Aliette de Bodard - Harbinger of the Storm

I promised you a review of Aliette de Bodard's new book but summer has infected the grey matter and I have to offer you is torpor. It says something about the book that it didn't remain as my handbag book for very long, despite it being summer and me having lots of big deadlines this week and there being not much energy left in me.

I met Aliette de Bodard's first book when my life went pearshaped, this time last year. I'd forgotten that until I re-read what I had to say about it. I liked it, but I didn't love it. It was more than competently written. It was simply not my cup of tea. The world it was set in was fascinating, however, and definitely one I wanted to watch.

De Bodard's new book, Harbinger of the Storm, is more to my taste. Her characterisation has improved (though still not as deep as I like) and her world just as fascinating. What makes this book so much more fun is that the palpable fear starts early on and that it's not based on splashing blood or nightmares. It's based on one character knowing just how thin the ice is upon which all the others are skating and yet not being able to stop more and more of them pouring onto the frozen lake to show off their ice dancing skills. That was a bad metaphor. There is no ice in this novel. It's all Aztecs.

The focus was still on the mystery rather than the fantasy, but this time I was prepared for it and I enjoyed it.

De Bodard is dangerously addictive. She still writes books about men, but the position of women (and the potential for their lives) is clearer in this novel. Also that de Bodard is doing what she said she was (in her comment on my previous review) - she is very sympathetic to women in fiction, and yet is writing about a culture that is aggressively male - she understands the conflict and handles it better in this novel. What I said in my answer to her comment* still holds, too "If you're being true to the base culture and there is no equality in it, then writing a man's book is a good approach, because it leaves the female reader a place to read from without being diminished."

I would very much like to see de Bodard's work in a different culture because I want to see how she handles women n a framework where women have more options and where one doesn't have to break out of the social norms to create a strong female character, but I also want to read more of her Aztec books.

The reason I want to read more of them is pretty important. De Bodard is developing a very nice way of describing peoples' interface with their religious life. She uses actual belief as a basis for the fantasy elements. This is wonderful. It assumes that the stuff that entails deep belief is real. From this assumption flows the understanding that, if it's real, then religious ritual may be all that saves mankind. And this is the heart of the novel. What we do, matters. In that way, it's not just a mystery, it's about Mystery.** Where the numinous touches our world and what happens when it roams uncontrolled.



* am I always this recursive? I blame the cookbook, which was all about me finding out what I did and what the people I worked with did

** Sorry, Medievalism outs itself. The Mystery Plays are important to me and tend to creep into my mind when someone raises the relationship between religion and ordinary life.***

*** Not that the Mystery Plays have anything to do with my own religious belief. I am modern and Jewish, not Medieval and Christian.****

****This last footnote is purely to plague yasminke.

Special guest post

I just emailed Mary Victoria (who has her author copies of the new book!) and told her that her being a guest on her own blog would be just plain silly so she should visit mine (soon). It then struck me (after I had sent the email) that it would be fun to be a guest on my own blog. I shall interview myself, I think. Right now.

 

 Hi, Gillian, welcome to your own blog. I have some tricky questions for you.

 I am an expert at leaping to the side when tricky questions are hurled at me, so fire away.

 

 First of all, what is the most interesting thing you found in your computer drawer today?

Not the Windows Service Pack. That was what I was looking for. No, I actually found a $20 gift voucher for chocolate. I shall spend it all on dark chocolate enrobing Buderim ginger.

 

 Besides eating Buderim ginger, are you doing anything to support flood victims?

 Don't look at me so accusingly. I am! Or I think I am. Or I may be if anyone's interested. I've offered a copy of Baggage and an hour's consultation about things Medieval for one auction and naming rights for a character in a novel in another.  Everything else I donate is between me and my bank account.

 

 Do you actually know anyone in Queensland?

Honestly! What a question! I know my brothers and my nieces and nephews (once of whom is giving me a great-niece in a mere two months) and a bunch of writers and artists and members of the National Council of Jewish Women. Friends and family, in other words. Lots of them. The friends may look the other way, whistling, but the family has no choice but to accept my existence. And so far they're all alive and kicking. Especially the kicking.

  

What are you writing right now?

Right now, this blogpost. Also the Conflux cookbook. Also my time travel novel (with added Templar). Also a dissertation. Also applications for travel grants. Also book reviews and essays. I tried doing them all at once the day before yesterday and needed up watching anime. From now on it's strictly no more than two things at a time. Two things plus coffee. And choc-coated ginger. I can multiskill as far as choc-coated ginger.

 

You turn fifty this year, are your friends tired of you reminding them?

 I do and they are and I am entirely enjoying ageing ungracefully. Also, I want presents. Lots of presents. And the darkest and richest chocolate cake. And…excuse me while I admire my gift card and dream about chocolate ginger for a bit. I've been on diet for too long and the yearning for dark chocolate is overwhelming.

 

 On the subject of overwhelming, I have an overwhelming desire for you to talk about your current novel and to ask you some questions about Life Through Cellophane.

 My mind has been overtaken by dark chocolate. You will just have to wait until I am recovered or until someone else asks.