The Hidden City By Michelle Michiko Sagara West

 The Hidden City

By Michelle Michiko Sagara West

I'll be referring to Michelle West by her married name for convenience sake but she was born Michelle Michiko Sagara, the first child of Japanese immigrants to Canada. She was born May 5th, 1963 in East York, Ontario where she grew up reading Nancy Drew, the widely varied works of Enid Blyton - an English writer who was so prolific that rumors she employed entire armies of ghostwriters would dog her until she died - and of course, JRR Tolkien. She attended the University of Toronto to study physics and English but dropped out to write, turning in her first novel in 1987 when it was rejected by Del Ray books. But they did it by calling her up directly, so she doggedly revised the manuscript and sent it back. This time it reached the great Lester Del Ray, who sent her a 4-page letter of corrections, among them a note that if you're gonna write a 97-page flashback, the flashback should be the first book in the series (He’s got a point.). Mrs. West, who got married in 1990 while all of this was going on, wrote that novel, turned it in, and saw it published in 1991 under the title of Into the Dark Lands. Since then she’s written at least 34 novels that I could track down, an army of short stories, and about 56 book review columns for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. During all of this, she has also, amazingly, managed to raise two sons with her long-suffering husband. Considering the struggles I've had to write these reviews and do anything else, I’ve got to say I respect her work ethic. Let's turn to the book though.

So a bit of back story, The Hidden City, despite being held up by some of Mrs. West's fans as a great jumping-on point is kind of awkwardly placed in the timeline. It's something of a prequel to the Sun Sword series in that it takes place before the events of that series but it's also deeply tied to those events, and Ms. West would later confess that she hadn't considered that some lunk like myself would wander into her universe on this book without reading the Sun Sword series first. This is one of the dangers of writing more than one series set in the same world, especially series that end being closely related and even overlapping. I'm not going to beat this point into the ground, I'm just going to note for any growing writers reading this, there's nothing wrong with writing closely related series that interlace or take place closely together. Just make sure that each series can stand on its own okay?

The Hidden City takes place in the capital of the Essalieyan Empire, Averalaan. However, you won't get a look at lofty imperial politics or the wealth of empire here. This book takes place in the streets and slums of the great city, as a result, you're barely aware that wealth and power on a large scale flow not too far from the main characters and their struggles (Wasted opportunity for class struggle?). Which I honestly rate as a point in the book's favor, showing how that despite being so close together that often the elite classes of an empire and the underclass might as well live on different planets (Problem is, they do, but the wealthy like to lord it over the underclass.  So the underclass should be able to see, but not touch.  Also eat the rich.{Nonsense, that’s what servants are for.  No reason to see the actual underclass}) but let's take a look at our characters. The book focuses but doesn't turn on the efforts of two protagonists: Old Rath and Jewel “Jay” Markess. Old Rath is a man who works and lives alone, unearthing the artifacts of a fallen and mostly forgotten empire whose relics can be identified by runes that only a few people even remember exist, let alone can read. A man sank into his old grievances and grudges, barely interested in the common man. Until Jewel tries to steal from him. Jewel, or Jay as she prefers to be called, is a newly orphaned girl trying to survive.  What grabs Old Rath's interest are two things; her ability to block his dagger strike despite an utter lack of training and her refusal to surrender the core of her morality even as the streets of Averalaan try to pull her into brutality and savagery. When Old Rath decides to take her in when fever strikes her down and in the midst of her fever she tells him a vision that ends up saving his life, their relationship is set. Although there are going to be some bumps along the road of course.

While Rath is more or less uninterested in his fellow man, Jay is committed to helping as many people as she can, her mystic visions guiding her to other street children who need her. So Rath finds his home filling up with children for a purpose he doesn't understand but finds himself increasingly committed to. Jay for her own part cannot explain it to Rath because she doesn't understand it herself, only that she can help these children and she needs to. Here we're introduced to a good number of supporting characters such as the large Arann and mangled Lefty, streetwise Carver, and others. Then Jay has a vision that leads her to rescue a girl named Finch, who reveals that she escaped a child brothel. There's only really one response to finding out there's a child brothel in your neighborhood and if the cops won't do it, well, Rath hires a band of adventurers and gets it done. It's here that the plot finally starts to pick up when they meet the young lady Duster, who had freed Finch as much out of spite as a desire to do something good. As Rath finds himself pulled into an ancient conspiracy of demons who seek to twist and corrupt imperial society, Jay and Duster find themselves on a different playing field, which is vastly smaller but no less important. Playing for the fate of Duster's soul. Can Rath move past his old grudges long enough to gather the resources and aid he needs to combat the very soldiers of hell? Can Jay find a way for Duster to avoid becoming something akin to those demons in human form? Does Duster even want to avoid that fate, or will her bitterness and hate over a lifetime of abuse that no one should ever suffer push her over the line into only wanting to drown everyone else in her rage, hate, and pain? This is all the better done in that the battle for Duster's soul isn't one of magic and fireworks but of simple human choice.

So having come into this story without any background in this universe, I will say that the book does a good job standing on its own. You can read this book without knowing a damn thing about the other books and series and still get a good story out of it. However, I can't help but feel that certain scenes and characters are inserted not for the benefit of this book but for other books that either have already been written or were going to be written (The House War series has 7 more books after this). There's also a definite pacing problem here.  For example, I wasn't entirely sure what the plot of the book was for over 300 pages (out of 754). Contributing to that was the whole story of whether Rath would end up adopting Jay being stretched out over 100 pages (Good God), which was pointless. Because if Rath doesn't end up adopting Jay then he has no role in the story and the entire story changes.  We know Rath is going to adopt Jay by page 10, we don't need to see it dragged out so you can honestly do it in 50 or fewer pages.  A large amount of time is also taken up introducing characters that don't have a large impact on the story. The duo of Arann and Lefty gets a lot of space in the first 300 pages only to be more or less shoved to the side to make space for characters like Lander, Carver, Finch, and Duster. While Lefty does play a part in inventing a kind of sign language for the group and being a bone of contention between Duster and Jay, it's a role that could have been played by another one of the orphans pretty easily (for example yet another orphan named Teller could have taken that spot). I'm left feeling like some of the characters are required to be here so that the books that take place in the future make sense instead of because they're important to this specific story. So the book feels like it's at least 200 pages or so too big and should have been cut down some, as does the collection of characters.

Now that said, the book doesn't feel like a bloated mess, if there are scenes and plot beats that go on for too long, at least they're mostly in service of expanding on the characters and letting us get to know them. Because at the end of the book, we do actually get a good sense of the main characters and can at least tell the supporting cast apart. Additionally, Ms. West ensures that the reader at least understands what's going on and how everything is connected even if the characters don't. So it's very clear that Ms. West knows what she's doing and is at least a competent writer. Her ability to connect a large scale plot (literal demons are pretending to be wealthy men in the very heart of the Empire seeking to find weak and corruptible men for unknown reasons[I mean, that doesn’t seem like a plot that should take too terribly long.]) and a small scale plot (will Duster allow herself to become a weapon that spreads the same pain and hate that destroyed her childhood and marred her entire life?) is very well done. Although I think there is a bit of overuse of tell, she did back it up by showing the readers how they're related. I'll also note that these demons feel more like ancient creatures of sin and hate than many other depictions. There is something chilling in a major demon willing to take time out of his plot to corrupt an empire to tempt a preadolescent girl into betrayal and sin because he believes she's on the cusp of becoming something like a creature of darkness and hate and nurturing that is at least as important as speeding up the fall of an empire to him.  The fact that Ms. West sells that in a bare half a dozen pages tells me that she could have told this story in a lot fewer pages too! The end of this book is brutal and chilling but also manages to have uplifting and affirming ideas of healing and friendship. So whatever else, I can say that Ms. West knows how to manage an ending, which seems to be a rare skill these days.

So I'm left with decidedly mixed feelings about this book. At no point did I hate reading it and it was engaging enough that I enjoyed the characters but at the same time, the book took to long getting to the damn story. I should be able to tell you the plot of any book I'm reading in under 300 pages folks. This book had me unsure and guessing until nearly page 500 but it was a very readable 500 pages. I'll also admit this book has gotten me interested in looking at other works by Ms. West, so it's done a fairly good job there. That said, it's clearly a victim of the bloat that's infecting the fantasy genre as a whole these days. Folks, your novel does not have to be weighty enough to kill a medium-sized house pet for it to be good. Oh well, I will abide in hope that we can battle that back without going too far the other way. I'm giving the Hidden City by Michelle West a C+. It's better than average but the outlined issues hold it back. I don't think that would be a problem for people who have read the other works in this universe. So maybe start with the Sun Sword series?

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Black text is your editor Garvin Anders