Alison Sinclair (1) (1959–)

Darkborn is the first novel of a trilogy (I never would have thought I’d ever get nostalgic about these, but in this age of endless series it is quite refreshing to see someone still writing a trilogy) and it has one of the most unusal and fascinating settings I have encountered in recent years. Due to a curse whose specifics are never elucidated (but I expect the later volumes will shed some light on that) the realm the trilogy takes place in, or more precisely its inhabitants have been show more split apart – on the one hand there are the Darkborn who are blind and are burned by light, and the Lightborn to whom darkness is fatal.

As the novel’s title indicates, this part of the trilogy takes place among the Darkborn (although there is a minor character who is Lightborn and who will apparently play a larger role in the next volume), and in the way how carefully and thoroughly thought-out everything about them and their way of life is, you really notice that Allison Sinclair used to write Science Fiction. Unable to rely on sight, the Darkborn perceive the world by touch and smell, but most importantly by sound – like bats, they use echolocation to identify their surroundings and their own place relative to them. Unlike sight, it is not a passive process, but an active one, and it is also conscious, so that for a Darkborn, large parts of the world remain shrouded in shadow unless they specifically direct their attention towards them.

Allison Sinclair is very good at considering all the consequences of this, and of how the lack of sight would influence and shape a whole society of the blind, giving the impression of a world where everything connects to each other in a reasonable manner and the overall pictures makes sense. What she unfortunately is not quite so good at is in making this world come alive for the reader, or to be more precise, to rise to the peculiar esthetic challenge of making the reader feel what it might be like to live in constant darkness and perceive the world with the four remaining senses only. The problem here is not with world building (which really is admirable here), but with realising the world one has built, conjuring it for the reader so that it is not just mere statistics and an impressive concept but becomes something vivid and concrete that the reader can experience in reading the novel. Of course, it is still fiction, which is why I would like to call this effect “world conjuring” with quite intentional connations of a stage magician’s tricks. World Imagining is as much in need of this as is World Building, and it is really World Conjuring that turns either from idle daydreaming or mere doodling into literature. Therefore it stands to reason that when we’re dealing with a finished novel some kind of world conjuring will have been involved, but the degree of that involvement may vary greatly. (And before anyone asks – yes, I think you can have world conjuring without, or with only a very minimal degree of either world building or world imagining – just think of the umpteenth reiteration of Ye Olde Middle-European Medieval Fantasy Kingdom here.)

In Darkborn, then, to return to the ostensible subject of this post, there is not much emphasis on world conjuring at all, just the bare minimum to make us see the fundamental workings of this world and let us admire Alison Sinclair’s skill and thoroughness in building it - but does not really give any sense of what it is like to experience it. In all fairness it has to be said, though, that the author does not even try – she is much more interested in developing plot and character (this latter being very much the main emphasis of Darkborn) and so I’m critizising the novel the novel for lack of something it did not even set out to do. Still, I think it would have made for a better book if its language had been more evocative of the world and of the particular way its inhabitants experience it.

But while Darkborn is not as brilliant as it might have been, it is still a very solid novel - its world is fascinating, its characters multi-faceted and while the plot is not exactly fast moving, it does develop an intriguing mystery that pulls the reader in and will have me turn towards the other novels in the trilogy before too long. show less

I liked this book more than I expected. Well, from the cover and the blurb, I expected more fluff. When I started reading, perhaps because of that, the book felt more stiff to me than was necessary. However, just one or two more chapters in, it had captured me, and I found it to have more depth than expected.

For one, the world is quite original. Due to a long-ago curse, half the people cannot stand the light (darkborn) and half cannot stand the dark (lightborn). The lightborn and darkborn show more are living side-by-side, unable to be in the same room together. The only way they can manage it is by dividing a room using a paper screen. a sign of trust in itself, because if the paper wall were to be breached, the darkborn would burn. Then there is such a thing as shadowborn, who exist on the border of the realm and aggressively attack the darkborn who live there. The darkborn cannot see, and use a sort of sonar (sonn) instead. Although there were some little issues with sonn at the beginning, where I felt there were some inconsistencies, the concept is quite intriguing.
This first book mostly follows the darkborn, but there is some interaction with the lightborn as well, since the main characters share a house with lightborn (using the paper-wall concept).

Then, the characters. I felt they were amazingly diverse. There is a psychiatrist, an aristocrat lady who despite wanting to fit into society, flaunts its rules by marrying him, and the psychiatrist's sister, who is a mage and healer, and works in a hospital (something that is equally flaunting the rules, since in darkborn society, magic is abhorred and women are expected to be ornaments). Then there is the darkborn mage who fights the shadowborn, and the lightborn assassin who is a guard of the lightborn princes.
Perhaps more importantly, the characters had a depth to them that I was not expecting. What I loved most is that although the story starts with Balthasar, the psychiatrist, before long it becomes clear that the real protagonist is his wife Telmaine. She is expected to be ornamental and tries to conform to society where she must, although it means hiding her abilities. Even while denying her own powers, she does not lack courage, however, and when events force her to use them, she is no cowering wallflower. I was glad that the men directly around her (Balthasar and the shadowhunter Ishmael) may sometimes be worried about her safety, but they also recognize her strength and the necessity of the situation and do not stand in her way. Considering that this is the society that belittles women, the number of strong women in it and the number of men who are willing to support them gives high hopes for the sequels, which I expect to focus more on lightborn society (where women are values as equals).

I think there is more to say about this book, but for now I will simply warmly recommend it to anyone interested in good fantasy. show less

I liked this book more than I expected. Well, from the cover and the blurb, I expected more fluff. When I started reading, perhaps because of that, the book felt more stiff to me than was necessary. However, just one or two more chapters in, it had captured me, and I found it to have more depth than expected.

For one, the world is quite original. Due to a long-ago curse, half the people cannot stand the light (darkborn) and half cannot stand the dark (lightborn). The lightborn and darkborn show more are living side-by-side, unable to be in the same room together. The only way they can manage it is by dividing a room using a paper screen. a sign of trust in itself, because if the paper wall were to be breached, the darkborn would burn. Then there is such a thing as shadowborn, who exist on the border of the realm and aggressively attack the darkborn who live there. The darkborn cannot see, and use a sort of sonar (sonn) instead. Although there were some little issues with sonn at the beginning, where I felt there were some inconsistencies, the concept is quite intriguing.
This first book mostly follows the darkborn, but there is some interaction with the lightborn as well, since the main characters share a house with lightborn (using the paper-wall concept).

Then, the characters. I felt they were amazingly diverse. There is a psychiatrist, an aristocrat lady who despite wanting to fit into society, flaunts its rules by marrying him, and the psychiatrist's sister, who is a mage and healer, and works in a hospital (something that is equally flaunting the rules, since in darkborn society, magic is abhorred and women are expected to be ornaments). Then there is the darkborn mage who fights the shadowborn, and the lightborn assassin who is a guard of the lightborn princes.
Perhaps more importantly, the characters had a depth to them that I was not expecting. What I loved most is that although the story starts with Balthasar, the psychiatrist, before long it becomes clear that the real protagonist is his wife Telmaine. She is expected to be ornamental and tries to conform to society where she must, although it means hiding her abilities. Even while denying her own powers, she does not lack courage, however, and when events force her to use them, she is no cowering wallflower. I was glad that the men directly around her (Balthasar and the shadowhunter Ishmael) may sometimes be worried about her safety, but they also recognize her strength and the necessity of the situation and do not stand in her way. Considering that this is the society that belittles women, the number of strong women in it and the number of men who are willing to support them gives high hopes for the sequels, which I expect to focus more on lightborn society (where women are values as equals).

I think there is more to say about this book, but for now I will simply warmly recommend it to anyone interested in good fantasy. show less

A complex and multilayered work, with a well-written disabled protagonist, several carefully-constructed societies and meaty themes of responsibility and loss. It reminded me in some respects of C. J. Cherryh's work, with its lucid intelligence and the emotional distance between reader and book. Not an easy read, but a haunting and rewarding one.