Thursday, December 5, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: An Autumn War by Daniel Abraham




An Autumn War is the third book in Daniel Abraham's "The Long Price Quartet," following 14 years after A Betrayal in Winter (Reviewed Here) and nearly 30 years after A Shadow in Summer (Reviewed Here).  Through the first two books, the series has been a fascinating character-focused tale of a few characters struggling with right and wrong and survival in an East Asian-inspired world filled with magical beings of mass destruction, an ruling class that relies upon murderous succession battles, and conspiracies driven by a jealous overseas military power.  Now with book 3, the series' title starts to make clear sense, as all that was brimming beneath the surface of the prior two books comes to a fore.

And wow, is the result impressive....and devastatingly impactful.  The story takes our main duo - Maati and Otah - in new natural directions, introduces a totally different but again fascinating antagonist, and adds in two returning characters who have changed quite a bit from when we last saw them.  And the result is a plot that sometimes borders on the veins of grimdark, where every character is forced to make decisions with potentially awful costs, all the way until an absolutely explosive finish.

Note: As usual for this series, I began it in Audiobook form, and the reader is again excellent.  Recommended in this format if you have access to it - such as by a Hoopla Library.

SPOILER ALERT: The rest of this review contains spoilers fr A Betrayal in Winter, which can't be avoided in trying to discuss this book further.  Be Warned.
--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------For generations, the cities of the Khaiem has survived and thrived, free from the threat of foreign invaders, due to the powers of the Andat - captured concepts of grammar imposing their will upon reality - and the Poets who wield them.  But for Otah Machi, Khai of the city of Machi, it is clear that that can't go on indefinitely, as it is growing harder for the poets to hold old Andat or, when they lose them, to bind new ones.  And Otah is well aware that the western military power of Galt has already tried twice to get around the Andat so that they can conquer the Khaiem.  But even the small steps Otah takes towards preparing for an Andat-less future are met with resistance from those who don't wish to change their ways of life.

But Otah is righter than he knows, for a Galtic general has made it his life's mission to destroy the Andat....and may have found his way to do just that.  And with the Andat gone, perhaps nothing will be able to stand in the way of the invading Galtic army, bent on destroying the Khaiem way of life.

Otah and his close friend, the poet Maati Vaupathai, the pair's former lover, Liat Chokavi, and Otah's uneasy ally, the mercenary captain Sinja, are the only ones with any foresight of the threat - and therefore the Khaiem's only hope of survival.  But to survive, the four of them will have to make incredibly hard choices.....and even then it will likely not be enough.  And even if it is, who will be left standing when the price for their actions must be paid.....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like the prior novels in the quartet, An Autumn War alternates telling its story between multiple points of view, with two of the points of view being our series protagonists and one being our new antagonist.  Our other two characters are returning characters, neither of whom had a viewpoint last book: Liat (returning from book 1) and Sinja (getting a bigger role after his introduction in book 2).  Unlike the other novels, this book takes advantage of these disparate viewpoints to take the plot away from just a single city of the Khaiem, with the plot affecting the entire Khaiem as the Galt invade.  In essence, while the plot structure of alternating viewpoints remains the same, the focus of this book expands as the undercurrents of the Galtic invasion of the Khaiem finally occurs, and the equilibrium held in place by the Andat is finally broken.

Which is not to say that the character-focused nature of this story has changed - it most certainly hasn't, and the characters remain tremendous.  Both Otah and Maati have changed over the years - Otah struggles to balance being a good ruler and doing what he thinks necessary with what others think a Khai should do - and when things hit the fan, with the burden he feels placed upon him by others who turn to him for leadership due to previously having been proven right.  Maati struggles with the idea of his scholarship possibly putting him back in the good graces of the Dai-Kvo years after his exile, and after his life seemed so simple.  He also struggles with how to be a parent, when his son returns to his life with a crisis of conscience.

And of course our three new (or returning) viewpoints are equally fascinating.  Liat struggles with the idea of her son following her path and running out on HIS own child and wife, and the idea of her son's survival in a world where he might be killed as part of Machi's succession.  Her fears of him repeating her mistakes, as well as his possible death, are palpable, but she's forced to try and handle those fears at the same time she is forced to use her management skills to help try and save the city.  Sinja is the least of the characters, but works quite well as a man who used to fight for money and now fights for a woman he loves.  And then there's the antagonist, General Balasar Gice, a charismatic and incredibly capable military leader of the Galts who is absolutely convinced that the Andats are an evil that must be destroyed, even against his superiors' wishes, in order to prevent a future apocalypse.  And the book makes a pretty good case he might be right.

For here, in this book, the series' title becomes most clearly apparent, as the price of the dependence upon the Andat becomes clear.  The Andat has resulted in the Khaiem's development of technology being stunted, of them unable to handle major changes without the Andat, and with the choices in the face of adversity of massive destruction either to themselves or to their enemies.  They invest one man with the power to make an absolutely devastating mistake, throwing thousands or possibly millions of lives into disarray or worse due to simple error.  Perhaps nowhere is that more clear than with Otah, whose choices to spare Galt in the both of the first two books, to try and be a good man and to spare innocents, are a clear but-for cause of the deaths and destruction that occur in this book.  If he had let the Khai of Saraykhet destroy Galt, this wouldn't have happened.  If he had turned Stone-Made-Soft upon Galt as revenge for the succession, it wouldn't have happened.  But Otah didn't want to kill innocents, and the price of being a good man now threatens his own family.

 I should add also that the non-viewpoint character's, particularly Otah's wife and daughter, are nearly as fascinating and make a big impact on the story as well.  And together all the characters, the battles, and their desperate actions come together for a tremendous and utterly devastating finale, where nothing will be the same again, and not everyone will survive.  It's easily the most explosive finale of the series, and it brings forth a cliffhanger (though this is a complete installment) that makes me want to read the last book in the series.....now. 
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)