SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck: https://t.co/kUTuaLCI8W
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) March 25, 2021
Short Review: 7.5 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): A weird fantasy tale from Tidbeck, telling the story of 3 escapees - 1 unwilling, 2 willing - from a cruel fae world without time, as they search for identity and roles to play - and the power that comes with them.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) March 25, 2021
2/3
The Memory Theater is the latest book by Karin Tidbeck, a Swedish author known for their brilliant weird fiction (think Jeff Vandermeer's work). Their previous novel, Amatka, is one of the few books I've ever given a perfect score to, being a brilliant dystopian scifi novel exploring the power of language and their collection Jagannath was once nominated for a bunch of English awards (I reviewed the collection here). So yeah when I heard they were coming out with a new novel in 2021 in English, well I was hyped.
And The Memory Theater is really interesting, even if it's not up to the same level as Amatka. It's an expansion of one of the stories from Jagannath ("Augusta Prima") featuring a Fae world without time, only with the story being rewritten with two new central characters as the novel's first act, before it moves on to what happens afterwards. The new story, featuring not just the spoiled Fae woman who wanted to learn about time, but also a quiet but calm giant girl and a human boy searching for his name, works pretty well even if it's really short and can easily be finished in one sitting. And then there's the troupe of actors from whom the novel gets its name, who act out the stories of the many worlds and peoples as well as a bunch of other trademark Tidbeck weirdness.
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In the Gardens time has no meaning - as the world resets at the end of every day, with the Lords and Ladies of the land - led by Lady Mnemosyne lead lives of endless revelry with no memory of days past. Human servants, names stolen by the lords, serve their masters until their story runs out and they are hunted till the end. And then there is Dora, the daughter of one of these fae masters by means of a bargain with an Outsider. Left all alone as an outcast, Dora hides with one of the human servants, Thistle, who serves the spoiled master Augusta Prime, and longs to regain his name and history.
And then the unthinkable happens - Augusta finds a corpse with a strange object, a watch, and her investigation of the watch...and the concept of time, results in her exile from the Gardens to Earth. Knowing only Augusta can reveal to Thistle his true name, Dora and Thistle flee through the multiverse to try and find her. But what they find out there is that the multiverse, and the stories told within, work very differently than what they know.
But on Earth, Augusta discovers that a world with time doesn't quite work like the world she knows, and that even her power to compel others only goes so far as she desperately searches for a way back to the Gardens.....
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The original story this is an expansion of featured Augusta, a Fae Lady in a plane without time and full of endless revelry, until she discovers time and is rejected by the land to prevent its destruction. Here, half of the story still follows Augusta - now more clearly a vain, spoiled, brat desperate to return to her land of endless partying and murdering of the Gardens, and unwilling to learn anything from her exile about patience and about treating others with respect after exile. And Augusta's story is interesting, especially as she first intersects with a being from a long lost library, a fragment of which is still around for only a little longer (this part feels very much like a part of another short weird Tidbeck story about storytelling).
But the other half of the story comes from Dora and Thistle, which is pretty much all new to this novel. Thistle on one hand is the human who wants to get back his name, so he can remember who he is and return to his old life. He's a boy easy to empathize with, and is very intelligent about how to deal with certain events as they come up, especially in the finale. Dora by contrast seems to some to be slow, but is really just shy and calm, not liking being talked to very much, but underneath it all she's not really dim, but just calm and patient, not feeling the need to panic and be afraid of things that might possibly happen until they do. It makes her a really strong contrast with Thistle, who is a bit more hotblooded, and the two of them have a really strong caring relationship as found-family.
Together they stumble upon some really interesting concepts, the foremost of which is the titular Memory Theater, a trope of "actors" who have titles instead of names mainly (Director, Journeyman, Apprentice), who "act out" the stories of people and events throughout the multiverse, telling their stories, whether those people are notable or just commoners. The Trope members don't just act out what happens, but they pretty much become the individuals they act out, and feel their feelings....all acting from scripts that magically appear one after the other. They're a crew that always is behind the curtain, never directly on stage, and what they act out - the stories themselves played out - can become reality, instead of just reflecting a reality already done. It's a really interesting concept, given more rise by the actors themselves having their own personalities and desires that make it so they won't always be fulfilling the same roles as their titles.
I'm not really describing any of this well, which is pretty typical for a Tidbeck story, but essentially we get two story arcs that intersect in Augusta's and Thistle/Dora's that work really well, with Tidbeckian weirdness along the way and a theme of the power and lastingness of storytelling - and indeed it is storytelling that winds up driving the resolution to the plot. Again, it's not as tight as Amatka, as Tidbeck appears to be throwing in different concepts from multiple ideas that may all share a similar theme (the power of stories and narratives and identities) but it works fairly well, and would make a good introduction to Tidbeck if you haven't had a chance to read them before.
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