The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston
For several years now, some SF critics have been talking about “the new weird,” a term for SF and fantasy that, as best I can tell, is defined by pointing at China Miéville. In fact, China and maybe M. John Harrison were the only people whose works everyone could agree were new weird. The new weird seems in part seems to be defined by the strangeness of the works (or perhaps more accurately the way the strange interacts with the familiar), though I think there is also something about character attitude, political stance, and maybe a bit of nastiness that also fits in. (Some have also defined it as a British movement, rejecting authors from other countries, but that’s a different issue.)
Until now, I was never able to point to any books other than those by China Miéville. Now I also have Steph Swainston’s Year of Our War, a very good, very inventive, very strange fantasy novel that definitely fits in with the new weird. It’s a wonderful first novel, set in a well constructed, believable, but quite strange fantasy world, populated by well drawn characters. It’s reminiscent of China Miéville’s works in some ways, but quite different in its own ways. Like Miéville’s novels also, it contains memorable scenes that stick with you long after some of the particulars of the plot begin to fade from memory.
The novel is set in the Fourlands, a world in which the three sentient species – humans and winged humanoids – have been at war against the insects – human-size insects which have by and large, as the novel starts, been confined to the Paperlands of the north. The world is overseen (ruled would be too strong a word) by a group of 50 immortals under the control of the Emperor. The Emperor has granted immortality to these fifty for their special skills – one is the world’s greatest warrior, another the world’s best archer, another the best sailor, and so on. The narrator, Jant Comet, is immortal because of his speed. He is a mixed breed, can fly, and is the fastest person in the world. He serves as the messenger for the immortals as they oversee the war between humans and insects. The immortals – who are much harder to hurt or kill than humans – serve as leaders in the war.
But Jant is also a drug addict, addicted to a heroin-like drug called cat. When Jant takes cat at near-overdose levels, he finds himself in a hallucinatory world called the Shift, people by even stranger and nastier characters than the Fourlands. It is also inhabited by a few people Jant knew in life, who died of overdoses. The Shift is nightmare like, and many of creatures populating it – creatures whose names and make-up seem to come from plays-on-words – give it an air of unreality. Yet, as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that the Shift hold the key to the war.
For early on in the novel, the Insect problem accelerates and the Insects swarm over much of the Fourlands. Sqabbles amongst the rulers – both immortals and immortals – make things worse. But the key to all of this lies within the Shift.
Jant is a well drawn and in the end a character the readers like. Despite his childhood of juvenile crime and his drug addiction, he has a strong moral base. He wants to do the best thing for his world and its people, he loves his wife, and has strong ties to several others in the world. There is a great scene where he has to overcome his own worst fears and his instincts to save a shipwrecked young girl.
Jant, as narrator, also helps structure the novel. It’s a fast paced novel, filled with incidents that come one after the other. Jant, as the messenger who flies rapidly from one area to the next, is thus the ideal focal character, in that he has to be everywhere, and he has to get there quickly, passing over the intermediate landscape to get to the next important narration point for the novel.
This is a wonderful first novel. It ends in such a way that while on the one hand it comes to a satisfactory conclusion to the major stream of events in the novel (unlike, say, Dan Simmons’s Ilium which just stops), though there is more to say here. I look forward to her next novel.
Until now, I was never able to point to any books other than those by China Miéville. Now I also have Steph Swainston’s Year of Our War, a very good, very inventive, very strange fantasy novel that definitely fits in with the new weird. It’s a wonderful first novel, set in a well constructed, believable, but quite strange fantasy world, populated by well drawn characters. It’s reminiscent of China Miéville’s works in some ways, but quite different in its own ways. Like Miéville’s novels also, it contains memorable scenes that stick with you long after some of the particulars of the plot begin to fade from memory.
The novel is set in the Fourlands, a world in which the three sentient species – humans and winged humanoids – have been at war against the insects – human-size insects which have by and large, as the novel starts, been confined to the Paperlands of the north. The world is overseen (ruled would be too strong a word) by a group of 50 immortals under the control of the Emperor. The Emperor has granted immortality to these fifty for their special skills – one is the world’s greatest warrior, another the world’s best archer, another the best sailor, and so on. The narrator, Jant Comet, is immortal because of his speed. He is a mixed breed, can fly, and is the fastest person in the world. He serves as the messenger for the immortals as they oversee the war between humans and insects. The immortals – who are much harder to hurt or kill than humans – serve as leaders in the war.
But Jant is also a drug addict, addicted to a heroin-like drug called cat. When Jant takes cat at near-overdose levels, he finds himself in a hallucinatory world called the Shift, people by even stranger and nastier characters than the Fourlands. It is also inhabited by a few people Jant knew in life, who died of overdoses. The Shift is nightmare like, and many of creatures populating it – creatures whose names and make-up seem to come from plays-on-words – give it an air of unreality. Yet, as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that the Shift hold the key to the war.
For early on in the novel, the Insect problem accelerates and the Insects swarm over much of the Fourlands. Sqabbles amongst the rulers – both immortals and immortals – make things worse. But the key to all of this lies within the Shift.
Jant is a well drawn and in the end a character the readers like. Despite his childhood of juvenile crime and his drug addiction, he has a strong moral base. He wants to do the best thing for his world and its people, he loves his wife, and has strong ties to several others in the world. There is a great scene where he has to overcome his own worst fears and his instincts to save a shipwrecked young girl.
Jant, as narrator, also helps structure the novel. It’s a fast paced novel, filled with incidents that come one after the other. Jant, as the messenger who flies rapidly from one area to the next, is thus the ideal focal character, in that he has to be everywhere, and he has to get there quickly, passing over the intermediate landscape to get to the next important narration point for the novel.
This is a wonderful first novel. It ends in such a way that while on the one hand it comes to a satisfactory conclusion to the major stream of events in the novel (unlike, say, Dan Simmons’s Ilium which just stops), though there is more to say here. I look forward to her next novel.
posted by Jim Mann at 10:11 AM
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