Wednesday, January 8, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham




Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet finally comes to a close in this book, The Price of Spring.  The series, which began with his A Shadow in Summer (Reviewed Here), has quickly become one of my favorites, as it tells an epic fantasy story spanning a timeline of over 60 years, with 15 year time jumps between each book.  Throughout it all, the story has told the tale of two characters - Otah Machi and Maati Vaupathai - as the world as they knew it has shifted over the long years: both through their own actions and the actions of others, and the costs of survival in a world filled with magical beings of mass destruction in the homeland and powerful foreign armies based upon steam tech on the outside.  The series' title - again, the Long Price Quartet - has really come into focus with the 3rd book and this book of the series, as the book asks once again: at what price should the past...and future be maintained?

Seriously, I could write a whole essay about this series and others have, and The Price of Spring is a truly fantastic conclusion to it all.  Whereas the prior books featured a number of viewpoint characters other than the main duo, this book alternates telling the story only between Maati and Otah's viewpoints, as their struggles...and lives, come to their conclusion.  At the same time, the next generation takes its steps onto the center stage, and the prices paid for the future by Maati and Otah are asked in new fashion of them as well, with the whole world in the balance.  As always the character work is incredible, and the story comes to a really satisfying conclusion, as it feels like it only could have here.

Note: I read this, as with the rest of the series, in audiobook format.  The reader is very solid, so it's definitely worth your time in that format if you are looking for an audiobook.

Note: Spoilers for Books 1-3 are inevitable below, sorry.

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------------
15 years have passed since the Galts invaded the Khaiem, leading to mass destruction, the losses of lives, and most of all: the sterility of all of the Men of Galt and the Women of the Khaiem at the hands of the failed Andat Sterile.  15 years, during which there have been no new babies in either great power and during which the powers have grown inevitably older and weaker....as foreign parties look upon them with hungry eyes.

Otah Machi, now emperor of the Khaiem, embarks on what he sees as the only possible plan for a future for either people: a plan to tie the two nations together, with Galtic women marrying Khaiate men, with Otah's son, Danat marrying a Galtic girl Ana to seal the deal.  But as Otah tries to fend off the two peoples' enemies and to keep his land safe, he finds major opposition to the plan from people on both sides, including from Ana herself, who has no wish of being in a political marriage, power or no, and without whom the plan will inevitably fail.  And then there's Otah's now 29 year old daughter, Eiah, who rejects his plan as she sees it as turning its back on the infertile women of the Khaiem, and casts the Galtic women as mere tools for their wombs.  Turning her back on her father, Eiah takes her medical expertise and finds the only other person she ever looked up to for a different path....Otah's once best friend, poet Maati Vaupathai.

For Maati has spent the last 15 years in hiding and seeking to correct his mistake with Sterile in the only way he can think of: by creating and binding a new Andat to reverse the damage of his error.  With Eiah's help, he embarks on a new scheme, to create a language of women's grammar, and a batch of poets who are women for the first time ever, in order to be able to come up with an Andat who has never been bound before.  But the Andat's powers are everything Galt and Otah fear, for good reason, and as Maati's plans usher towards completion, they will force he and Otah into one final confrontation, with the massive power of the Andat threatening to change the world forever for one final time......
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In prior books in this series, the story was told from the perspectives of roughly four to five characters per book, with two of those perspectives always being that of Otah and Maati, but the rest being other major characters in the novels.  The Price of Spring switches things up: other than in the prologue and epilogue, the story is told entirely from Otah and Maati's perspectives, without others in the way.  It's an interesting thematic choice, because in one form, this book is the finale of Otah and Maati's stories, begun back in the first book 53 story years ago, and so it's somewhat fitting for our story to be told only from their perspectives.  On the other hand, it's also a strange choice, because this book makes it very clear throughout that this world and story have shifted to the next generation: Otah's son and daughter and their generation - the last generation at the moment of both Galt and the Khaiem.  I definitely wished that some of the members of that generation had viewpoints in this book, but instead, we have to see these characters' actions through Otah and Maati's eyes.

But they're fascinating eyes, mind you, as both Otah and Maati have grown into fascinating old men as they try and fix the world they both broke.  I could write a full essay on how they've grown and their overarching philosophies, but I'm going to avoid that here, since that's really not what I do on this blog.  But in short, Otah believes now that the past is the past, and that attempts to directly undo it are foolhardy - and in the case of trying to restore the power of the Andat, as insanely dangerous - and that the way forward is to try and adapt to the circumstance, even if that forces the people of the Khaiem and Galt to massively change their lives and to feel diminished as a result.  Otah has always had the determination to do what he feels necessary and the goodheartedness to make decisions based upon what he truly thinks is best for everyone long term regardless of what others think about those decisions.  These were the traits he was tested for at the Poet's school all those years ago, and they explain his character even 53 years later.

By contrast, Maati never really passed those tests for those traits, and his view is more focused on restoring the past then adapting to the future as a result.  Focused more upon the ends than the means, Maati seeks to restore the Andat to undo his mistakes so that the past form of the Khaiem can return.  As with the last book, where part of his failure to bind Sterile was due to his lack of having past those tests, and him not having the goodhearted determined nature needed to be a poet, these traits affect him in his drive towards this goal as well: causing him to overlook anything that suggests his means are having bad results on the way to his main goal and causing the conflict (whereas Otah's nature forces him to reconsider and try things differently when his means seem to backfire).  And reslly, Maati is almost a broken man - so enraged at Otah in jealousy of what he sees as Otah falling upwards, and Otah's refusal to help (despite Otah letting him live after Sterile while others would have had him killed), so obsessed about undoing his mistakes and restoring the past, his lack of goodheartedness at his core leads him to some tragic errors that cause the events of this book to go so disastrously, which is all I"ll say without spoiling.  And all of his makes so much sense, and works so well, because of Abraham's writing here and before.

But again, while Otah and Maati's personality differences, and Maati's brokenness, drive the story somewhat, this is really a book showing the next generation, who doesn't have the baggage of hate that Maati and Otah have.  In particular there's Eiah, Otah's physician daughter who seeks the Andat to restore the fertility of her generation so they aren't left behind, but also to progress forward with healing through the Andat, rather than just to restore the past, and who - like her father - has the good nature needed to know when the means have gone wrong.  There's Vanjit, the young woman whose family was killed in the Galtic invasion and whom Maati teaches to be his first successful poet, and who can't let go of her feelings of loss and rage.  There's Danat, Otah's son, who refuses to be merely a political pawn and to do something for the good of others that centers upon what he feels is a wrong - such as bedding/marrying a girl who doesn't want an arranged marraige.  And there's Ana, the Galtic girl whose mother arranges for her to marry Danat to seal the new Galt-Khaiem treaty who stands up for herself and her own autonomy in place of what was once the way of the old guard.  This is the kids' story, as Eiah makes clear to a spoiler character from the past generation, and it's their actions that will decide the future of this world, not that of the older generation.

In short, and god knows I've already failed at keeping this short, The Price of Spring continues its fascinating plot and character work from beginning to end, as it shows the end of Maati and Otah's stories and the beginning of the stories of the new generations, who are themselves deciding the costs they are willing to pay for their own futures.  It's a hell of a way to conclude this series, and man cannot I not think of a similar way of doing so in another series I've read....so yeah, you should be reading the quartet, if somehow you weren't already.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)