Wednesday, April 17, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie




The Raven Tower is the most recent book from award-winning author Ann Leckie, but her first fantasy novel.  All of Leckie's prior works have been in science fiction and all four picked up numerous awards and nominations - four Hugo Nominations and one Hugo Win, among many many other awards - so The Raven Tower has been highly anticipated since it was announced.  Myself, I'd really enjoyed Leckie's "Imperial Radch" trilogy but was less enthused over her last novel, "Provenance."  Still, Leckie always tries to do interesting things in all of her novels, often playing with different takes on race and gender, so I'd reserved The Raven Tower from my local library as soon as I saw they got a copy.

So how does The Raven Tower measure up?  Honestly, it's hard to say - like her other books, Leckie is playing with a few tricks here, telling half the story in the second person and using a dual narrative that the book switches back and forth between seemingly at random (Leckie's typical playing with gender continues here to a much smaller extent).  And while both of these narratives are interesting on their own, it's never quite clear where either is going....and when they finally intersect, they land with kind of a thud.  Some books are more than the sum of their parts, but The Raven Tower seems to be less, leaving me waiting for a payoff that never really came.  I think I liked it more than Provenance, and I'll be unsurprised once again if it winds up on a bunch of award lists, but it didn't quite satisfy me.


--------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
A God tells two stories:

In the present, the Country of Iraden is in a strange state.  Protected for ages by its god, the Raven, the Country is ruled by the Raven's Lease, who is protected and given power by the Raven in exchange for a promise to commit suicide upon the death of the Raven's current instrument.  But when Eolo, a warrior and aide to the heir to the Raven's Lase, comes back to the Raven's capital city of Vastai, he finds that the Lease has disappeared and his brother has taken power instead of the heir.  With his master paralyzed by anger at what he sees as injustice, Eolo begins to investigate what truly happened, and finds that the state of both Gods and Men in Iraden is not exactly what it seems on the surface.....

In the past, the God tells its origins, as it began its remembered life as a simple Stone, learned language from humans, and grew to care about some humans who were inside its territory.  Over the ages, the God began to interact with other gods and to learn about the world outside its territory.  And through these interactions the God learned about the perils of using its power to make things true and came into conflict with the Raven of Iraden.....
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The Raven Tower tells of a fantasy world of men and gods, using an interesting combination of some fantasy ideas I've seen before individually but never quite in this combination.  Gods here can gain power through worship and offerings, can be more powerful if specialized rather than broad-in-spectrum, and can do deeds by speaking truths into existence, warping reality to fit their proclamations.  But Gods need to be careful, for by proclaiming something to be true that isn't they can inadvertently use up a substantial amount of their power, and can as a result negate their own existence through the overuse of power.  The result is that the Gods and Men have symbiotic relationships, and disruptions in those relationships can cause major upheavals.

Into this setting/magic system Leckie puts forth an interesting number of characters, particularly in the book's two leads: Eolo and The God.  Eolo, a trans man, is really the lead character and he's pretty solid as our lead through the story - a man devoted to his master and willing to try to help his master Mawat out, despite his Mawat's impulsive actions getting in the way.  Highly intelligent, more so than people would suspect due to his rural upbringing, his willingness to question the way things are makes him the perfect choice to solve the mystery of the strange situation that is present in Vastai.  I wish we'd learned more about his background in this book - the most we get is a quick conversation about how he met Mawat, but his adaptive thinking and actions make him a very solid hero to root for and read about further.

The God is also an excellent character in the past storyline, as it goes from being an isolationist not caring about anyone else to caring just a little bit, bit by bit.  Despite seeming a simpleton at times, it's surprisingly quick in its intelligence to adapt to circumstances to ensure it isn't taken advantage of.  Together with its good friend, the Myriad (who seems to have come from a meteor and now takes the form of a swarm of mosquitoes), it makes a fun duo of friends with seemingly opposite personalities but similar goals - with the Myriad being far more willing to explore and take action and the God being content to wait and think.  The God's storyline is a lot more abstract than Eolo's but it works, due to the God's feelings and actions being somehow compelling.  And besides this duo, most of the minor characters, from other smaller gods to a pair of deadly twins, are also well done and interesting in their actions and motivations.

The problem is that all of this fails to come together in a satisfying way.  Unlike many books with dual narratives, the narratives don't really complement each other as things go on, so it's not like the two storylines give the reader contrasting perspectives.  And the book, which does not contain chapter breaks at all (which is an annoying choice for someone who doesn't want to read this novel in one sitting), goes back and forth between these storylines seemingly at random.....and since the narrator of both storylines is the same, it sometimes takes a second to figure out the story has switched narratives.  And so the key for this book therefore is the payoff, the moment where the two storylines converge.....and it's kind of a dud.  For most of the book, it seems to be heading towards a big reveal and that never actually occurs, and what does occur just sort of gets a "huh" from me.

Whereas my problem with Provenance was that I was completely uninterested with the characters despite a very serviceable plot, this book had interesting characters and then just didn't do anything interesting at the end with them.  Again, I suspect others may differ on this, but for me, this was a miss.
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