Friday, December 14, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Vita Nostra by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko (Translated by Julia Hersey)




Vita Nostra is one of the most strange science fiction or fantasy books I've read all year.  It's also one of the more remarkable books I've read all year.  The book is the first in a stand alone trilogy - each of the books apparently has similar themes, but otherwise has little to no connection to the others -  originally published in Russian by Ukrainian authors Sergey and Marina Dyachenko in 2007.  And its incredibly engrossing even as its the book gets stranger and stranger as it goes on.

In a sense, Vita Nostra is a subversion - in a major way - of the scifi/fantasy "chosen one goes to a magical/scifi school to learn about a new strange world."  And I do mean a major subversion, this is a school whose methods involve pain and terror, with disastrous consequences for its students' families if they fail to meet up to the standards set for them.  But the book is far more than that, a book about language, about change and metamorphosis (the trilogy is known as the "metamorphosis cycle") and about love and fear, in a package that left me a bit flabbergasted as to what I'd just read when I finally finished.


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------
Alexandra "Sasha" Samokhina is a normal teenage girl who just wanted to enjoy the beach on a vacation with her single mother when she notices a strange man following her.  The man, who introduces himself as "Farit Kozhennikov"  seems to possess strange powers and forces Sasha to undergo weird tasks every morning for some unknown purpose, under threat of harm to those she loves.  Meanwhile Sasha's mother sees nothing wrong and begins a relationship with another man, Valentin.

But the tasks from Farit don't end when Sasha's vacation ends, and soon Sasha is forced by Farit to attend the Institute of Special Technologies in the remote town of Torpa, an institution no one has ever heard of.  There Sasha, along with other forced students is forced to undergo classwork such as reading exercises from a textbook that seems to be complete gibberish, with more threats made if the students don't meet the instructors' standards.  And while the other first years seem very similar to Sasha, the 2nd and 3rd year students in the institute seem very very strange....

Sasha and her mother plan at first for Sasha to find some way to get out of the Institute, but as time goes on, Sasha finds the strange work at the Institute to be appealing, deriving some psychic satisfaction from doing more and more, even beyond that which the instructors assign.  It seems Sasha is something special and deserves special attention from the instructors and she begins to feel herself changing as she undergoes more and more weird instruction.  But what exactly is Sasha changing into?   And is she going insane in the process?
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Vita Nostra, which takes place from a third person point of view of Sasha (mostly), is a book that is extremely hard to explain and quantify.  The perspective of Sasha at first matches that of the reader, who gets drawn into the story as things take more and more turns for the strange.  And not strange in a good way, but strange in a way that is quite terrifying - Farit Kozhennikov seems to possess the power to put Sasha into time loops until she does what he wants and the power to cause "accidents" and "illnesses" to befall the people she loves, and the strange professor of the mysterious specialty class that seems to be the center of the school promises fierce punishment for anyone who can't succeed at the bizarre assignments.

But as the book leaves Part One, the reader becomes a bit more disassociated from Sasha, seeing what is happening to her from a bit more distant of an eye, and the result is no less scary.  I joked on twitter that between Part One and Part Two in this book, Sasha appears to have gone insane, engrossed in her studies of things that don't make sense despite the disturbing means that have been used to get her to start those studies in the first place.  But insanity doesn't really describe the changes that come over Sasha, and the book spread its reveals out over the long haul, leaving the reader desperately wanting to keep reading more to find out what is going on (somewhat like Sasha is desperate to do more classwork).  Again this is insanely creepy in its execution and yet it drags you in in its own unique way.  This is absolutely a story about learning and metamorphosis unlike anything you've ever seen before.

But like some other weird SciFi - to name a comparison of a book that is similar but incredibly different, Jeff Vandermeer's "Annihilation" - this is not a book of clean simple answers, but one that is entirely cryptic until its incredibly powerful (but no more clear) ending.  I can't state enough the impressive translation job done here - the language use here is insanely precise and that it all works out in a language other than the original is marvelous.  And again that ending.  Good lord.

(A Note: I've seen some reviews of this book describe it as a "Young Adult" book, which is a designation I'm a bit skeptical about applying here: yeah the book features HS/College-Age students in a school environment, but I don't really think any of the events that occur really work even as a metaphor for the development of a teen into an adult, though obviously others disagree on that.  Again, I think the book is really interesting and well worth reading, but I didn't get the same YA-esque vibe here.  Your mileage may very I guess (fwiw the book isn't listed as YA on Amazon or in its marketing materials))  

 Is Vita Nostra perfect?  I wouldn't say that though I've deliberated giving it one of my perfect scores anyhow because of how fascinating it is that its flaws barely matter.  I might wind up doing that too between the time I'm writing this review and the time I actually publish it - its definitely near the category of "Must Read"s I give perfect scores to, and fits the vein of prior perfect scores like Amatka and Annihilation.  If it has flaws, it's that the requirement the school (and Farit to others) puts on the characters to lose their virginity is a bit more ummmm blatantly evil and disturbing than the rest, though no sexual abuse is ever shown on page.  This is really minor and forgettable in the grand scheme of things really.  The book also takes a while to get moving, but I felt drawn in by the creepyness from the beginning, so I can't really claim pacing issues are here.

Normally my reviews of books tend to start with going into the characters and then after that the plot, but that approach doesn't really work with Vita Nostra - sure Sasha is a great character, and some of the secondary characters are fascinating, but they're not really what this book is about.*

*ROT13 Spoiler on this: Gur Cbjre bs Fcrrpu naq gur zrnavat oruvaq Grkg, naq jung jr nyybj gb or cneg bs gung - jurgure gung or srne be ybir be guvatf gvatrq ol obgu.  V'z ernyyl rkcynvavat jung V tbg bhg bs guvf cbbeyl rira va fcbvyref fb V'yy fgbc abj.

Yeah, read this book.  I'm just stopping this failure of a review now.
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