The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

This story strolls from strength to strength. It strikes me as similar in some ways to The Fifth Season in that both stories feature a narrator of immense age and unreliable perspective, or biased perspective, and both stories’ narrator ends up being a character in the book. Is this a thing that authors are doing now?

This story builds a wide world in a small amount of pages. The gods are everywhere, lesser and greater gods, some working together in alliances, fighting other alliances, scheming for more political power over potential prayer givers. Some gods get great power from human sacrifices, some gods choose other paths to personal fitness. Human relations with the gods often involve deals: humans will provide X, gods will provide Y. Spiritual capitalism, or bartering, from small things like a willing human sacrifice for a god providing surprise in a key battle, to big things like protecting an entire border of a country from raiding for fealty to the god. And on top of this layer of godly court politics sit multiple layers of human court politics. Leckie effortlessly weaves these together because she tells a story that involves all strata of her world’s population.

The narrator, a god, is eventually realized in the novel as a character that the human characters interact with. This ties the human story of Eolo and Muwat into the spiritual story of the gods. Eolo and Muwat are in a world where the gods act regularly and openly on behalf of their chosen people groups, which keeps the gods in mind during the human parts. Falling out of this split focus on the gods and the humans, the time-scale for either half of the story similarly spans different realms. Leckie tells the gods’ story over thousands of years, and the humans story over just a few—though, as the gods interact with humans other than Eolo and Muwat, to some extent the whole of human history in this part of this world is exposed.

And that’s a part of how she weaves so much information in so effortlessly: instead of massive info-dumps, Leckie relies on the narrator touching on all aspects, scopes, scales of the story told regularly. It can be a little confusing at first trying to determine the thrust of the story, but by showing all sides of it consistently—regularly returning to the gods, the humans, and the specifics of Eolo and Muwat—the three weave together in a complex but clear picture.

The other technique Leckie uses to weave this all together so that it makes sense: she tells interesting stories. The story of the spear meant to find its mark is more than just an explanation of the gods’ reluctance to speak, it’s a memorable parable that I still contemplate long after finishing the novel. This seems so simple, but its important: instead of throwing away explanations that illuminate characters, places, or situations, Leckie crafts microfictional interludes that stand on their own as solid stories, but serve the rest of the story in showing some aspect of the characters. Leckie spends a lot of time showing through telling—she shows why the gods do not want to speak untruth by telling the reader a story about a spear meant to find its mark. Does that make sense, or am I just confusing telling and showing? I think Leckie blends telling and showing.

A very good novel, one I took a little time to dive into, but once I groked the interrelated nature of the three-fold narrative (another similarity to The Fifth Season), I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to just about everybody. Leckie is still adding to her string of good novels.

Provenance by Ann Leckie

This book focuses in on the life of one character—her family struggles, her difficulties with money, her hairbrained scheme to jailbreak her adopted mother’s political rival’s son. But it also manages to simultaneously focus on the larger, galactic political situation—after the Ancillary events, the AI demand citizenship in the treaty, so everybody is going to come together and debate it: the Raadchai, the Presger, the AI, and the Geck, at least. But the book focuses on Ingray, and her interiority.

As such, the strength or weakness of the book is based on the strength or weakness of Ingray. I found them to be a weak character. Not a character who has weakness, but a weakly drawn character—perhaps it doesn’t help to have a simple, coming of age main character, and then have your other characters point out how simple Ingray is. The starship captain says something like, “I know you, you’re going to panic for five minutes, then grasp the situation and think of something unexpected to do.” And Ingray does, again and again.

Yet, the fact that the panic almost always takes the same form lets the portrayal of Ingray down, removes some potential complexity from them, makes them more simple. Simply put, Ingray cries every time she is put under stress, freezes up, then sucks it up and holds her chin up and gets stuff done. Ingray often finds the strength inside themself to do this, but only after an initial panic and cry. That reaction didn’t start to bother me until the last third of the book when I realized that she rarely reacts otherwise no matter the seriousness of the situation—an attempt at her life? Good thing she already had a panic and cry about the coming confrontation with her would be assassin, because she was able to chin up and get it over with. Facing task master mother after long trip abroad, coming back broke with a fugitive in tow? Get the cry in on the way home, then face her stone faced. Exchanging herself as a hostage for a pack of schoolchildren caught in the crossfire of a small invasion? Sit down with the other hostages and have a good cry, then start thinking about how to escape.

My problem with this mono-reaction: going to the same well to draw tension into your novel starts to fade after time. George Martin fakes character deaths again and again, and I don’t believe him that characters are dead anymore. It takes the bite out of death. Here, I don’t really care that Ingray is crying again, just skimming a couple of sentences or paragraphs until she’s over it and gets onto the solution to the problem—no tension added from her crying. Her crying shows a realistic, relatable reaction profile, but until the second to last conflict, it’s the only one Ingray shows. Her coming of age becomes acting first, telling her mother “no”, then crying afterwards. And this new reaction unlocks a third one, telling her competitive brother “no”, and then not crying afterwards—the final conflict in the novel.

These split-focus books—the interior emotions of a single character who isn’t some all-powerful emperor played against a wider political background that intrudes in increasing ways throughout the book—strike me as sensational. NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season pulls it off brilliantly, as does Leckie’s Provenance here. However, that style of narrative does somewhat depend on how well the main character holds the interest and sympathy of the reader. And here, Ingray was just too one-sided for me to invest in like I invested in Jemisin’s Essun. Yes, Ingray changes, but only finally in the last ten to twenty pages, too little too late.

The theme of the book examines vestiges, historical artifacts, in their present relationship with society. In America, something like the Liberty Bell probably wasn't actually rung out after the Declaration of Independence was Signed, but it was there at the time, and so we respect the cracked hunk of metal. Leckie tries to dive more deeply into these relationships between artifacts, the truth of their historicity, their role and place in society, and our personal feeling about them. It's a fascinating discussion that held my interest throughout the novel. She uses the word "Vestiges" to cover post-cards and declarations of independence alike—as well as all manned of keepsakes and mementos and souvenirs in between. I'm not sure she comes to any new idea here, but she examines the concept and concludes that they are, ultimately, replaceable and repairable, but still somehow invaluable to a culture. So, though the reflection doesn't provide any major insights, it does trace pathways of thought that broaden the discussion around artifacts, rather than deepen them. Some characters try to use vestiges for racial arguments, some for personal glorification, some for gravitas, some for pure monetary profit, and Ingray sees all these characters in her homespun adventure and reflects on them all.

I found this a fascinating world and a fascinating story, but I found Ingray to be a flat character that let the whole thing down a little.

Chanur Series by CJ Cherryh

This series has five novels that tell three interconnected stories: the first book, the middle three (published as three books, but they're really just one), and the last one. This Space Opera series tells an adventure tale of inter-station traders travelling faster-than-light to try and make a buck or two, becoming increasingly engaged in politics, and eventually coming to grips with their political reality as well as their personal reality. The stories focus on the characters and use action to change them or confirm their natures. Unlike other Cherryh novels, the focus of these is almost exclusively on single characters per book, though Chur, Hallan, and Tiar also get some alone-time on-screen, mostly due to their unique abilities. The story starts with, and focuses on, characters from a feline race of intelligent creatures: Pyanfar for the first four books, and Hilfy for the last. And Cherryh doesn't leave it there: the secondary Hani characters who play the antagonist role in the first novel come back in the second story arc and become, if not heroes, then at least sympathetic. Three things about Cherryh’s writing that really come to the fore in these five novels.

First, the laws of physics and tendencies of economics help build the world and tell the story. Whoever wrote the Wikipedia article calls these novels, "Unusually realistic examples of space opera", and that's a great way to put it. Technology and the laws of physics deeply influence the possibilities of the economic and political realities within this universe. For instance, time dilation exists in this universe⁠—unlike other Space Opera tales that ignore hundred year old physics. The speed of light has importance here: as a Chanur ship approaches a station, the light from their dropping out of FTL hasn't reached the station yet, and they have an opportunity to monitor the traffic and communications within system, light hours old information, before anybody else knows they've arrived. This fills in the context of this new situation they have dropped into. Then, the delay between sending and receiving a message⁠—due to the speed of light⁠—plays an important role both in perception of situations, and in decision making. Also, the political organization that guides these alien species trading together is just that, a loose political affiliation that tries to regulate trade for everybody, rather than a political force. (Or, at least it starts out that way...) Cherryh rationalizes the economic and political intrigue in ways that, if you like Cherryh’s other writing, you will love here. It absolutely feels "unusally realistic".

Second, the sparseness of her voice. I don’t know how to explain this adequately. So, her narrative follows her characters who don’t describe things they already know, don’t explain as much as dwell on and recontextualize pieces to puzzles they’re given. Let me try an analogy: sometimes, when I read a Greek Myth, I think, “Huh. I don’t think I get that one? Why? And why was that seen as entertaining?” Then later something happens in my life that recontextualizes it, and I go back and re-read it, and it’s newly emotionally effective, or logically understandable as a story. Cherryh has a tendency towards that type of writing. And these books more than a lot of her other books. That’s not a bad thing. I like books that require some effort from the reader, some contemplation from them.

Third, and I know I’ve said it before: she writes aliens well. Really well. Throughout the series, alien species tend towards more and more screentime, and understanding of them grows⁠—but never in leaps and bounds, never in a way that contradicts earlier knowledge, or doesn’t coalesce into a whole. The Compact (Yes, this absolutely is Space Opera, the central organization of trade is called The Compact) is made up of a methane side and a oxygen side⁠—each space station split down the middle. And from the start, when Pyanfar knows nothing, the T’ca and Knnn are entirely obtuse. They’re scary. But, by the end of the fourth novel, by the end of the second of three stories, some understanding is present. They’ve been seen on screen enough times now that Pyanfar becomes more comfortable around them, and hence the reader is allowed the same cautious thawing.

How does she write her aliens well? This question drove me to look up her writer’s advice and compare it to her work here. In her, “Creating a World and Culture”, she states, “First, your environment. That becomes a biological given. It produces the beings you're writing about. Culture is how biology responds and makes its living conditions better.” She then goes on to talk about how the alien species do things that humans either focus on or spend time doing⁠—finding differences between us and them, and using those as jumping-off points to further creation: eating, dying, questioning, modifying spaces for shelter, communicating with others, and believing about the afterlife. Out of these basic questions, and a knowledge of biology, her aliens come.

So, this seems to be a case of designing in a notebook, and then cherry picking the important or interesting data for the novel itself⁠—rather than a massive intro-info-dump, or an info-dump halfway through. By the end of the fifth novel, fundamental things about Stsho gender phasing biology remain unknown; the Kif tendency to push and prod and judge solely on their own morals with little cultural relativity has hinted at, but not explained, a homeworld culture never seen in the books; Hallan Meras’ encounter with the loading cart reveals more about the T’ca and dockside regulations, but nowhere near enough for Pyanfar's cautious thawing to take place for him or Hilfy.

In short, she keeps the aliens alien by:
• Not explaining them, except in what the characters know and rely on in dealing with them;
• Letting her characters curiously question the alien natures and discover pieces that only lead to more questions;
• Discovering and expanding on the ways they fundamentally differ from humanity in the way a bear or mosquito does, including communication, eating, death, etc. She takes all these one-step further, at least. Ok, so the Kif are exclusively carnivores, so they're competitive like earthly carnivores. But where Cherryh distinguishes herself is taking that further: therefore, when the meet an unexpectedly strong outsider, they're going to respect and follow and learn from and feel threatened by and threaten;
• She designs them first, and then never reveals the whole design.
In looking at it this way, this technique apes the old adage, “don’t show the monster,” which I agree with if the story wants the monster to stay monstrous. But she applies this adage to things that are not monsters, aliens, and they read as alien. Again, in Greek Myth, some of the magic of Myth is that the gods, titans, and other immortals operate on a different biological, moral, and spiritual level, and that constant mystery and surprise helps Myth beguile. For instance, Cherryh never explains humans. Tully is a known quantity by the end of book four, but his people remain mysterious to Pyanfar and Hilfy throughout. Cherryh rides this almost fourth-wall breaking line, by relying on the human reader to input their knowledge of humans to contextualize the novel's humans' actions, knowledge her main characters clearly lack. Brilliant.

My one single critique arrises from the way the first and second books relate. At the end of book one, many things seem solved in an optimistic way. Humans have discovered The Compact and Pyanfar has an exclusive contract to trade with them, saving her clan and culture, and the whole Compact, really. But the second book ignores this optimism and opens on a pessimistic note with Pyanfar held hostage and released by possibly different unknown parties, with her trading license revoked and her stranded. Reading these back-to-back like I did, this jarring shift took a few pages for me to understand, and at the end of the series it still feels like a bit of a cheap writer’s trick, like Cherryh wrote herself into an overly solved position, and had to hit a reset button to get the story back off the ground. That’s not to say that the middle three novels, composing a story by themselves, didn’t absolutely engage and engross me, just that a part of the story makes little sense by the end of the novel, Cherryh doesn’t explore that aspect enough for me to feel emotionally invested in Pyanfar’s misfortune, though I am still curious about it. It's almost as if the first book didn't need to be in the series, or was a rough draft.

In short, these novels show a lot of the strengths of Cherryh’s writing, and some of the weaknesses. Though it’s a Space Opera Adventure that I adore, I wouldn’t recommend it to everybody. I can think of two or three people that I can’t wait to tell about these books, but in requiring so much from the reader, and in skipping a major plot point that, between books, shifts the whole tone from victorious to defeated, recommendations have to come with a caveat. However, wholeheartedly, I can recommend her techniques of creating alien species and populating a universe. I am floored by how well she writes aliens. Where some of her books take a few pages, or a third of the book, to start getting to a point where I can’t put it down, here each book’s pacing brilliantly starts off with a bang and continues from problem to solution to new problem consistently and I turned the pages happily, devouring these stories. Finally, the realistic feeling of the aliens is matched by the realism and rationality she puts into designing the universe and reacting to physical laws and economic tendencies that help inform the story and keep it based in our reality. Brilliant stuff.

[EDIT 2/1/2020:] The novel series does some gender role reversal. Hani women are allowed off the planet's surface, while each tribal pride's male is not. Excess men retire to reservations and must fight to the death, and win over and over again to even find a chance of getting off the reservation alive. Men who portray any divergent masculinity die immediately at the hands of traditionalists, or must be strenuously protected by their family. I find this gender reversal engaging and wonderful: instead of simply reversing the roles, Cherryh reasons out what a matriarchy might look like, and uses stereotypically masculine traits to identify reasons why men constitute the hani second sex. For instance, she calls men flighty and over-emotional⁠—phrases that some men continue to call women today. Yet, instead of just "switching the pronouns" like some unimaginative authors have done in their gender reversal tales, Cherryh reasons out what stereotypical traits of males would be construed by those two words, and the hani males are viewed as unreliable or lazy, and quick to anger or sulk, especially when denied food. Cherryh uses the same words that men have used against women for centuries, yet changes what they mean to reflect toxicly masculine tendencies. This fantastic work leads to a gender reversal tactic that I adore. I've only ever respected one other gender reversal book this much, Y: The Last Man by BK Vaughan.