Book Thoughts: World-Building and Suspense in SPIDERWEB ALLEY and EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD

"Book One of The Elverie Road"

When I learned that author Verlyn Flieger has been called "the world's foremost scholar on the works of J. R. R. Tolkein, of course I wanted to read her new novel, SPIDERWEB ALLEY. Scheduled for June 25 release from Minnesota publisher The Gabro Head, it's printed in a compact chunky form, 5 by 7 in ches and about an inch thick -- which immediately suggests tucking it into a pocket or modest carrier bag, for reading between stops or efforts.

The frontspiece offers an almost poem describing a chilly seacoast with nearby mysterious forests and "curious patterns of stars." Kath and Mick, who've bonded over the search for an old book at the library's Special Collections, are driving along the coast at evening, headed to an inn, when strange things begin to happen. Kath finds herself drawn to the eccentric people and their quaint folkways, feeling as if she belongs, in a way that the odd persons she connects with seem to confirm. Is this an Otherworld, a faerie place? Kath will come to know it as Elverie.

Her particpation in several faerie-related or pagan festive occasions here puts her into danger -- and perhaps even more so for Mick, suddenly in competition with a powerful mythic man who seems to know things about Kath that don't make sense to him. Soon he's denying her experience, sure she's having some form of breakdown.

The book's small shape allows a count of 362 pages for what's really a novella, or part I of a three-part longer novel. The ending's irritating in that sense, because things have really only just begun to knit together. I can't tell when the other parts of "Elverie Road" will reach print, but if you, like me, need to read this one in honor of the specialty of its author, brace for some frustration.

Flieger's novel is clearly built from the old British tales (English? Irish? Scottish?) told at firesides and on becalmed ships. Her creative aspect is the entwining of such tales with a modern and conflicted marriage. I'm holding off on deciding whether it "works" until I see the rest of the story in the sequels.

Dictatorships, Expanded Conflicts, and Genetic IDs

EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD (SparkPress, Sept. 2024)  is described as the debut novel by Sheri T. Joseph, but from the level of expertise involved in world-building here, I'd have to guess she's written plenty of other material while learning her craft. 

Alexandra Tashen is super bright and has earned her PhD early enough to be a postdoc student at age 23. She's also surprisingly naive, considering how much grief she's witnessed already, with a missing father and a genetic inheritance that puts her in danger daily. Any random ID screening could show up the not-quite-erased tagging gene that her father tried to spare her, and she'd be instantly a criminal and lose her career and lifestyle as well as freedom. And self-respect.

The professor she's working with, Kommandant Burton, is part parental and part mentor and mostly, although Alex doesn't quite realize it the implications, militaristically in charge of a lot of the almost-free part of the world. Wars familiar to us today have multiplied, fractured, and realigned the nations; the Kommandant is a general and a West Point alum and is in control of her group of factions.

The most significant aspect of this "world," though, is clearly built from today's American and even global politics: Someone's exerting unusual hacking skills on behalf of those who need asylum. The entire world of politics and conflict is balanced on who'll be allowed movement between which regions.

Alex is sometimes less interesting than her Kommandant, Suzanne Dias Burton (authors beware: that's a risky framework). Here's my favorite half page, as Suzanne interacts with a Russian-style counterpart who's just suggested that global instability justifies continued control:

"Gallows humor," said Bulgakov. He had the tranquil composure of a tortoise. "For many here, the refusés in the Netcast are separated family. They remember the kindertransports."

Suzanne stiffened, and checked for implied criticism. The kindertransports had smuggled children out of the Federation for several years following the Treaty, until the g-screens made it impossible to hide them. The children were returned. with scenes of screaming families that still rose in Suzanne's worst dreams. But Bulgakov's face remained serene. Suzanne wondered if it was possible for him to be outraged or shocked. Perhaps nothing surprised him anymore.

The book's finale is a strange one, half soft, half provocative. If there's a sequel, which seems likely, I'll be lining up for a copy. By the way, EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD will surely be compared with Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale -- but I think it's much closer to pushing today's politics to a believable extreme.  Nicely done.

 

How Bad Could Things Get? Chris McKinney's WATER CITY Trilogy Tests the Answers

Climate collapse, floods and fires, political divisions, wars and devastation—in America, it's not uncommon for people to feel like it's going to take a great leader to get us safely out of these very hard times.

But that's not where Chris McKinney heads in his WATER CITY trilogy. After the earlier Midnight, Water City and then Eventide, Water City, where a synesthetic former detective's been tackling the crushing issues around him in an effort to save his too-talented daughter from being coopted, McKinney and Soho Press collaborate to move rapidly into the last volume: SUNSET, WATER CITY. 

In a radical switch from the nameless not-quite-hero of the first two books, the third one (set in the year 2160) spins from the point of view of that talented daughter, Ascalon, whose experience at age 19 includes both armed resistance and a lot of forms of tech destruction. Battling both her US neighbors in the toxic lands of the Great Leachate, and the overwhelming technological dominance of the near-deity Akira Kimura, Ascalon's courage and defiance take root in her anger at her father, as well as her love for her vanishing family.

As I read SUNSET, WATER CITY a second time, I thought a lot about trilogies. The one I grew up with was The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien); then there's the Hunger Games trilogy. But also there's a trilogy at the start of Ursula Leguin's Wizard of Earthsea books: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972). And I'm one volume into reading Cixin Xiu's formidable Chinese space trilogy right now.

On reflection, I wonder whether world-building requires a bigger canvas than a single book. Building the pressure points needs to extend beyond that first volume, and the most intriguing and memorable characters, whether heroic (Frodo, Katniss) or antiheroic (Ascalon's father and Akira Kimura herself), need years to mature and deepen, in order to provide a meaningful resolution to another world's issues. And maybe that's especially true when, as with McKinney's trilogy, the issues are so clearly unsolved in our own present time: environment, antagonism, excessive power.

So my second reading of SUNSET, WATER CITY looked for how McKinney (who by the way is a native Hawai'ian with ethnic threads that are Korean, Chinese, and Scottish) asserted the solutions to the trilogy, not just to one book. What I found is that this third volume is as much a statement of human value as it is an adventure. Ascalon asks herself, "It this what it always is to be with other people? To not understand each other? To harbor trauma? To bottle anxiety, probe, and flinch before another even responds? I feel lost." When she decides to tackle the bigger issues of her world, she's aware that it's also an escape from this inner lack of certainty; "I will try to bury my grief and rage for now. I will try to fix this. I will take my father and Jon6J to Ascalon Lee. It's time to return to Water City."

A return to Water City demands unusual physical capacities, and many will feel especially strange to "mainlanders" reading the series -- but less so to those who live with islands and oceans. Over time, the presence of this trilogy and the inevitable film versions to follow may bring Ascalon's adaptations to some level of expected adaptation, like Frodo's interaction with the Ring. But expect a first reading to feel uncomfortable; expect to utilize your capacity to "listen" and to "suspend disbelief." Ascalon's discoveries, at first framed in her perceptions of her father, are worth reaching: "He should've known that it's impossible to sleep to the future to change the future. One needs to be awake to change that."

Without spoiling the plot, I can say that Ascalon clarifies her own motives as she battles for what she feels is right. Unlike the three leaders around her -- her father, her mentor Ascalon Lee, and the overwhelming Akira Kimura -- this young woman intends to protect her world, if she can just figure out which elements of it merit that protection.

In a time of chaos and pain, it may seem counterproductive to dip into a trilogy that proposes that Earth's issues are so extreme that only interplanetary settlement and technological unity will pull us through. But McKinney's narrative is so compelling that it's well worth entering his speculative world and his painfully maturing protagonists. Besides ... isn't it time, after so many decades, to step beyond Frodo and Gandalf's solution for Middle Earth?

[For some extra insight from the author, look here: https://www.watercitytrilogy.com/building-water-city.]

A Vermont Halloween-Season Connection

Pumpkins are sprouting on doorsteps, silhouettes of witches dance in the breeze, and kids are intently trying on and reconsidering costumes -- it's almost Halloween.

For those attached to Vermont's history, it's also almost November 3: 89 years since the great flood that devastated so many of Vermont's roads, bridges, and homes in 1927. The flood damage lived well beyond the normal lifetime of such disasters, as it took root in the fertile imagination of a writer named Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft.  Lovecraft first visited the Green Mountains in 1928 at the invitation of his friend Vrest Orton, a prominent publisher and businessman (and founder of the Vermont Country Store).

To H.P. Lovecraft, Vermont was a wild place -- lovely, yes, but also with the potential for the dark, the frightening, the weird. He carried the scary side of his mixed impressions into his writing, creating a story called "The Whisperer in Darkness." We would now call the tale "speculative fiction" but for many years it was simply seen as horror: the genesis, in fact, of today's best horror writing.

Lovecraft's long career included many more brilliant stories, and he also served on the board of a "little literary magazine" of the period called Driftwind, where the publisher and editor in chief was Walter P. Coates of North Montpelier, Vermont. Issues of Driftwind that include Lovecraft's own writing, mostly poems, are treasured highly.

A collector of Lovecraft writings and related documents is allowing me to display today's images of the front and back of a postcard sent by Lovecraft to Coates, an amazing item that portrays the working relationship of the two men. Many thanks for the permission to show these.

[Transcription: Still on the move! Visited a week in North Wilbraham, + am now bound for the Mohawk Trail. I mean to see something of the country before I die! YrobtServt (Your obedient Servant) HPL] [Postmark date appears to be Oct 7 1928; the Mohawk Trail is a major road across northwestern Massachusetts.]

And if you have a Lovecraft reflection of your own, please share it in a comment on this piece.