Tuesday, April 10, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman




Tess of the Road is my book of the year* so far in 2018.  As the eponymous heroine of this book tells asks another character: "Have you ever experienced something so far beyond words that you couldn't explain it?"  That's how I feel about this book, a story about a young woman, burdened by guilt and shame over a tragic past experience, feeling pressured by people who don't understand, who tries to find some answer or just some....thing to hold on to by walking along the road.  It's a story with a main character whose hurt is so real but also so many other characters who have their own responses and ideas that I was simply enthralled.  This is a book that dares not to have a single answer, and to refuse not to commit to any particular answer that comes up, and it is basically perfect as a result.

*Not that this makes my prior book of the year (Mishell Baker's Imposter Syndrome) any lesser in quality.

Incidentally (to take a step back), this book is actually the third of Hartman's books set in the same world, after Seraphina and Shadow Scale, and characters (Seraphina is the main protagonist's half-sister) and plot details from those books are referenced in this one.  That said, I haven't read either prior book, and it didn't detract from my experience at all - again this is my favorite book I've read this year and my second perfect score of 2018.  So you can read this as a stand alone just fine.

Trigger Warning: The main character's backstory in this book involves rape.  The book does not spend long on the description of the act (it's not in fact revealed to be rape until very near the end of the book, in fact), and of course the driving force behind the main character's actions are her attempts to grapple with what happened, so there is nothing about it that is gratuitous, but I figure I should give fair warning given how high I'm going to be recommending this book throughout the rest of this post.  Still, I think this book, which is about a woman trying to deal with that very act, might still appeal to those who usually avoid books dealing with rape/abuse, but if it's a deal breaker to you, I understand.  

 More after the Jump:

---------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------
Tess Dombegh was once a young girl/woman who only wanted to find excitement in the world, who idolized pirate stories and new discoveries rather than the idea of being a proper lady following the strict teachings of St. Vitt, as her mother would have her.  And then she brought "shame" upon her family and was forced to pretend to be the younger fraternal twin to her sister Jeanne and to try and help Jeanne get married to a proper gentleman whose money might be able to help her family.  All the while enduring the shame and accusations of her strictly religious mother and less caring father, who wants to send her to a convent.

But when Tess' (half-dragon) half-sister Seraphina gifts Tess with a new pair of boots, on an impulse Tess puts them on and tries to walk out on the Road.  Frightened by the idea at first, she soon runs into and is accompanied by a figure from her past: a Quigutl (a semi-dragon-like race disrespected by humans and dragons alike) named Pathka.  Together they make a goal of walking the road till they find a World Serpent, a legendary creature from Quigutl legend that both humans and dragons don't believe exists.

But the Road is a long path and as Tess begins to feel some purpose upon walking upon it, she will soon find experiences along the way that re-characterize everything she knows, particularly her tragic past experiences and her shame.  And she will find herself attempting in the process of doing so to help others, particularly Pathka, who has a past of his own he doesn't seem to want to confront.

Throughout this book, Tess will essentially search for meaning on the Road, but what she finds may not be as simple an answer as she could ever have hoped for.
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Tess of the Road follows Tess from the Third Person, with it mostly taking place in the present, but occasionally flashing back to reveal the events that led to Tess' shame.  The book doesn't do this in any particular pattern - early on there are parts where chapters alternate between past and present, and then you'll find us staying with the present for several chapters in a row before events come up that cause Tess to flashback (or to tell the past story to another character).  This whole thing works because Tess is such a well written character that any reader will have an incredible empathy for her, especially after from seeing her as a little girl in the prologue to being essentially broken by the first chapter.  This is Tess' story, as you might expect from the title, and Hartman makes her story both tragic and enthralling at the same time.

I've read a bunch of reviews of Tess on the Road that suggest that this is a book about Tess finding herself, or that Tess does manage to find herself in the end.  But what amazes me about this book is that it is also a book where Tess does the opposite - she fails to find an answer as to her own past and what she should do going forward, she fails to "find herself."  In essence I'd best describe the book as being about Tess "finding herself" as if those two words were in the "Contradictory case," a unique feature of the Quigutl's language (known as Quootla) described by the book:

"Quootla had a suffix, -utl, that could be glued to the end of anything-nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, small rodents- and meant the word itself plus its opposite."  

This is a book about Tess finding herself and yet not doing so at the same time, about her finding answers and finding at the same time that those answers are wholly inadequate, about trying to help others while still looking for a way to help herself.  This is not to say that Tess isn't much better off both physically and mentally by the end of this book - she undergoes a tremendous amount of character development, or else this book simply wouldn't work.  But saying it's a book about finding herself doesn't quite do the book enough credit, and doesn't explain how revelatory this is - this is a book that quite simply does not say that there is a single answer or even a right collection of answers for someone in Tess' situation, as one character puts it when regards to whether an idea is right or wrong:

"Wrong....I gave you two choices as a test, there are never just two choices.  That is a lie to keep you from thinking too deeply."

 Tess isn't the only one searching for answers in the story, as many of the other characters are as well.  Tess realizes that her companion Pathka is also not only searching for answers, but on the run from a tragedy he doesn't want to acknowledge.  And Tess comes across a number of other characters who are searching for answers in their own way - and who aren't necessarily grateful for Tess' interference.  In a less capable author's hands, each of these characters's stories, many of whom take up small parts of the book and then disappear as Tess moves on, would seem like rote parables, but Hartman makes them all feel like natural parts of Tess' journey that stay with her.  And these stories/characters often contradict each other -  for example, seemingly immediately after Tess has a big revelation, she tries putting it to the test in helping another woman she finds to have been in a similar situation, only to find that woman had her own plan that Tess ruined.

And then there's the ending.  I've read online that Tess of the Road is the first in a new duology, but even if it isn't, it functions perfectly as a stand alone, despite the fact that things aren't simply resolved by its end.  The ending features, not to spoil anything, one of Tess' personal relationship conflicts being resolved while another is opened up raw again, and yet despite it hurting Tess (and me as the reader) it seemed like a natural way for things to go. For the book to end in a happier way - because while this book ends on a far more hopeful note than it begins, I wouldn't necessarily call it a totally happy ending - would ring incredibly false and this book doesn't fall into that pitfall.

In short, Tess of the Road features fantastic characters and a plot/story that pulls no punches on a serious subject and comes up with a result that is just an incredible journey.  If you can handle the subject, you need to read this.
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