God's Demon By Wayne Barlowe

 God's Demon

By Wayne Barlowe 

Wayne Barlowe was born on January 6th, 1958 in Glen Cove, New York to Sy and Dorothea Barlowe, both of whom are well-known natural history artists. He attended the Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Science and Art starting in 1976 and in 1977, he also apprenticed in the Exhibition Department of The American Museum of Natural History. It was during this that he collaborated with his parents on what would be the first of many book assignments, the Instant Nature Guide to Insects (I think I used to have this book.). In 1979 he also old his first self-created book, Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials, written in the same style as a field guide for wildlife, it received mixed reviews, I suppose it was a bit ahead of its time considering that we devour books like that these days. This didn't slow Mr. Barlowe down, however. He went on to illustrate over 300 books, creating a second book called Expedition, which formed the main inspiration to the Discovery Channel's docufiction special Alien Planet (Holy shit, it’s this guy?!  Yaaassss!) and more. He married noted science fiction editor and agent, Shawna McCarthy, on Jun 26, 1983, I was unable to find out how long the marriage lasted, only that Mr. Barlowe remarried Laura Hansen in 2013. Mr. Barlowe has also been involved in the artwork for movies and films ranging from Babylon 5 Thirdspace (AKA JMS Meets Lovecraft), Hellboy, Harry Potter movies (which did have some really good creature design), and Pacific Rim. God's Demon published in 2007 is his first prose novel however and that's what we'll be focusing on today. 

Now a friend recommended this novel after listening to my low-key grump on how modern fantasy tends to avoid religious themes and issues. Now it is not my intent to say that secular fantasy is bad. Nor is it bad to have secular or atheist characters in your story, although if you're in a setting where the goddess of farming can literally show up for the harvest festival, being an atheist might be a challenge (But notably, not impossible.  What distinguishes things claiming to be gods from other powerful beings that don’t?  And then there are the Chaos Gods, who Good People Don’t Worship.). Of course, you can absolutely write that Iron Age fantasy which is devoid of any real religion or gods, just be prepared for me to ask what takes the role of religion in those societies? My issue is when writers create societies that deeply reflect our own medieval or classical societies, often adding in, active gods and... No one has any real religious or theological concerns or urges? This tends to end up with characters feeling like 21st century first worlders dropped into another world instead of characters that actually grew up in a completely different society which is a whole another gripe that I'm pretty sure my editor and many of you have memorized at this point (Oh yes.  Very much so.). God's Demon however places a theological concern dead center of the story and makes themes of faith and religion unavoidable. Because God's Demon takes place in hell, as in the place you go if you die in a state of sin, the place where the Fallen Angels of Lucifer's Rebellion were exiled and became Demons. 

The Demons are not comfortable in Hell, because hell is a savage and brutal environment and even Demons can be injured just by traveling exposed to its infernally hot winds (I would be annoyed…). They responded to this by rallying around their old leaders from the rebellion and building cities and fortresses from which to rule fiefdoms they carved from the deeply hostile surroundings (Demonic feudalism… Marx’s Beard…{There are also natives that pre-exist them and the Demons treat them as something to hunt for sport} Ugh.). By the time of the novel, just about every Demon is enmeshed in a complex feudal hierarchy leading from the least overseer to the Prince of Hell himself Beelzebub, who rules from the twisted city of Dis (Otherwise known as Phoenix.{our streets are too wide and straight, plus we don’t light the city by burning people} No, but getting in your car feels like a burning coffin.{That’s just because you refused to fix your bloody AC for years you goof!} That was before the car was even started!). The Demons power their lifestyles through the use of human souls. The cities are built of bricks made out of human souls, they create beasts of burden and war from them, books, weapons, just about everything  (So when Faust sold his soul to the devil, he was destined to become… a hammer.{you stop that} What?  I was just thinking of a random tool!  Honestly!). This is done because it's honestly easier than using Hell's natural resources and the Demons justify it by not only considering themselves a superior lifeform to humanity (which was also the justification for their Rebellion in the first place) and arguing that any human who shows up in hell deserves it. As well as some Demons suggesting that spending eternity as a wall brick is frankly getting off light for some of them (Like Giles de Rais!  Most prolific serial killer of children ever.  Hundreds of child-bodies were excavated from the castle walls of Joan of Arc’s BFF, and the judge at his trial begged the prosecution to stop presenting evidence because it damaged his faith in a benevolent God.). Of course, humans who stand out in their depravity get worse punishments. Most humans are just stripped of their identities and memories and turned into a workforce that can also serve as building materials if there is any shortage. On top of that Hell has native lifeforms and peoples that the Demons battle with, hunt, and exploit. While these are dangerous creatures that are frankly better adapted for the dangers and conditions of Hell, they cannot match the Demon's abilities to use magic or the Demon's exploitation of souls to create fortification and weapons. So even the sapient natives of Hell have been pushed to the margins and are hunted. 

However, not all is settled in Hell, Beelzebub the Lord of flies is not Lucifer but instead his chosen regent. The arch rebel himself has not been seen since the early days of the fall. Beelzebub's laws are simple, Demons may war upon each other but the Demon Lords are not allowed to conquer or kill one another, only to constantly trade territory back and forth. There is to be no grace, no generosity, no beauty, nothing but reveling in their debased and debauched state (Ugh.  Come on demons, at least try to better yourselves.  Prove to YHWH that you are better…). Above all else, there is to be no hope of betterment and certainly no thought of redemption or repentance (Oy veh). The city of Dis, a twisted warren of ugly alleys and crooked streets, is a reflection of this. The souls trapped in this city are inflicted with torment after torment and the Demons who live here do not fare much better. The court of Beelzebub being a pit of paranoia and self-serving social climbing for the sake of it. If you are not careful, the Lord of Flies will dictate your punishment himself. Trapped in this court is Lilith, the first woman (She did not deserve this for wanting to be on top…{You’re missing a chunk of the story there, see when she and Adam had that argument, she left Eden and God… Did nothing to her. Given the argument was basically over who outranked who, the fact that God yanked a rib out of Adam could be read as a rebuke to Adam. Lilith meanwhile hooked up with a Demon or Angel (there’s debate because this is basically Jewish folklore we think is adapted from Babylonian folklore during the captivity [Which is probably is, but that’s a non-negligible portion of the Tanakh.  Of course this whole story is primarily taken from medieval Jewish literature as opposed to anything in Genesis or even subsequent rabbinical texts.]){She's in the dead sea scrolls, also I don't think 8th century counts as medieval!} and gave birth to monsters who attacked people in their sleep.  That pretty much got her tossed into hell.  Lilith was also believed to attack pregnant women and cause miscarriages as well as being responsible for sudden infant death syndrome .  Most of this gets glossed over or ignored in modern takes because then they can’t use her as a cool edgy pseudo feminist figure}), the consort of Lucifer, who before he disappeared, basically sold her to Beelzebub.  Which makes her Beelzebub’s consort whether she likes it or not.  Lilith is not content to suffer however, she plots to escape and more than that to create a society where she can be more than just someone's property. She has to advance her plot by inches as she is under constant surveillance because Beelzebub's greatest law is that he will share Lilith with no one. Not with the souls of her fellow human beings, not with his fellow Demons, and not even with her own hopes and ambitions. Lilith is not the only rebel in hell though (Good). 

The Demon Lord, Sargatanas creator and master of the city Adamantinarx, the closest thing the demons have to a city of beauty and culture has been troubled of late. While he has built a grand city that is the model of government and art and wealth, he is not pleased. When a chance encounter with a soul, forces him to realize that everything he has built is on a foundation of exploitation (Please be the soul of Marx, please be the soul of Marx…{*stares in American*}). It also forces him to realize that the souls he's been using as nothing more than raw materials are in fact people, who aren't that different from him. While Adamantinarx is perhaps the mildest place for a soul in Hell to end up, it's still Hell. Human souls are still at best well-treated slaves, raw materials at worst. This turns Sargatanas to asking himself if his behavior since the war has justified his rebellion or his punishment? And he realizes that his punishment has been justified but he also realizes that there is no reason that his punishment should be eternal (I would say that perhaps the punishment wasn’t justified, but is now…). Sargatanas resolves that he is going to go back to Heaven and find a path to redemption or die trying. This conviction becomes a threat to the very underpinnings of Hellish society and the pursuit of this conviction will overturn every law in Hell. Because Sargatanas’ message of hope and redemption finds a willing audience in the Demons and Souls of Hell and that strikes at everything Beelzebub stands for (Which is… what?  Mean-Spirited hedonism-botery? {No, the idea that only pain and punishment are allowed in Hell.  No relief, no mercy, no grace.  That the Demons are not allowed to even attempt to be better people} Maybe this is a failure of mental imagery on my part.  But from what I see Beelz is like “There is no talk of grace or redemption in hell, we’re stuck here so make the best of it and exploit the damned souls”. Because he does have a rape victim/consort...). 

This story is told through a first-person narrative mostly told through the eyes of Eligor, a Demon Minor and officer in Sargatanas army. While not one of the Demonic Lords, called Demon's Major, he does occupy a privileged position as leader of Sargatanas flying guard. He also often serves as a personal bodyguard and sidekick to Sargatanas giving us a good view of the progression of the rebellion at least from the top down. Another viewpoint is the human soul Hani, who through Lilith's plotting is empowered to confront Sargatanas and strike a deal that might lead to freedom for himself and even possibly all the humans of Hell (Not Marx, but good!). This gives us a more bottom-up view, although it misses out completely on the bottom rungs of demonic society. We also get chapters from Lilith's viewpoint but she's not on the front lines, operating at a bit of a remove. For the most part, she is giving us an outsider's view and the view of a woman trying to create her own future and it's rather compelling. Mr. Barlowe does a good job of giving each of these characters their own voice and combining these voices and viewpoints to give us a fully realized story. It's a story that takes place in a strange, fascinating and excitingly scary world, the characters are interesting and honestly fairly sympathetic. Additionally, it's an action-packed story because the only way Sargatanas can really pursue his redemption and create a space for others to do so is to militarily overthrow Beelzebub and tear down the city of Dis before the Lord of Flies does the same to him. The military confrontations are well done and often nail-biting and the final confrontation is frankly amazing (Excellent!). 

That said, because the story doesn't give us a voice among the lower orders of Demon, we have no idea how the average demon on the street views this. Is Sargatanas quest for redemption something that will actually take hold among them or are they forced to simply march along with the orders of their superiors regardless of their own thoughts and feelings? Another issue I have is simply how human all the characters are. I mean Sargatanas and Lilith certainly carry baggage from their former lives but it ends up being played out via very human reactions and emotions. Now I can't go after Mr. Barlowe too harshly for that because if he made the characters too alien, the readers would be unable to connect to them. However, I think he erred on the side of making them too human and would have liked to see a bit more of a divide between them and human beings. I mean for example we get romantic and sexual behavior in this book from the Demons and I find myself asking... Why? Demons are immortal, they don't age and they don't reproduce, there are no baby Demons running about. So why do Demons have the physical equipment for sexual behavior and the urges to engage in it? (The Lord works in strange and horny ways?) Because we see Demons on all sides engage in it. Now romance is a different matter but it would have been an interesting difference to see Lilith, who was a human being fully capable of romantic feelings and behavior, and the other Demons not so much.  Now, this is balanced out by Hani and other souls having viewpoints that wouldn't fit in well in the modern-day.  They feel like people who have been trapped in an awful situation and now see a way out.  They just don't get as much screen time as the Demons because this isn't primarily their story.  I should also note that theology is a bit basic, you won't see complex or involved arguments here. The problem is that everyone accepts Sargatanas premise that the Demons were wrong to rebel without any debate with the counterargument from Beelzebub about why redemption has no place in hell, get back to your place below me in the pyramid. While I agree with Sargatanas, I would have liked to see someone at least argue with him a little. As it is, it feels like everyone in his feudal domain falls into line with his reasoning way to easily. Despite that, I really did enjoy this book, it's the quest of a single person to create the possibility of something better for himself and the people around him. Sargatanas isn't just trying to get to Heaven but trying to create a path of redemption out of Hell itself. The quest to create some hope, even in the darkest of places is a powerful one and Mr. Barlowe isn't afraid to treat it as the epic action it is. A quick note before giving my grade, this book does take place in Hell, so there are a lot of scenes that could be disturbing. While Mr. Barlowe avoids being explicit or graphic there are disturbing scenes and a good number of them. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone easily troubled. With that warning, I'm giving God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe a B+ and I do recommend it. 

    So this is our last review of the year, we will be returning in January on the 22nd. If you would like a vote on what the first review of the year will be, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where a dollar a month gets you a vote on upcoming reviews, themes, and more. The vote for the first review of the month will close on January 12th. Until then from your editor and myself let me say Happy Holidays, may you and your loved ones stay safe and as always Keep Reading.

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Perdido Street Station By China Meiville

 Perdido Street Station

By China Meiville

  Dr. Mieville was born in Norwich on September 6th, 1972 but his parents separated fairly soon after he was born and he was moved to the city that clearly maintains an iron hold on his heart and subconscious, London. He grew up with his sister Jemima and his mother Claudia Mieville who was a translator, writer, and teacher. She was born in New York City and because of that Dr. Meiville holds dual citizenship in the US and the UK. For much of his life, his father was absent, they only met a handful of times and his father passed away when Dr. Mieville was 19. When his mother moved out of London in his late teens, Dr. Mieville went on a scholarship to a boarding school, Oakham, a private school (although the English call their private schools, public schools, thus maintaining the separation by common language across the ocean). After spending two fairly unhappy years (Because British boarding schools are often hellpits.) there, he took a gap year in Egypt and Zimbabwe, in Egypt he taught English and developed an interest in Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics before it was cool. After that, he headed off to Cambridge to read English (Basically majoring in English) but feeling constrained by it switched to a much more interesting study of anthropology (I bet that makes you feel validated!). Now before this, he had been involved in the CND and anti-apartheid campaigns but it was at Cambridge that he started a turn towards Marxism (Yaaas!  For reference, Dr. Meiville is a Trotskyite.  I am not going to hold that against him in the name of left-unity.  Trotsky was a pretty cool dude for a human icepick stand.).  He graduated in 1994 and gained a master's degree and Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics in 2001. He also ended up holding a Frank Knox Fellowship at Harvard University for a year. His understandable dissatisfaction with postmodernism to explain historical or political events led him to fully embrace Marxism at that time. 

It was during all of this that he published his first book, King Rat, in 1998, set in a fictionalized version of London's club scene, where a young man deals with the fact that he is half rat and being framed for his father's murder (I mean… dealing with the fact?   That seems like the kind of thing you come to terms with in your teens.{well he finds all of this out after coming home to his father’s dead body and being arrested for the murder} Oh.  That’ll do it.). It was very well received getting nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for first novel and the International Horror Guild Award for first novel. He followed that up with the first book set in his alternate universe of Bas-lag and the City of New Crobuzou, the subject of this week's review. Since then he has won the Arthur C Clarke Award 3 times, the British Fantasy Award twice, Locus Awards, a Hugo award, Nebulas, and more. Additionally, he stood for election in the 2001 general election as a candidate for the Socialist Alliance and was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (My kinda guy.). His works have been for the most part widely considered great examples of the New Weird style of fiction. Which has a lot of conflicting definitions but is mainly interested in mixing things up, merging street culture with ancient mythology, subverting genre expectations, and trying for new mixes of science fiction, fantasy, and often urban writing. I have my own opinions on it but I'll hold on to them for now. For reasons I haven't been able to find he has been a victim of online stalking and harassment as well as outright defamation mostly since 2017. Because of this, I have been very careful to try and use only confirmable information in this work and try my best to avoid spreading anything I wasn't sure of. I do want to take a moment to decry this behavior, just because someone writes something you don't care for is not a reason to harass or stalk them. Dr. Meiville may have personal politics that some dislike (Certainly not your editor.) but he doesn't call for anyone to be harmed or subjected to state violence. There are certainly limits to tolerance, we should never tolerate people who call for the death or brutalization of people for circumstances of their birth for example. Those kinds of beliefs and people have no place here and should be ejected, my advice is don't game with them, don't review them, don't read them. However, someone who wants to advocate for peaceful changes in our political and economic systems (that don't involve going after ethnic groups or marginalized peoples) should be able to do so without being subjected to a campaign of aggression or attack. It is frankly shameful that he has been subjected to such and I'm going to say this, stop stalking, harassing, or otherwise persecuting people whose only issue is that they have beliefs you don't like (Unless of course, such people are calling for your own death or the deaths of others. {At that point it’s self-defense to get rid of them post haste} I have no problem punching Nazis in the face. I just want to make it perfectly clear that Your Reviewer is not endorsing a fascist-tolerant position.  I don’t want him misconstrued.). You're not a hero for doing so, you are in fact one of the bad guys and that's all I have to say about that. Let's instead finally turn to Perdido Street Station shall we? 

Our novel takes place in the city of New Crobuzon built beneath the titanic ribs of some ancient beast, the city serves as a setting and a character within the story. It is a wealthy, powerful city whose influence stretches across the world buoyed by dark magics and darker sciences. Where even the powers of Hell maintain an embassy for the Lord Mayor to maintain relations and avoid certain misunderstandings. It is a savage city where the majority of its citizens groan under gilded age levels of exploitation and oppression, where political parties fight over dividing the people along species lines or uniting across those lines to fight against upper-class interests (Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!). A repressed city where most of its citizens are denied the vote, except for the wealthy and powerful, and those lucky enough to win the suffrage lottery. Where underground unions foment illegal strikes to demand 8 hour working days and minimum wages, where printing the idea maybe the City Militia instead of operating masked or in plain clothes should operate openly and that citizens should have rights beyond what they can buy gets your paper labeled a criminal publication (So basically Czarist Russia and the German Empire, with an Ambassador from Perdition.{With a heavy English flavor, they call their government Parliament after all}). It goes hard for those who make an enemy of the City Militia who lurks in overhead airships and has filled the teeming streets with informers and secret agents. A city where being convicted of the wrong crime can get you not only enslaved but remade. Remaking is something I would label a dark science, where people are reshaped often against their will, in state-owned factories with combinations of biological grafts or cybernetic implants. Often turning men and women into nothing more than intelligent industrial tools for the use of the powerful. I honestly find the technology level truly interesting here because they have airships and something even worse than a nuclear bomb but at the same time, flintlock pistols are the height of personal weaponry. Unless you get convicted of a crime and turned into a living flamethrower or something. New Crobuzon is a city at war with itself, more concerned with keeping its underclass down than fighting organized crime because quite frankly there are times where it's hard to tell organized crime apart from the government (They are one in the same, in such systems.). Despite all of this New Crobuzon is an economic and cultural powerhouse that can reach across the world despite being a single city-state. The artists of the city constantly push boundaries, while the magic users and scientists dig deeper into the mysteries of the universe. As long as they can find people willing to pay for the knowledge anyway. 

Issac Grimnebulin is one of those scientists, even if he's at the barely respectful fringe of scientific society. He lives outside the constraints of academia mainly because he realized that not only was he a terrible teacher and that he hated teaching (I can relate.  I am good at it, I just hate grading.{Every teacher I’ve ever known hates grading}), he hated the fact that he was wrecking his students even more. So he bailed from the university to set up his own lab in a warehouse and using contacts and project work bought and/or looted his own lab equipment and set about doing science for hire to fund his own research. I have to admit I have quite a bit of respect for Issac, as my own time in university was full of professors who didn't give a good damn if they were decent teachers or not. Hell, I had professors who were outright proud of doing a crap job of being teachers, or at least I have no other way of processing a person who walks into a 202 class and brags about a 30 percent failure rate (I had one who was a really good teacher who did that.  But it was because if you can’t understand genetics or won’t do the work, you have no business going into medicine and thus genetics was a weeder course for the Pre-Meds. He didn’t boost that failure rate either.  He gave us all of his old tests. {Sure but there’s a difference between having a subject so complex that a number of students just aren’t gonna get it and bragging about how you like to wash people out of a class that is covering material of moderate difficulty at best} Yes.). Look I get that student apathy and laziness account for a lot but frankly bragging about how you try to boost the failure rate of your class suggests that not only are you a lousy teacher but you're on a sadistic power trip and shouldn't be in the classroom. So full respect to Isaac for refusing to punish bright eager young folks for his disinterest or inability to transmit understanding and instead chose a harder path (And in this capitalist hellscape, it definitely is a hard one.). He's not the only one because there are several Rogue Scientists who are working on disapproved but not disproven theories. Issac also maintains a bit of a roguish lifestyle, this is clearly seen in his relationship with Lin. Lin is an artist which already makes them a strange pair but on top of that Lin is a Khepri, a non-human who very closely resembles a human female body with a large scarab beetle for a head. I don't mean a beetle's head but the whole beetle with wings and legs fused onto a humanoid body. Now all humanoid Khepri are female, the males are lobster sized beetles that are non-sapient. Lin practices a traditional Khepri art using an organic paste that she chews and then extrudes from an orifice in the rear of her head as a fast-drying spit that becomes fairly strong and durable. The Khepri use this to make sculptures via group work but Lin defies that tradition by working alone and focusing on subjects and styles that the Khepri find nontraditional. For example, using tools to enhance the details of her work. She and Issac are lovers in a relationship that is something of an open secret because society demands they at least put some effort into covering it up. Cross relationships or cross-sex as people in this setting call it isn't uncommon and is fine as long as it's causal. It's even considered normal if you just pay for it. Having a loving adult relationship with someone of a different species that involves sex that you both enjoy? That's terrible (Oh the scandal!  I can never judge anyone for this.  If Garrus were real…). On top of that Issac revels in using what some of us call his anarchist and criminals options to gather lab materials and subjects even when it would be less trouble to do it legally (I swear, I only ever use those options when it’s harder to get them legally.). Despite that, or maybe because of it, Issac can publish his work and enjoys a rather high reputation for his work to the point that someone is willing to cross seas, deserts, and all manner of wilderness to hire him to do the impossible, and Issac just can't say no. 

That someone is Yagharek, a garuda from the far off Cymek Desert. The garuda are a race of humanoid bird folk who can fly most likely due to magic since their wings are attached to their shoulders from the back. The same shoulders that their human-like arms are attached to (Yeah, it’s magical. The biomechanics of that just wouldn’t work.). Yagharek has trekked to New Crobuzon on foot because he can't fly anymore. He can't fly anymore because his own people tore his wings off! This was done to him due to a horrible crime he committed against another garuda, which they refer to as choice theft in the second degree with utter disrespect. While the facts of garuda society and beliefs are shared out sparing, spooled out at various points in the narrative. What we learn is that they are a fiercely communal people with a high level of individuality, they believe that an individual can only be fully realized and free within a community. They also believe that stealing a choice from another is the only crime there is. To the garuda, someone who steals your car is committing a crime, but not because they took your property but because they robbed you of the choice to drive your car, to sell it or give it away, or to not use your car at all (Honestly, I kinda like this conception.). All these things are valid choices that have been taken from you by a thief, who has also disrespected you personally by treating you as a resource to exploit rather than a concrete and real person whose choices matter. It's an incredibly interesting world view with some profound implications that we sadly don't really get to dig into. Because while Yagharek's desire to fly again is our inciting incident, it's not the crisis point of the book. Yagharek's obsession with reachiving flight becomes Issac's obsession when Yagharek offers him a bag of pure gold nuggets to get it done and Issac is prepared to do anything he can to make it happen. Unfortunately, an inability to teach isn't Issac's only character flaw, there's also a huge streak of impulsiveness and a tendency to not really think through the implications of his actions. This leaves me wondering how he has avoided burning down his own lab at this point and becoming a cautionary tale to students to think their experiments through lest you burn to death like poor old Issac the rogue scientist (My guess is that the impulsivity only applies operationally, not tactically, so to speak? {Hard to say, he’s one of the guys who does things according to the method but depends more on inspirational jumps then grinding out data from small steps}). Then again Issac does metaphorically end up burning down his lab here, the problem is he might end up taking the city with it! Because of that love of using his criminal and anarchist options? That ends up going poorly when he gets something delivered to him that he really shouldn't have gotten when he asked for examples of all types of flying creatures or creatures that go from a nonflying to flying status. Like, say caterpillars, that are somehow connected to the hot new drug of dreamshit that is taking the city underbelly by storm. Just one pellet will let you experience dozens of other people's dreams, thoughts, and nightmares. No one knows where dreamshit comes from, how it's made, or what it really does to its users but that's not stopping people from jumping on it. So what is this caterpillars' connection? What has Yagharek and Issac stumbled onto and how many people are going to end up paying the cost for it. 

Meanwhile, Lin has managed to get into a tricky entanglement of her own when she is somewhat forcibly hired by the mob boss Mr. Motley. Mr. Motley is clearly insane, having remade his own body so many times that it's actually an amorphous collection of body parts from animals and other races hammered together in a chaotic mockery of a humanoid form (No kink-shaming, but body modification can go too far, kids.). So of course he wants someone to sculpt him so he can enjoy the work of insane art that is his body. Lin is stuck trying to navigate a situation where she keeps enough favor from a man who is clearly unstable that he doesn't beat her to death but doesn't get pulled too deeply into his business that she can never leave. It doesn't help that she does this without telling Issac anything thinking to herself that ignorance is what will keep him safe (Word to the wise, kids.  It is never a good idea to think that not informing someone you love of something like that will keep them safe.). I'm just gonna say this folks, that never works. As Lin and Issac strive to keep their entanglements in the shadowy world of crime a secret from one another, events catch up to them and they find themselves dragged into a dark world of secrets, plots, and deeds fouler than any gutter sleeping homeless man could even dream about because they're the kind of vile sins you can only really do if you have money and minions (The rich really are capable of whole new levels of villainy.{resources and power bring greater opportunity and choice is all} Also I kinda figure it’s like drugs.  The little acts of assholery just don’t cut it after a while, and suddenly you find yourself on Epstein's Island.{I don’t know, seems like there’s plenty of rich dudes who don’t turn into screaming manics}). 

Because the secret behind that caterpillar and the dreamshit drug is the kind of secret that would be ruinous to the government if exposed and worse could lead to the deaths of a lot of people. Because if things do get out of control? An invasive predatory species that is so scary that even demons won't screw around with it could end up getting unleashed on the city. A city that for all its skill in dark magic and dark science has no idea how to combat a threat like this and whose government has of course taken every step necessary to ensure that they will be exposed to this threat if even a low-level clerk makes the wrong move (Which they always do, eventually.). This is on top of the unrest and simmering discontent of a population being ground under in the worse of Gilded age excess and aggressive upper-class heel grinding (Eat the Rich {Please note this review does not condone eating people}). Because adding to the tension is the fact that the unions are stirring and people like Derkhan Blueday, art critic by day, socialist muckraker by night are frantically working to expose as much government corruption and double-dealing as they can (My spirit animal.). Derkhan is also, unfortunately for her, a friend of Issac and Lin's so when the tide of events threatens to pull them under, she's going right along with them. Meanwhile, a remade who has slipped his leash named Jack Half A Prayer is outright fomenting armed revolution by murdering Militia members and informants whenever he can find them (Good {considering they torture and kill without trail, I’m feeling at very worse this is a gander and goose situation, at best, justified resistance} At that point it’s like giving Nazis a drumhead-trial in the woods.  Nothing of value is lost.). Most of this is happening in the background but bubbles over into the main story with Jack functioning as more of a Chekov's Gun than an actual character. There's in fact a number of these in the story that help the setting feel very real, like a trio of adventurers that get hired to help out Issac, much to his disgust, that plainly signal that Dr. Mieville has not only played a good amount of D&D but was often a character of less than sterling motives. Which makes him a member of a long and proud tradition if we're going, to be honest. 

Perdido Street Station is a sordid and epic tale featuring flawed but mostly decent protagonists whose own mistakes and talents have placed them in a horrible and deadly situation. Issac, Derkhan, and the others aren't hardened adventurers or professionals in violence but people from the fringes of respectable society who lose their grip on that fringe and find themselves in the dark underbelly with little in the way of recourse or hope of rescue beyond what they can provide for themselves. As such they are up against vastly more powerful and dangerous opponents and enemies but they're not without advantages. Issac's talents manage to win him allies in strange places and Derkhan's journalistic skills lend themselves well to disguise and stealth. Of course in a world where reporting the truth is a crime, journalists have to adopt more criminal methods than ones we would be used to. The setting presented is fantastic in the extreme but feels very real, as Dr. Mieville presents a place with wonders and terrors, with people trying to do good, despite all manner of degradation and degeneracy going on. The book itself has a bit of a slow start but once the main threat shows up speeds rapidly with the pace getting a bit odd at the end. The ending itself however is full of consequences and is rather hard-hitting. I do think some elements could have used some work, for example maybe Jack could have been a character instead of a plot device, given the role he plays in the end. The plot itself is well done but some parts feel over-padded like Issac's first attempts at figuring out flight and some parts could be cut out completely like his trip to the squatter's town outside of New Crobuzon that ended up having no impact on the story or the plot at all. That said, I would never have believed that this was Dr. Mievilles second novel, it reads like a veteran work and I can see how it earned the reputation it has as a stand out example of new weird fiction. For myself, I'm giving Perdido Street Station by China Mieville an A-. It's not without its flaws but in my opinion, managed to rise above them to deliver a hell of a read. 

    So the end of this year is thankfully soon upon us.  With the last book of the year having been chosen by our ever-wise Patrons God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe.  After that, the review series will return on the 22nd of January.  If you like a vote on what review we greet 2021 with, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where a vote is as little as a dollar a month.  We will see you next week and until then, stay safe and Keep Reading. 

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black Text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

The Burning God By RF Kaung

 The Burning God

By RF Kaung

There's always a bit of satisfaction when I complete a book series for this review. Especially one as powerful and fascinating as this one. Since it's been two years since the first book let's catch up with just who Ms. Kaung is.  Ms. Kuang was born in Guangzhou, China on May 29th, 1996. In the year 2000 her father - a former student who was at Tiananmen Square (I will resist the temptation.) - took his family to Dallas Texas where Ms. Kuang grew up. She graduated from the Greenhill school in 2013 and, attracted by the debate team, attended Georgetown University. She took a gap year in China working as a debate coach and like many newly liberated students found herself feeling strange without the specter of homework hanging over her every moment (I sympathize with this since I started this book review series when I finished my own time in college). So she decided to write a book. She was nineteen. The book was published when she was twenty-two, in 2018. The Poppy Wars was a big hit, being nominated for the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award for best novel. The fans of the novel would award their own somewhat tongue in cheek nickname for her of Grimdark's Darkest Daughter. The sequel The Dragon Republic was released in 2019 and earned a spot on Time magazine's list of 100 best fantasy novels. Meanwhile, Ms. Kaung had headed off to Cambridge having gained a Marshall Scholarship and earned a Masters of Philosophy in Chinese Studies. In 2019 she attended Oxford and earned a Masters of Science in Contemporary Chinese Studies. In the fall of 2020, she returned to the United States, to pursue a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Literature. To say she's an expert on China and Chinese culture and history is one way of putting it, another way is if you're reading this review odds are you're not qualified to explain Chinese history to her (I await the neckbeards…). That said, let's turn to the Burning God!

At the end of the last book Fang Runin, known as Rin to her vanishingly small circle of friends, had realized that her biggest problem facing her nation of Nikara wasn't the remaining Mugenese soldiers who were trapped in Nikara or the feuding factions of Nikarans who were turning on each other for power as the nation fell apart around them. It was in fact the imperialist Hesperians (Good.), the Hesperians are a coalition of powers united by a single monotheist religion and a drive to unite the world under a single world order (Fuck that shit, in all its forms!). Now, they're not looking to formally conquer Nikara and turn them into an imperial possession like the Mugenese were, before Rin kinda... Exploded their country using the power of her Shamanistic connection to the god of destruction to commit genocide. Instead, they're looking to turn Nikara into a puppet state that they can exploit for cheap labor and natural resources to maintain prosperity in their own home nations (Gee!  Where on earth have we seen this before? {Pretty much everywhere humans developed societies honestly}). While this is theoretically less brutal in that the guys being sent to work the mines and factories are at least being paid, we're still looking at a lot of people being oppressed and suffering under a boot, if not just outright worked to death for pennies. There was, however, a seductiveness there because unlike the Mugenese, the Hesperians would bring medicine, food, superior technology that would again in theory at least improve the lives of the average Nikarans. As long as they converted to the Hesperian religion, adopted Hesperian practices, and learned Hesperian languages anyway. Of course, Rin only realized this after helping the Hesperians chosen puppet, the House of Yin crush most of the organized resistance to their rule (Ugh.). It doesn't help that the Hesperians loathe her personally. Let me explain. 

The Hesperians are monotheists who believe in a god of order they call the Divine Architect. As such they don't believe that Rin is touching the Divine at all through her Shaman powers but is instead a conduit for Chaos and therefore is anathema to everything good and decent in life. Now Rin is a chaos bringer and burning bundle of destruction but to be honest she didn't need Shamen powers for that. Her own natural gifts and complete and total inability to make good decisions while naturally being thrust into the right time and place for her decisions to matter are more than enough (Ouch!  But there is no lie in this statement.). Although I'll admit her kill count would be millions less without those powers. That being said the Hesperians want her, personally, to study to find a way to suppress and/or turn off her powers. The thing is, I can kind of see why. I mean the Cike, the small elite group of Shamen that were used by the Nikara Empire and later the Nikara Republic was not only able to bring about mass destruction but all of them were doomed to slide into insanity and be taken over by the god they were connected to. This would turn them into engines of mass destruction that would keep going until killed (I can certainly see the point in at least learning to control that shit, but then again, if the imperialists want me to do something, I am unlikely to say yes.). The only other way is to imprison the Shamen in a prison of enchanted stone in a specific sacred mountain, where they will remain alive and screaming in a tomb of stone... Forever. Becoming a Shamen means embracing a short, terrifying life that will end in insanity and pain... If you're lucky (Reminds  me of the rise of the Great Old Ones.{While I don’t think the gods of the Nikarans could be directly compared to the Great Old Ones, they are elemental forces older than the universe that simply do not give a shit about us, our morality or our delusions of grandeur}). Of course, the Hesperians are also incredibly vile racists who barely see the Nikarans as human and want to force them to live under Hesperian rules. So they're not doing this out of any desire to make Rin or her countrymen's lives better but to remove something they can't understand or control from the world. This also leads to them using the cruelest and most questionable of methods because why bother with a drop of kindness if you're dealing with subhuman beasts goes their reasoning. 

To combat this Rin has fled to the south to rally the reviled masses of her nation. You see Nikara itself isn't free of bigotry. The northern part of Nikara has long considered itself more advanced, more sophisticated, and just outright better than the south. As a result, southerners are looked down on as bumbling hicks at best, natural serfs at worse. This has built up a lot of resentment that Rin intends to weaponize and point at the northern-based Nikaran Republic and their Hesperian backers. Of course, she'll have to deal with the elites of the South, their factional politics, and the thousands of Mugenese soldiers still in Nikara with nowhere else to go (Sounds like a lot of hard work…). Assuming she can keep the leaders of the south from selling her out to the North. She then has to organize the people of the South into being able to effectively resist a power that can strike them from the air with impunity but Rin might have her own weapons that will bring terror and destruction on a scale even the Hesperians can't match. Assuming those weapons don't doom her first. Even then, it's not over because in the last book we learned that Rin's rival from her military academy days, Yin Nezha, is himself a Shamen of the Dragon, an elemental force that could be considered the equal opposite of her own patron the Phoenix. This means the House of Yin is basically trying to have it both ways. In this, however, she at least has something of an advantage as she is much more practiced with her powers than Nezha but is that enough of an advantage when Nezha not only has a better supplied and more advanced force but a more unified one? 

Now as you can guess the Poppy Wars series owes a lot to the experience of China in the opening decades of the 20th century. In a lot of ways, Ms. Kuang is pulling from the story of her own family, not just the story of China. If you have even a passing familiarity with the history of China in the 20th century then you can see a lot of the same beats and broad characterizations. The Empress Daji and the House of Yin despite being at odds with one another both take on characteristics of the Nationalist Chinese forces. The Mugenese are very close analogs to the Japanese(Including the nuking!). The Hesperians are basically all the western powers (the US included folks[And how!]) eager to get at the wealth and labor of Nikara and not caring about the damage they cause while getting it. I've run into some people asking if all the atrocities in these books were present in the real history and I'm just gonna say that Ms. Kaung actually misses a couple of the smaller ones that I'm aware of, which I assume is a combination of a lack of space and the fact that she needed to stay focused on the characters here. So if you found the fantasy series upsetting wait until you actually look at the history it's sourced from (Can confirm). That said this is not a one-to-one copy of the Chinese experience in WWII or the 1930s and 20s, for one thing, Ms. Kaung is more creative than that and for another she allows the characters to have a big enough impact on the world around them to change things. For one thing, having been to Japan I can confirm it was not reduced to ash choked wasteland forever with every last living thing burnt to death or buried under magma and ash (Which is good.  Though Unit 731 needed to be shot, not paperclipped.). 

Ms. Kaung's focus on the characters is a major strength in this series and she keeps it up in the last book. She also remains utterly and completely committed to the theme of Rin making bad decisions. Make no mistake here, while Rin's story is a tragedy, it's one entirely of her own making as she spurns chance after chance to choose something else. There are mitigating factors of course, but Rin at every step sacrificed everything else to pursue the fastest route to power. At every step she encountered resistance she moved to greater and greater savagery until we've reached the point where it could be argued that she has done as much damage to Nikara as anyone else. Which does a marvelous example of displaying the limits of raw power in the story. Now she's not alone in this, the elite classes of Nikara were more than happy to put their own struggles for power and position over the wellbeing of their nation or people. Those who were outright collaborating with foreign invaders were more than happy to knife each other for scraps. For that matter within Rin's own social circle, we have the genius Kitay who basically enables Rin in all her bad decisions even when he knows it's a bad idea. Nezha himself is often in the position of pouring gas on this fire given his weird relationship of hate-lust with Rin where they barrel from near romance to literal knives in the back. At every step of the way, Ms. Kaung fully embraces the implications of the character dynamics and their decisions and writes the consequences believably, vividly, and mercilessly. This whole series has been a screaming train ride towards a single end and in this final book, Ms. Kaung gives us that final train crash in all it's you-can't-look-away horror and glory. Now that said, she also knows how to avoid going overboard and embracing darkness for darkness sake. Throughout the book, there are humanizing moments of friendship, family, and willingness to sacrifice for the right thing that keeps this book from turning into an unbearable slog through suffering. There's also the underlying idea that none of this is pointless, that something better might eventually arise, and that at some point the killing can stop and the healing slowly start. This is important because without those humanizing elements and the sense that something else is possible then the books lose their emotional impact and Ms. Kaung displays that she is fully aware of that. More so than some veterans of the craft. That said if dark fantasy isn't your cup of tea, you may want to try something else but if you can stand some darkness then you should definitely get on Rin's wild ride. Just don't pretend you're surprised by how it ends. I'm giving The Burning God by RF Kaung an A and I encourage everyone to give this series a try. 

    I hope you enjoyed this week's review and had a Happy Thanksgivings folks. Next week's review as chosen by our ever wise patrons is Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. If you'd like a vote on upcoming reviews, themes, or even a look at other projects coming up... Join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Until then stay safe, happy holidays and as always Keep Reading!

The red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

The rest of the text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Elves Volume 2: Honor of the Sylvan Elves By Jarry Nicholas

 Elves Volume 2: Honor of the Sylvan Elves

By Jarry Nicholas

So quick note before I jump in here, if you look for this book on Amazon, you might find a different graphic novel of the same series. Which is sold on Comixlogy as Volume III, from what little I can dig up (we at the review series, unfortunately, lack French speakers[Look, it is on the list.  But I speak German and am simultaneously studying Spanish and Russian.]), The Honor of the Sylvan Elves was packaged in Volume I Crystal of the Blue Elves. So if you're looking at a different story than the one I'm reviewing that's why. Anyways, Elves takes place in the same world as the by now familiar Dwarves comic only focusing on the stories of the Elvish people who seem broadly divided into 5 ethnic groups or ideologies. We have the withdrawn White Elves, the seafaring Blue Elves, the wood-dwelling Sylvan Elves, the corrupt Dark Elves, and of course, the disdained by everyone Half-Elves (Poor half-elves). As you can guess from the title this story focuses mostly on the Sylvan Elves or rather their relationship and history with humanity. Let's jump on in shall we.

The Princess Lladi of the city of Eysine has a problem. Well to be honest, she has several, but the most pressing problem is the large army of mercenary Orcs and Goblins laying siege to her kingdom and tearing it up bit by bit (That would in fact be a problem.). This mercenary army works for a confederation of merchant dominated cities out on the archipelago, who have decided to make a play for regional hegemony. They're doing this through a combination of brutal economic warfare by buying up commodities like wheat to drive up the price and forcing local kingdoms to take out large loans to... Buy enough food to feed people. They then use the terms of the loans to basically seize power in the local kingdoms turning the feudal rulers into puppets (So, how soft-colonialism works in the developing world by way of the IMF and World Bank.  Gotcha!). We will now pause to allow the editor time and space for his anti-capitalism rant (Oh, I am way ahead of you buddy! {Was also shorter than I expected, are you feeling alright?}  Yeah I am cool.  Just also writing communist Harry Potter fanfic that will make JK Rowling scream.). However, the city-state of Eysine has managed to resist this because they control a strategic set of straits that they charge a toll to passing ships to allow them through (Normally I oppose rent-seeking like this, but you do what you can to ward off Imperialism.). This has allowed them to feed their people and leave the ancient forests of the elves alone instead of mortgaging out their children to be chattel for amoral merchants or committing to a savage race war with the Elves to seize enough land to feed themselves (This is right-neighborly of them.). The merchants of course can't have that, which is where the Mercenary Armies of Orcs and Goblins come in. With their traditional allies refusing to march since they're now fully owned clients of the archipelago, the men of Eysine are slowly being pushed back and attritted away by a seemingly unending mass of Orcs. However, Princess Lladi is more than a pretty face or a bargaining chip for royal marriages, she's a woman with a solution. If the merchants are going to hire Orcish mercenaries to burn her kingdom to the ground, she'll get her own mercenary army. An Elvish Army (Good for her!).

Ranger and Prince of Elves Yfass is an elf with a problem. When a human woman comes running into the forest with a company of Orcs and Goblins on her heels and rushes into a ruin that is sacred to the elves, it seems a simple enough thing. Kill them all, let the crows sort them out, no one who isn't an elf leaves the forest alive (It is The Way.). That's been the rule since he was a small child, which was so long ago that the cities of men were simple towns with wooden walls. Things get complicated however when he finds out there are a lot more Orcs than he thought and the human woman channels the spirit of the ruins to cast magic and destroy the Orcs that were about to kill him. This complicates things because, well now he owes his life to this woman, and murdering people who have saved your life is rude (And sometimes The Way It Has Always Been Done needs to change.). Second, a human shouldn't haven't been able to channel that kind of magic reserved for natural spirits, elves, and the extinct order of human Druids. The Druids kept humanity in balance with nature and the elves, when they were wiped out by some unknown force, humanity was left without guidance. Without guidance humanity developed into a species out of balance with its environment or so the elves claim. This human woman named Lladi however could be the beginning of a whole new order of Druids bringing back balance and possibly rebuilding the human-elf alliance (Which would definitely be a good thing, given that those filthy fucking Imperialists won’t stop with human territories.  They’ll colonize the elves next.{Elf elders are pretty confident they don’t need grubby human allies to resist aggression and seem much more focused on the status quo.  Oddly short-sighted for people who’ve lived generations don’t you think?} Very.). Which would secure the wilderness that the Sylvan elves live in for another 1000 years at least. So why are his elders so hostile to her and so determined to see her dead? Why does his Mother the Queen heal her wounds and demand he be allowed to make his case and stand dead silent and unmoving otherwise?

Elves Volume II is a story of old secrets coming back to haunt everyone and causing new problems. Despite that, though, it is also a story of Yfass and Lladi bridging the gap between cultures and ages to come to a new understanding and the possibility of new hope. Now I liked both characters and the plot and the secrets buried within it were interesting. The art was nice and drew a sharp distinction between the increasingly urbanized and often wartorn human world and the wild but timeless elvish world. However, there simply wasn't enough space for the plot to really delve into things and it moved fast and at the expense of characterization. Mr. Nicholas responds to this by doubling down on his main characters, which leaves them feeling a bit isolated in a world of underdeveloped supporting characters but I suppose that's better than the alternative. This is a shame because Lladi's family had the potential to be great characters in their own right as did Yfass's foster brother and his elders. Despite the lack of space, I did feel it was better than average but not that much. Elves Volume II Honor of the Sylvan Elves by Jarry Nicholas gets a C+ from me. I hope to see something grow from this though.

Elves Volume II: Honor of the Sylvan Elves by Jarry Nicholas was chosen by our ever-wise patrons. Our patrons get to vote on what books or comics get reviewed, discuss and have final approval on theme months (for example October's Fangsgiving) and more. If you'd like to get a vote for as little a dollar a month, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Next week, we finish the Poppy War with The Burning God by R.F. Kuang. Let us rejoice in what Grimdark's darkest daughter brings us. Until then, stay safe and Keep Reading!