Tuesday, January 4, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release in paperback on January 18, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.    


Skyward Inn is a short science fiction novel by Aliya Whiteley which came out this past March in hardcover, and is set to be released in paper back in January 2022.  It had a hook that caught my eye when I saw in in a Rebellion (the publisher) newsletter earlier this year, but I never got to it at that time.  So I took a chance on it when it popped up on NetGalley in advance of the book's release in paperback, hoping the hook - aliens who surrendered without firing a shot, but with things not as they appear - would turn out as interesting as it seemed.  

And well, Skyward Inn is an interesting novel for sure, dealing with themes of imperialism, of isolationism, of being together and alone (and both at once), and of issues of language and understanding perhaps most of all.  The story does so through its two protagonists: first person protagonist Jem and third person protagonist Fosse, who is essentially autistic in a community that doesn't understand his struggles with language and identity, in a galaxy where alien-human interactions, even in an isolationist community, is seemingly falling apart.  And yet while there's a lot of interesting stuff here, a lot of the themes are kind of muddled by the book not dealing with much of them directly, instead relying upon things being weird and indirect (I've seen some VanderMeer comparisons, and that's not too far off, although this doesn't quite work as well).  



-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Jem left the isolationist Western Protectorate after having her son, not quite fitting in, and joined the Coalition war effort as a propagandaist prior to what was expected to be a war against the alien Qita.  But the Qitans surrendered without firing a shot, and no war occurred, and Jem and a Qitan friend, Isley, returned to the Western Protectorate to run the Skyward Inn - a bar specializing in a special Qitan drink.  Jem wishes she could love Isley and be loved in return, but instead only shares with him her stories of what she saw on his world in her travels.

Jem's son Fosse, raised by his uncle (a leader in the Protectorate), finds himself a teen boy without a place.  He can't seem to put this feeling into words, and no one seems to understand him because of it, and so he tries to relieve himself with his own hands - and an axe - on an abandoned farm.  But this relief, both sexual and in violence, doesn't last long.  

And then the visitors come.  First another Qitan who arrives mysteriously to ask Isley for help, which forces Jem to wonder how much she really knows about the one she loves.  Then three mysterious human strangers take over Fosse's farm, and talk of magic and disease.  And soon the two of them find their worlds seeming to collapse, as people begin to melt together, and the future falls into doubt.....as the real truth of how the Qitans are begins to come clear....
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Skyward Inn is technically Jem's story, as it's told mostly in her own first person point of view.  For substantial portions however, the story switches to being told in third person from the perspective of Jem's estranged son Fosse, with the change in perspective later becoming significant in the book's final act.  Jem and Fosse live in an isolationist Protectorate in what is now the UK, which doesn't avail itself of modern technology, unlike the global Coalition government outside that uses such technology and attempted to wage war against the Qitans before their surrender.  

The setting is one with a lot of interesting aspects - Jem's role for the coalition was to put propaganda leaflets on various places on the Qitan world, exhorting them to give in and surrender....and it turns out in the end, that the Qitans took these for wisdom.  The Coalition uses implants in one's head that tell one answers to any question they think, which Jem winds up finding offputting while Fosse later finds them comforting.  And yet Coalition technology can't quite match up to real experiences, as Fosse finds out when he sees a VR experience of his own home, which can't match up to the real experiences until he takes a drug that dampens his own memories.  More interesting is the idea of how the Coalition, the Qitans, and the humans all make the mistake of thinking of the others as being part of one unified group instead of multiple groups, with the Qitans thinking there are only a few human languages because that's all they encounter, the humans thinking the Qitans are all the same, etc. There's some obvious anti-imperialist themes going on here - made even clearer by the differences between the isolationist wanting to go back to the past Protectorate vs the Coalition.

More interesting are the ideas of language, storytelling, and the struggles of being alone and together all at once.  For Jem, she can't quite explain to Isley how she loves him, and can't quite explain her own memories and history, and only tells him the stories of his own homeworld from her experiences.  For Fosse, who is very definitely autistic in an isolationist community that doesn't seem to have anyone able to understand and help him with that, it makes him unable to really explain his own feelings to basically anyone.  And so for Fosse it's a revelation when he first gets the Coach implant that will answer his questions, and then later meets a Qitan with whom his lack of understanding isn't a barrier.  And then there's the communication between the humans and the Qitans, which falls completely apart, until it winds up in disaster for them both (sort of).  

There's a lot more here that's hard to talk about without spoiling, such as the idea of being together with people and yet also still being isolated and alone, which the book's ending tackles in depth.  And yet while there's so many ideas here, it's all contained within a plot that's so indirect, and yet not QUITE weird enough to be really completely unique (that's sort of where the VanderMeer comparison falls apart for me, as the way things turn out is a plot trope I've seen before, most notably in a certain anime) that it just feels more like a "huh" muddled plot in the end more than something truly insightful.  Sometimes being more direct about your themes, or dealing with less of them, allows for a stronger story, and I feel that's where Skyward Inn kind of falls apart.  
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