Thursday, January 14, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Blade Between by Sam J Miller

 



The Blade Between is the latest novel by Sam J Miller, who won the Norton/Nebula Award for his "The Art of Starving" and was also nominated for a Nebula for his last novel, Blackfish City.  Miller is however one of those weird authors for me, whose prose or writing style just doesn't flow to my eyes...not for any obvious reason I can explain, but I just have trouble reading him.  So I originally DNFed Blackfish City before coming back to it due to its award nomination, because I couldn't quite get into it, and I was worried I'd feel similarly about The Blade Between (I got through The Art of Starving as an audiobook, which helped a little).

And well, The Blade Between worked better for me than Blackfish City, but only barely, and not only did I not love the prose again, but well I don't think it managed to work out in the end with all its themes and characters.  It's a story of gentrification in Hudson, (upstate) NY, of anger and hate, of people being forced out by others without a thought, and of pasts not easily left behind, and these are a lot of strong themes that Miller is playing with to go along with several solid characters.  But in the process, the themes get muddied and I don't really like how it ended things, so yeah, I think this'll be the last Miller novel I try for a while.  

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Homophobia. 


-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Ronan Szepessy vowed never to go back to his hometown of Hudson, the city he grew up in, the city where he was relentlessly bullied by homophobic assholes, the city where his mother died.  But now after years away, where he gained minor fame as a successful photographer, he finds himself on a train back to the City, despite him not understanding why. 

But that confusion is only magnified when he sees what has happened to Hudson:  how the once shabby old city has now become flooded by wealthier people from the City, looking for second homes and new expensive developments.  How the old residents are being forced out by increasing rents and rich developments trying to force buyouts and how the longtime mayor is promoting a new out of towner to replace him.  How the city has become something other...to the dismay and suffering of nearly all who came from Hudson in the first place.  

Ronan may have hated this city, but it was his city and the city of those he grew up with, like his first love Dom and Dom's now wife Attalah, and damn if he isn't going to try to do something to stop its transformation.  And so Ronan hatches a plot with Attalah to force out the newcomers....but to his shock, he soon finds the plan off the rails, and guided by an inhuman monstrous and hate-filled entity that wants only destruction.  Ronan may have never wanted to come back to his hated hometown, but soon it may be up to him to save it.....
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The Blade Between tackles some serious issues, particularly the devastation of gentrification, the difficulties poverty and drug usage causes people of lower income, and how no one really seems to care about these issues.  It does through some chapters told in Ronan's first person point of view, but also other chapters that show the story from a third person perspective that follows various characters as needed for the story - starting with Dom (Ronan's first love, now a black police officer) and Attalah (his black wife, who tries to run a non-profit for saving the city that just can't get enough done).  These three characters in particular, as well as some of the minor characters shown, really are done pretty well and show the real life impacts of these issues.  

The Blade Between further deals as a heavy theme with the contagion of hate and the power of it spreading and how it only leads to worse and worse outcomes.  And so with Hudson and the characters here, gentrification leads to outsiders, who take the place of the locals who were simply trying to build their lives, forming hatred, and that hatred here - as Ronan tries to use it for good purposes - spirals out of control into a force that only leads to destruction and chaos....and not a restoration of the old, but rather a destruction of all.  And the old way, although it deserved a chance to change on its own, was far from perfect as this book notes, in its conservative nature and homophobic behavior.  The book also uses Attalah to cleverly note that the people who feel the most free to let their hate color their own behavior are often those who have privileges that may don't have - so Attalah's actions were always a bit more conservative, but when a white woman gets on the same path, she gets out of control because she has no reason to reserve herself; similarly, Ronan's hatred, even as he DOES openly recognize his privilege, is something he feels more open expressing when he knows he'll be judged slightly less for it.  

But despite all of the above, The Blade Between doesn't really resolve itself well and by the end it doesn't really work.  It's definitely trying to be a book showing the problems these real world issues cause, and noting that there is no silver bullet answer....and yet the book ends with everyone seemingly coming together after a major sacrifice is made, with one of the people involved in the gentrification working with the others to try and compensate.  The book's supernatural element is seemingly generated from the bones of the whales that were buried under Hudson, and just seems extraneous and not to fit with it all (there's elements of destruction from colonization there as a theme, but it just doesn't fit with it all).  And how that ending is achieved, that aforementioned sacrifice, is just ugh no.*

*Spoiler in ROT13: Ebana va gur raq ernyvmrf gung gur fhcreangheny ryrzragf ner evyvat hc ungerq naq qrfgehpgvba ol punaaryvat uvf bja ungerq naq fb engure guna fbzr purrfl rzoenpr bs ybir svkvat guvatf - juvpu ubarfgyl zvtug'ir jbexrq tvira gur ybir orgjrra gur znva gevb - ur....pbzzvgf fhvpvqr?  Naq lrnu ur pbzrf onpx nf n fcvevg gb fbzr rkgrag, ohg yvxr qhqr, gung'f na njshy raqvat naq whfg xvaq bs ercerurafvoyr?  Ab.  

Miller's novels tend to take cynical views of the world, and the theme that hatred and vengeance gets nowhere is a common one in them.  But this is just the latest of his books where I'm not sure I feel like he can put together this cynicism or the themes in a way that feels like it says something important or that is satisfying, and soooo yeah, it just doesn't work for me.  

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