Wednesday, November 8, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys




Winter Tide is a novel of a genre that seems to be expanding these days: the Lovecraft subversion genre.  I've never actually read any of Lovecraft's actual work and really don't have an interest in doing so - the racist ideas behind the guy and behind his writing are fairly well known, and nothing about the ideas of his I've heard about has drawn me in enough to really try to read his work despite that.  That said, Winter Tide marks the 5th story in the past year that I've read or started reading that attempts to put a spin on the Lovecraft mythos, in a way that Lovecraft would hate as it subverts the very hatred that inspired his work.

That said, Winter Tide is a pretty good work even for someone like me, who has basically no knowledge of the Lovecraft work it is subverting.  The story inverts the Lovecraft work in that our main protagonist is one of the monsters themselves, a premature Deep One who still has a human-like form, and well...the only evil actions in this book are taken by humans, not the monsters.  That may sound simple, but the overall product is a nicely complicated tale that features protagonists dealing with issues of racism and nationalism.  If you enjoy Lovecraftian works, I suspect you'll REALLY enjoy Winter Tide, but even if you aren't a clear fan, this book works pretty well.

More after the Jump:

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
In 1928, the United States government attacked the people of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, and removed the surviving occupants into internment camps.  The people of Innsmouth were the subspecies of humanity referred to as the Deep Ones, who would eventually metamorphose into underwater forms.  But only two land-dwelling Deep Ones survived the internment camps, Aphra Marsh and her brother Caleb, who were released after World War 2.

Now, in 1948, the two Marshes have struggled to survive. Caleb has sought access to the library at Miskatonic University, in order to obtain the books and journals from Innsmouth that were taken from their home.  Aphra instead has, along with a human named Charlie, sought out books of rituals and knowledge to relearn the powers of her heritage, and tried to survive on the West Coast, far from her home.

But Aphra's exile is about to come to an end - because when an FBI agent asks her to go to Miskatonic to help prevent the Russians from obtaining body-swapping magic, Aprha and Caleb will both be together again for the first time near their old home.  And at Miskatonic they won't just find prudish professors, but eager students, humans with mad heritage, and even a member of the Great Race.  And then there are their underwater Elders, who have their own demands for Aphra and Caleb, the last ones of their race, and the continuation of their heritage.

But the biggest threat won't be those with non-typical human blood - but that of other humans who wish to tap into the magic themselves to obtain their own powers.  These humans believe that Aphra's whole race should have been exterminated and cannot be reasoned with....and may bring destruction upon the whole world in their hateful ignorance.
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Winter Tide is Aphra's tale, told entirely from her point of view, as she returns to the area around her birthplace for the first time since her people's almost complete destruction.  This is not a humorous story (it's not grimdark either mind you) - it's a story about a people who were nearly destroyed out of fear and hatred of the other and how the survivors try to cope and maybe even find themselves reborn when they're seemingly on their lonesome.  And it's a story where you realize fairly quickly that even with most people having realized the genocide was probably wrong, they're still acting out of that same fear and hatred years later.

What makes this work is that Aphra is an excellent narrator and character.  In a worse writer's hands, a Human of the Water who wishes to one day return to her people under the sea could seem almost comical, but Aphra instead is a strong 3-dimensional character, even when she's considering choices that would seem almost outrageous to our sensibilities (the question of whether she has a duty to procreate to preserve her race for example, is an issue that comes up).  Similarly, in a worse writer's hands, magical rituals like those seen here could feel too much like deus ex machinas, but Emrys always makes the magic seem to fit right in and be logical.

The rest of the cast is largely secondary but still very solid: Caleb's approach to his and Aphra's lone existences is very different from Aphra's but feels very real at the same time, the Yith Professor Trumbull makes a hilarious-yet-serious Great Being, and the inquisitive Audrey was a character I wish we spent more time with.  The book had me suspecting it was going to drop a bombshell on us regarding Audrey, but never actually does and I think is much better for it, although again, I hope we get to see more of her in the sequel.

In short, Winter Tide is a pretty good book and while it leaves a few sequel hooks for next year's sequel (I think this is the start of a trilogy) to pick up on, it tells a complete story.  If I had a complaint it's that the epilogue to the book feels like it's tacked on because the writer removed characters from where they needed to be for the sequel and needed to put them back there, which feels awkward.  Otherwise, the only reason I don't rate this higher is that well...it didn't quite blow me away and the Lovecraft spin isn't really something I'm THAT interested in - if I was so interested, this book might truly have done so.

Recommended. 
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