, and I also really liked what Elliott did with some of the structural elements of the plot - there are things here that are resolved that I would have expected be left to the third book, but having resolved them, Elliott is in a place to use those developments to throw the readers for a total loop. Indeed, my one minor complaint might be the sheer number of things that happened in the climax, but this is minor. I also really like what Bee is becoming, and there's something about it--women, dragons, battleaxes--that keeps tickling my memory, but I still don't know what it is. This book also gets more into the trolls and their culture, which was also awesome. The trolls have been making me think of Dinotopia, but it's clear that they are descended from carnivores, unlike the majority herbivore saurian society of Dinotopia.
I actually stopped reading this book 2/3 of the way through because it was too good and I didn't want it to end. But eventually I started reading it again and I realized that the conversation that
holyschist and I were having in the comments to my review of Cold Magic, which I had thought was interesting but essentially a tangent, is actually a very important question that is at the heart of the calculus Cat is trying to make in this book: empire or not? Revolutionary war or the desire to protect people from hardship and death? Because in this book we are really introduced to the magnificent alternate!magical!Napoleon himself, Camjiata by name, and my hat is off to Kate Elliott because he is one of the most compelling characters, and best antagonists, that I have encountered in books. I love Camjiata! Even when he is making Cat's life difficult, he is compelling, admirable, abominable, with an enviable certainty of himself and his destiny and charisma that boils off the page. I've never really heard a good defense of the argument that we, moderns living in the early years of the 21stC, should be rooting for the British and the aristocratic oligarchies of old Europe against France in the Napoleonic Wars, and crucially, Elliott's Camjiata is an improvement on our world's Napoleon in a number of ways: no squabbling relatives installed on the thrones of Europe, no obsession with begetting a male heir (or even any heirs at all), and principles that are less misogynist and more egalitarian than our Napoleon's. But he's not an ideologue, either, as this conversation with Andevai indicates:
"What do you want, Magister?"
"I want to kill him."
"But not me?"
"You have something I want. The means to abolish clientage."
"A legal code is not the means to abolish clientage. One must have the means to enforce such a code. I can say or write anything I want, and that does not make it happen, or make it true. Why should princes and mage Houses abolish clientage? Whatever your origins, Magister, you have benefited by your association with Four Moons House. You, and your people as well."
"I may have. But they have gained material benefit, nothing else."
"I would not call material benefit 'nothing.' I have seen a man holding his dying child, the one he could not feed because his crops failed and the share for his lord must be met regardless. I have seen a wife hold the broken ruin of her husband crushed in a fall of rock in a mine whose bounty enriches the mine's owner but not those who work in it. Sometimes the gods are cruel, but more often it is the cruelty and greed of men that kills us. You stand in a high place with the waters rising. I would not be so quick to give it up merely for principle."
"Are you a radical, General? Or just an ambitious man who plans to use the blood of others to wash his hands at the altar of victory?"
"As you say, there will be a conflagration sooner or later. Which do you want, Magister? I will bring it sooner, and before the old order is quite ready to combat it."
"They are ready," said Vai. "They will fight you to the last drop of their blood." (459)
So, a couple of points further to the empire discussion. One, I'm not convinced that empires and rights are incompatible, or that empires are predicated on slavery and patriarchy. In other words, I don't believe that the nation-state is the ideal political form or even that nation-states do better at protecting the rights and lives of their people than empires do. And while I want to do anything but ignore it, I also think that excoriating the Romans for slavery and patriarchy, and ignoring the fact that few if any ancient societies were free of those institutions, is bad historical practice. Pre-modern, agrarian societies are profoundly unequal, with steep social hierarchies. Legal codes can ameliorate these inequities, but only to an extent. It's the early modern, and the beginnings of social, economic and technological formations that give more wealth and social capital to larger portions of society, in which the possibility of equality the way we think of it becomes thinkable. All these issues are much more pointed in Elliott's world, because there are actual Romans still around, and I'm sorry to say that Cold Fire confirms that the Romans are profoundly anti-democratic and anti-popular, and in Elliott's world there are alternate ideologies floating around, and so yeah, let's totally excoriate the Romans, and the mage Houses, and all the other old powers of Europa who don't want change.
And it's for that reason that I actually question Cat's implicit assumption that she can and should decide the destiny of Europa, or that she has the right to protect people from making their own choices and exercising their own agency. Revolutions are bloody, by and large (or at least, the early modern revolutions that cracked Europe's order were) (although, having imprisoned Napoleon on Elba, it took another hundred years after Waterloo for the old order to finally commit suicide). But it may be, as my roommate N and I (she's teaching a class on war and revolution this summer) were discussing yesterday, that the old order of Europe was so bad that the violent, repeated, and frequently failed early modern revolutions were fully necessary to break it open. Everyone dies eventually (I'm not sure Cat knows that, really), and there are things that are worth dying for.
All of which is to say, unlike Cat, I'm cautiously in favor of Camjiata and his invasion of Europa. Even if his empire doesn't do what he promises, it still seems better to me than the repression and de facto slavery of the petty princedoms and tyrannies of Europa at present. (I also like that as readers it's possible for us to understand Camjiata differently than Cat does, even though the book is entirely from her perspective.) The final thing is that, as I realized yesterday while I was running, the issue of empire or not is also tied into the emotional dilemma Cat has to deal with in this book, which is being bound against her will versus being bound by choice. It makes a difference, as Cat realizes.
The unstable element in all of this is the spirit world, of course, and Cat's sire (and what he does at the end of the book, OMG), and her awesome brother Rory, and what Bee is becoming. I can't wait for Cold Steel.