HIGHLIGHTS ~dragons with FEATHERS ~what flavour of gender do you prefer, we have SIX ~vikings ~gay??? lesbian??? sorry we don’t have words for those we juHIGHLIGHTS ~dragons with FEATHERS ~what flavour of gender do you prefer, we have SIX ~vikings ~gay??? lesbian??? sorry we don’t have words for those we just call them PEOPLE ~krakens ~don’t wear the brooch unless you mean it ~vote stabby princess for queen 2021!!!
The very first thing I wrote down in my notes when I finished Black Coast was: AHHHHH I LOVED THIS SO MUCH!
This is going to make very little sense, but I’m going to say it anyway: Black Coast felt like a luxury to me, like every chapter I read was a decadent gift to myself. What other people might feel during a spa day full of pampering, I felt reading this book; like I was being catered to and indulged and spoiled absolutely rotten, because Black Coast is just jam-packed full of all the things I love.
The opening of the book is a pretty good example: the ‘prologue’ of sorts is an excerpt from a fictional book, in which a Naridan is writing about another country, a series of islands called Alaba. The writer is scandilised because Alabans recognise five or six genders ‘depending on how they are counted’.
Now, from the original blurb I saw, I was under the impression that the whole of the story was going to take place in Narida. So not only was I confused as to why we were hearing about another land entirely (I really should have cottoned on!) but I was wistfully disappointed. Why did he set the story in Narida? I want to visit Alaba! were pretty much my exact thoughts.
So you can imagine my delight when I found out that Black Coast does take the reader to Alaba! The story is definitely focussed on Narida, but fear not; we spend a fair bit of time in Alaba with all its genders (which I’ll talk about in a bit).
See? My every wish, instantly granted!
The story itself is actually pretty easy to summarise: as the blurb says, a clan of Tjakorshans (you can think of them as Vikings, more or less) has appeared on the Black Coast, not to kill and steal and raid as they always have before, but to beg sanctuary and permission to settle. The adopted son of the local lord is the one who gives that permission, and is then responsible for trying to get his people to accept the arrangement, which has him working side-by-side with Sanna, the Tjakorshan clan-chief. Meanwhile, the sister of the Naridan God-King is working to hunt down and have killed a threat to her brother’s throne, a mission which almost has her crossing paths with an Alaban street-urchin who will prove very important to the outcome of that mission…
But that description really doesn’t do Black Coast any justice at all.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!
Wow. I finished this book just a few minutes ago, and I'm reeling. In the best way! But I'm not aThank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!
Wow. I finished this book just a few minutes ago, and I'm reeling. In the best way! But I'm not at all sure how to describe what I just experienced.
First off, Phoenix Extravagant took me completely by surprise; it was not the book I was expecting. I was incredibly excited when I heard that Lee was writing a fantasy novel, because the creativity demonstrated in his sci-fi is incredible, even though I bounced off those books (I'm not much of a sci-fi reader, and they are pretty heavy sci-fi). So, thinks I, now he's writing fantasy I have a much better chance of being able to properly appreciate him! Because fantasy is my genre, even when it gets properly weird. This one, I'll be able to read and be wow-ed by!
And I did! I was! This was much easier to sink into than Ninefox Gambit, and I enjoyed it immensely. But I was expecting the wild, outside-the-box, wildly-inventive creativity of Ninefox, and that's not what this book is. Or no, that's not right; it's that Ninefox is immediately and obviously out there. You can't miss the fact that it's like nothing else you've ever read, because the alien strangeness is in your face from the first paragraph.
Phoenix Extravagant is also like nothing else I've ever read, but in a much subtler way. Superficially, the world and story of PE is fairly recognisable, even standard; the setting is obviously inspired by eastern Asia, and the magic system takes the form of a series of glyphs painted in special inks - it's very reminiscent of computer code. A few small but delightful details stand out - one of the minor characters is a gumiho, the Korean equivalent of a kitsune, a shapeshifting fox-spirit, and her presence in society is completely normalised, a conceit that delighted me; as did the presence of the Celestials living on the moon, visible going about their lives through telescopes. But for the most part, neither the worldbuilding nor magic system are what makes this story special.
I hardly have the words to explain what it is that makes PE such a heavy hitter. I mean that literally; I don't know what to call the primary movers and shakers of the story. Cultural forces, maybe? Phoenix Extravagant is like an ocean that is calm on the surface, but has deep and powerful currents running just beneath what's visible. It's about the give and take of different cultures, of shifting cultures, of cultural values and those things that are valuable to a culture (not always the same things). It's about appropriation and assimilation, patriotism versus practicality, conquerors against the conquered. Those are the things powering the plot, driving the story and the characters within it. Those are the things that sweep you up and drag you in and keep you up late at night, turning pages as quickly as you can.
Move over, Wizard Howl; there’s a new eater of hearts in town. And she’s far more swoon-worthy than you ever were.
A big chunk of fantasy readers aboutMove over, Wizard Howl; there’s a new eater of hearts in town. And she’s far more swoon-worthy than you ever were.
A big chunk of fantasy readers about my age (and older, and younger, for that matter) will remember Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle. Others might know the story from the Studio Ghibli adaption of the book.
I sat up and paid attention way back when all we knew about Night Shine was its pitch: Howl’s Moving Castle, but queer. That was enough to sell me, and Night Shine was one of my most anticipated reads of the year.
It does not disappoint!
Nothing is a young woman who lives in the walls of the palace, an orphan who would have no place if she hadn’t the friendship and favour of Kirin Dark-Smile, the prince and heir. No one knows where she came from, and no one particularly cares, so long as she stays quiet and out of the way and lets people forget about her.
Instead, she does something spectacular, and has to go rescue the prince from a sorceress who only steals girls, not boys – and yet has taken Kirin.
Night Shine is simultaneously a beautifully simple and delightfully intricate novel. On one level, I could lay out the plot for you in a sentence or two, but to do so would be to cut the heart out of this story; you would miss so much! You would miss Gratton’s light, deft hand with her worldbuilding, the way she lets details fall just-so so that their ripples paint the shape of a world as big and real and vital as our own. You would miss all the cunning loopholes Nothing can slip through via gleeful worldplay; you would miss celestial unicorns and river-dragons and most of all – most of all you would miss the arc of a girl called Nothing becoming…Everything.
There’s just so much to love here, I don’t know where to start. Maybe the place to begin is with the way Gratton contrasts the relationships that make up the story: Kirin + Nothing, Kirin + Sky (Kirin’s bodyguard and secret lover), Sky + Nothing – and Nothing + the Sorceress Who Eats Girls. This is very much a book about love, but not the soft, starry-eyed kind; it’s about love as a feral, strange thing, eerie and beautiful, with sharp edges and feathers. Neither of the loves on offer to Nothing – as part of a polyamorous relationship with Kirin and Sky, or the love of the Sorceress – are conventional (to the reader – the set-up Kirin, Sky and Nothing have been planning to enter into for years is perfectly normal within their culture); but still, there’s a very stark (and, I think, deliberate) difference between the relationship of Nothing and Kirin, and Nothing and the Sorceress. It’s one that I found absolutely thrilling; on the one hand is a literal prince, Nothing’s childhood friend and benefactor, the person she has always believed would be her future. And on the other side is this powerful, frightening woman, who takes the hearts of young women for her dark magic.
I mean, it’s not even that most stories would make the decision between the two love interests obvious; in most stories, the sorceress wouldn’t even be an option, and not because she and Nothing happen to share a gender. She’s dark! Scary! She shapeshifts and she kills people and she deals with demons! (More on the demons later). This is not someone who’s supposed to be a love interest! This is someone who’s supposed to be the villain!
So it is just beyond amazing to me that Gratton takes all of that – everything the Sorceress is – and makes her a love interest anyway. Like – screw your ideas of traditional romance; monsters make awesome girlfriends.
(It’s so much more complicated than that. It’s so rich and vital and mutable, refusing to be pinned down and neatly labelled. There’s no box to neatly tuck this into. This isn’t a familiar trope, we don’t recognise this story-pattern, arc-pattern, when we encounter it. We have no map for this. This is uncharted territory, and it’s beautiful.)
Have to admit, I don't at all see what the fuss is about. Incredibly boring: the writing style reminds me of the Silmarillion, and that is not a complHave to admit, I don't at all see what the fuss is about. Incredibly boring: the writing style reminds me of the Silmarillion, and that is not a compliment....more
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