Tuesday, October 13, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston





Master of Poisons is the newest fantasy novel by author Andrea Hairston, whose work I have previously missed out upon.  The novel is a stand alone epic fantasy novel based upon African folktales (with further inspiration drawn from Indigenous American cultures as per the acknowledgements) and has gotten a lot of praise from sources I follow (Martha Wells gave this a blurb, for instance).  So when I put this book on hold both at my physical library and at the elibrary, I had high hopes.

And Master of Poisons honestly met those hopes and then some, becoming one of my favorite reads of the year.  It's a novel featuring a world bereft by (fantastical) climate change, and a governing body/Empire that is too short-sighted to take any of the steps necessary to address it, often denying the problem in the first place.  In this world comes two very different protagonists: an older leader desperate to convince his colleagues of the danger and who is forced to search for a legendary spell and a young girl (who grows into a young woman over the course of the book) sold by her family and who finds herself among griots and disciples of a kind of magic.  Oh and we have griots, magic based upon spirits and the spirit world, animals with personalities, and dangerous pirates to boot.  It all comes together in a really great way in the end, and yeah this is a keeper for sure.


----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Poison Sand is consuming the Arkhysian Empire - its land is drying up, its crops are dying, and its people are suffering.  Djola, the 43 year old Master of Poisons and member of the ruling Council, knows this.  Twenty years ago, Djola had left his people to help Emperor Azizi unite the land in a peaceful rule, and now he hopes he can use his power and influence to convince the Emperor and the people of the land to change their ways - to take steps necessary to slow the coming destruction while he searches for a Conjure that can reverse it.

But the other members of the Council are too set in their ways, and prefer a quick fix - a fix like trusting in the dark powers of a priest using Conjure powered by the bleeding/sacrifices of unwilling captives.  Unwilling to trust in a long-run plan, Djola finds himself exiled, cast away from his wife and children, and put on a pirate ship, where he desperately searches for the Conjure to save the land that will allow him to return to his family.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Empire, a young girl named Awa, possessing the power of smoke-walking, is sold by her father to the Green Elders.  There she learns about the land and its people, and their stories from Yari, the Griot of Griots, and takes steps to become a griot herself.  But fate will not allow Awa to grow up so easily, and soon, like Djola, she finds herself in the midst of the chaos of the dying land, making choices that could change the fate of the entire world.....
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Master of Poisons tells its story in what seems at first like a typical epic fantasy fashion, with the first few chapters alternating between Awa and Djola's perspectives.  And then you get a few chapters featuring Djola in a row.  And then you get a chapter from the perspective of an elephant (Mango, the elephant to be precise).  And suddenly you realize that things aren't quite so straight forward.  And that's really the case with Master of Poisons, which opens the story with a paragraph that could come right out of an essay about today's world:

"We are more likely to deny truth than admit grave error and change our minds.  Even in the face of overwhelming evidence or imminent destruction, we refuse to believe in any gods but our own.  Who can bear for the ground to dissolve under their feet and the stars to fall from the sky?  So we twist every story to preserve our faith."

 And that's the theme for the setup of this story.  The Council would rather line their pockets than enact Djola's ten year plan to preserve the land while he looks for a cure (a metaphor for global warming if there ever was one).  The Emperor is too scared of his people and Council to do anything other than push Djola for a quick urgent change, even though he knows that casting Djola away onto a pirate ship will only harm his Empire (even more so as Djola is forced to aid the pirates with his magic to survive).  The Emperor pushes away advisors who could help who are women or vesons (the book's term for non-binary characters) in similar fear.

Meanwhile in Awa's personal world we see the same thing.  So her father selling her out of shortsighted fear of her power and a lack of care but for his own survival, even as he knows his actions are wrong.  Later, sprites under the care of the Elders decide rather than to take the long path towards becoming an Elder they would choose the shorter path of betrayal.   And in the so-called "Holy City", the High Priest Hezram declares people "transgressors" and bleeds them to fuel his "Dream Gates", a magic to temporarily protect his city while magical climate change destroys everything around it, a fix is not only evil but cannot work long term, and only serves as a shortcut for power and greed.

It's in this world that Awa and Djola struggle to survive and find a way through, along with the other people and animals that they meet.  Djola's wisdom gets him exiled, and he is determined to do the very thing he warned against, rush to find a quick cure magic despite the fact that everyone who knows of it warns him of said magic's dangerous power if misused for the wrong reason.  But as he finds himself seeing more suffering first hand, and hearing of the suffering of his family and friends via correspondence, he begins to lose himself to despair.  Meanwhile, Awa begins in despair as she is sold, but finds happiness with the elders.  And when even that is taken away from her, she keeps to the knowledge that there has to be a better way, that she cannot kill, that she can get back those taken from her and find happiness somewhere.  She is in no way an optimist, but her spirit is strong, even as she's confronted not with simply more suffering but truths that people and things she cares about may have changed in ways that make her uncomfortable and unsure...she remains devoted to saving people.  The two protagonists don't meet till 60% of the way through, but you can see their contrast from the very beginning, it works to illustrate the challenge and difficulty of moving forward for change in this world.

The plot is strong throughout, from beginning to end, and always keeping the reader interested, whether the characters are merely growing up in peace or on board a pirate ship using conjure to do more and more damage to innocents.  We see themes such as that of Empire and colonization, how it attempts to shun foreigners and those peoples it has absorbed, and how that thinking blinds it to solutions that could possibly have saved it - like I said above the jump, African and Indigenous American cultures inspire this book heavily, and as we're seeing with wildfires currently, and the book makes a point how the wisdom of such cultures could lead to solutions to the environmental problems caused through ignorant Empires.  We see through the views of animals the power of kindness and how that kindness has long term effects, as opposed to cruelty which simply results in eventual destruction.  And it all leads to an ending, that is absolutely fitting, which caps this one off nearly perfectly.

There's room for a potential sequel to this novel if Hairston wants, but I doubt one is intended. and it's absolutely not necessary.  This novel isn't perfect but it's damn close and one of the best novels of the year for sure for me, and one I probably should go back and read more slowly.  Highly recommended.
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