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primeidealI mostly enjoyed the Divine Cities trilogy and this has been getting good buzz, so here we are!
This has been recced as "Sherlock and Watson in weird ecology world." To the latter point first: the Empire of Khanum is routinely beset by enormous leviathans which they routinely have to repel; the monsters' corpses transform the land, leaving behind bizarre plants, and the empire's researchers study and manipulate these to create all kinds of plant-based technology, from thin "fernpaper" walls and plants that keep the room cool, to body modifications making people super-strong or agile or computationally speedy, sometimes at the cost of their lifespan. But it's necessary to have these augmented people, because how else are we going to keep the leviathans back? And so the cycle continues. I enjoy RJB's worldbuilding, thumbs-up here.
Din on Ana:
Fans of "Divine Cities" may be amused by the fact that the officer who assumes temporary command during a wall breach has the title of "seneschal;" the technological change hinted at with lines like "We don’t need war heroes here anyway. We need plotters;" Din's habit of making tea for Ana when they need to puzzle something out; and some compelling antagonists, with realistic motives and a complex mystery. There's a small-scale romantic subplot for Din, and along with trying to track the hints/foreshadowing for the mystery, I enjoyed the puzzle of "hmm, Din notices and describes this character in a different way than everybody else, is he looking with attraction goggles?" Maybe so! :)
Overall, I found this to be a little more optimistic than either Divine Cities or the first 2/3 Founders books (I haven't read the third). The Empire is both the force that drives back monstrous leviathans at colossal sea walls, and the ordinary routine of people repairing the roads, but despite all the corruption and greed in the world, sometimes you can see justice done and even have time for a cute date.
However, the main characters as characters didn't really grab me. Din struggled with written exams in his training, because of his dyslexia, and is still an apprentice because of it; he's the infamous 20-year-old very tall minor. The words "boy" and "child" are used more than eighty times, combined, and while some of the usages are in other context ("this suspect's parents died when she was a child"), almost all of them are used as dismissive terms of address for Din. Are we supposed to conclude he struggles with his masculinity or has some other dark secret identity? No, he's just insecure about barely being able to read, that's it.
Ana doesn't suffer fools gladly, or at all, and has a bit of a potty mouth. Now, I'm not entirely opposed to cursing; I like it when people say things like "Titan's taint!" that give us a sense of what's sacred/profane/taboo within their own worldbuilt culture. And someone like Mulaghesh from Divine Cities, a grizzled and jaded war veteran, can drop f-bombs with the best of them; even in worlds very unlike our own, language referring to sex and scatology is still emotive. But when Ana says something like "goddamn," I'm like...I want to know more about your universe's god and where they are damning people to. And I didn't completely buy all the "oh, I just couldn't help myself from flipping the table with the suspects, rich people are so awful I just had to react." Even those of us not born with a great deal of social skills have the ability to learn some self-control, when the situation requires!
In general, she's a zillion steps ahead of everyone else. It makes sense that the Watson character is the POV in Holmes-and-Watson type stories--if Sherlock figures everything out on page 40, the rest is kind of boring. But sometimes she'll send people down false trails and several chapters later be like "ah, yes, I had already figured that out but was waiting for the rest of you to catch up to me"--if that kind of smugness annoys you, maybe avoid.
But more broadly, there's an issue of, "Din usually follows the rules, except when he doesn't; Ana occasionally follows the rules, when she feels like it." Whereas, while some of the antagonists are merely profit-hungry and amoral, others are people who try to take justice into their own hands, and then things escalate and oops, now there's a dead body. What gives one set of characters, but not the other, the right to determine when it's okay to break the rules in service of a higher call? The fact that they're protagonists? Yeah, some of the rule-breaking differs in degree, but it's a subtle distinction, and one that I'm not sure the book necessarily answers.
Fun fact: based on the acknowledgments I'm a small number of degrees of separation away from Bennett but it's still a long story ;)
Bingo: Published in 2024, Reference Materials, will be a Readalong, is planned to be First in a Series. The leviathans are probably Eldritch Creatures? Din's dyslexia probably counts as a disability?
This has been recced as "Sherlock and Watson in weird ecology world." To the latter point first: the Empire of Khanum is routinely beset by enormous leviathans which they routinely have to repel; the monsters' corpses transform the land, leaving behind bizarre plants, and the empire's researchers study and manipulate these to create all kinds of plant-based technology, from thin "fernpaper" walls and plants that keep the room cool, to body modifications making people super-strong or agile or computationally speedy, sometimes at the cost of their lifespan. But it's necessary to have these augmented people, because how else are we going to keep the leviathans back? And so the cycle continues. I enjoy RJB's worldbuilding, thumbs-up here.
“Then we’ll have to add the Tala canton to them,” she said, sighing. “To protect against any wormrot, or neckworm, or wormbone, or fissure-worm you might encounter out there. As well as cheek-worm, of course.”
I stared at her as I absorbed the expansive variety of worms waiting in the wilds to devour me.
Miljin spoke up with a sadistic smile: “She don’t mean the cheeks on your face, son.”
I shoved my breast forward at them, ensuring they’d see all my heralds: the flower and the bar, denoting me assistant investigator; and the eye set within a box, indicating I was also an engraver.
As for the former: the narrator, Dinios "Din" Kol, has been assigned as the Apprentice Assistant Investigator to Anagosa "Ana" Dolabra. Kol has augments that make him an "engraver"; essentially, someone who has photographic memory, so he is an excellent choice to send looking for evidence. Ana's brain is very good at making deductions and putting pieces together, but she's easily sensory-overloaded (some kind of neurodivergence?) so she prefers to send Din out in her stead. She can also be rude and blunt around everyone, which is a problem for many non-Din people. Din accepts the downsides of being an engraver (it's not always great to remember everything perfectly) in exchange for the money the job brings in. However, he also has dyslexia/some kind of learning disability, so it's difficult for him to understand written material unless he reads it aloud (and then uses his memory powers). There are some cool digressions about "what does it really mean to have muscle memory"; sometimes it's like, "I didn't do anything, it was just my body moving by itself" and like...if you didn't do anything or have any agency why are we even reading this book then, but other times, it's like "yeah, different people have different learning styles, that's a strength and not a weakness."I stared at her as I absorbed the expansive variety of worms waiting in the wilds to devour me.
Miljin spoke up with a sadistic smile: “She don’t mean the cheeks on your face, son.”
I shoved my breast forward at them, ensuring they’d see all my heralds: the flower and the bar, denoting me assistant investigator; and the eye set within a box, indicating I was also an engraver.
Din on Ana:
With her bone-white hair, wide smile, and yellow eyes, she often seemed vaguely feline: a mad housecat, perhaps, roving through a home in pursuit of a suitable sunbeam, though always willing to torture the occasional mouse.
In the first section, Din is sent to review the case of a man who has died under grotesque circumstances; a magical tree exploded from his body. (There's a lot of similar levels of body horror, so fair warning.) Ana puts the pieces together and quickly makes some deductions, and on page 41 of 411 we get: "What you told me is more than enough. In fact, it’s so obvious that I’m worried this all might turn out a little boring…" Fortunately for us (if not Din and Ana), a spate of similar deaths means that they have to investigate a much bigger conspiracy that might mean danger for the entire Empire, especially with the leviathans approaching. It's one of those "hmm let's investigate this person of interest...oh bleep they're dead...maybe we should ask some questions to this guy...who is also dead, womp womp" adventures. (Also, in context, even the title is kind of a spoiler!)Fans of "Divine Cities" may be amused by the fact that the officer who assumes temporary command during a wall breach has the title of "seneschal;" the technological change hinted at with lines like "We don’t need war heroes here anyway. We need plotters;" Din's habit of making tea for Ana when they need to puzzle something out; and some compelling antagonists, with realistic motives and a complex mystery. There's a small-scale romantic subplot for Din, and along with trying to track the hints/foreshadowing for the mystery, I enjoyed the puzzle of "hmm, Din notices and describes this character in a different way than everybody else, is he looking with attraction goggles?" Maybe so! :)
Overall, I found this to be a little more optimistic than either Divine Cities or the first 2/3 Founders books (I haven't read the third). The Empire is both the force that drives back monstrous leviathans at colossal sea walls, and the ordinary routine of people repairing the roads, but despite all the corruption and greed in the world, sometimes you can see justice done and even have time for a cute date.
However, the main characters as characters didn't really grab me. Din struggled with written exams in his training, because of his dyslexia, and is still an apprentice because of it; he's the infamous 20-year-old very tall minor. The words "boy" and "child" are used more than eighty times, combined, and while some of the usages are in other context ("this suspect's parents died when she was a child"), almost all of them are used as dismissive terms of address for Din. Are we supposed to conclude he struggles with his masculinity or has some other dark secret identity? No, he's just insecure about barely being able to read, that's it.
Ana doesn't suffer fools gladly, or at all, and has a bit of a potty mouth. Now, I'm not entirely opposed to cursing; I like it when people say things like "Titan's taint!" that give us a sense of what's sacred/profane/taboo within their own worldbuilt culture. And someone like Mulaghesh from Divine Cities, a grizzled and jaded war veteran, can drop f-bombs with the best of them; even in worlds very unlike our own, language referring to sex and scatology is still emotive. But when Ana says something like "goddamn," I'm like...I want to know more about your universe's god and where they are damning people to. And I didn't completely buy all the "oh, I just couldn't help myself from flipping the table with the suspects, rich people are so awful I just had to react." Even those of us not born with a great deal of social skills have the ability to learn some self-control, when the situation requires!
In general, she's a zillion steps ahead of everyone else. It makes sense that the Watson character is the POV in Holmes-and-Watson type stories--if Sherlock figures everything out on page 40, the rest is kind of boring. But sometimes she'll send people down false trails and several chapters later be like "ah, yes, I had already figured that out but was waiting for the rest of you to catch up to me"--if that kind of smugness annoys you, maybe avoid.
But more broadly, there's an issue of, "Din usually follows the rules, except when he doesn't; Ana occasionally follows the rules, when she feels like it." Whereas, while some of the antagonists are merely profit-hungry and amoral, others are people who try to take justice into their own hands, and then things escalate and oops, now there's a dead body. What gives one set of characters, but not the other, the right to determine when it's okay to break the rules in service of a higher call? The fact that they're protagonists? Yeah, some of the rule-breaking differs in degree, but it's a subtle distinction, and one that I'm not sure the book necessarily answers.
Fun fact: based on the acknowledgments I'm a small number of degrees of separation away from Bennett but it's still a long story ;)
Bingo: Published in 2024, Reference Materials, will be a Readalong, is planned to be First in a Series. The leviathans are probably Eldritch Creatures? Din's dyslexia probably counts as a disability?
