Amal El-Mohtar

Yes. This is a satisfying book about faerie and folk songs and sisterhood and murder ballads. Marvelous that it also includes willow working. And my very favorite bit is that Peri Meri Dictum Domine is at the heart of it, and discussed very cleverly as a riddle of both past and future. I’ve never thought of it like that — so brilliant, and such a gift to my evening. I was once deeply enamored of fairy tales and have gone off them somewhat due to over exposure, but this is, like T. show more kingfisher’s books, the style of story that digs down to the heart of a folktale and brings up something new and rich and spicy. I love the characters. I experienced vast emotions from such a short book. The short story at the end matched it in pure unadulterated narrative wonder. Glorious.

Advanced Readers Copy provided by edelweiss. show less

“All good stories travel from the outside.”

This is a passionate, genre-storming prose poem about temptation and the paradox of opposites that are not: of hunter and prey, tempter and victim - one and the same.

“I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious - I want you to cut me, sharpen me.”

Irresistible

The first temptation is to defy the instruction to “Burn before reading”, and the climax hinges on whether or not show more to succumb to the urge to read a poison pen letter. In between, there are the temptations of rule-breaking (including the rules of genre), devising and rising to reckless challenges, and the lure of forbidden love. No serpent or apple, but there is the possibility of an Eden.

Battling through time

Red (written by Max Gladstone) and Blue (written by Amal El-Mohtar) work for opposing organisations: the post-human cyborg Agency and biopunk Garden, respectively: “flash and dash” versus “patient planting and pruning”. Their bodies, personalities, and words reflect that… to begin with.

“What a microcosm we are of the war as a whole, you and I. The physics of us. An action and an equal and opposite reaction. My viney-hivey elfworld, as you say, versus your techy-mechy dystopia.”

They travel time in unexplained ways to shape and guard the future their bosses desire, trying to outwit Orwell’s famous line in 1984 (see my review HERE): “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

Image: The authors (Source.)

Epistolary love

“There’s a kind of time travel in letters”.
They are letters in the loosest sense: steganography in tree rings, seeds, molten lava, bee stings, stars and more. Almost out of sight, the shadow Seeker gathers, works, and consumes the broken, illegible remnants.

Image: Message in lava? (Source.)

"Assassinations become assignations."
It’s a sort of Romeo and Juliet up and down the twisty threads of time: braiding, cutting, cauterising. A shimmering kaleidoscope of butterfly effects.

“I have known you since before I knew you.”
Literally true for those who travel in time. Who loved who first? Who existed first?
“Under the spreading chestnut tree, I made you and you made me.”

What sort of novel is this?

It’s unpolycategorisable, and revels in that. Genres include: sci-fi (minus the science), time-travel, alternative history, speculative, futuristic, dystopian, Utopian, poetry, epistolary, action thriller, espionage, new weird, LGBTQ+ love, fantasy, magical realism, tragedy, comedy…

Freedom from futility

“What lasting advantage comes from murdering ghosts, who, with a slight shift of threads will return to life or live different lives that never bring them to the executioner’s blade?”

It’s red and blue, not black and white. Their love is transgressive not because they are both female, but because they are meant to be enemies, even though there is no binary sense of good and evil. When you’re constantly rewriting events, right and wrong become as mercurial as “history” itself.

“Wars are dense with causes and effects.” Time wars especially, and when any battle can be rerun with a different outcome, war is even more futile than in a linear, single universe. That realisation is liberating.

Subtle diversity

Red, Blue, and Red’s Commandant are brave, intelligent, strong, women, taking charge of their lives. I appreciate normalising that by not shouting about it, but I don’t think I’d have noticed their gender if it hadn’t been stated, which rather dilutes the point. However, I prefer subtlety to sledgehammers: immediately after this, I read The Psychology of Time Travel (see my review HERE), which constantly reminds readers how diverse the characters are.

Up, down, back, forward, but how?

Details of the mechanics would be out of place in such ethereal writing, but sometimes it’s frustratingly opaque:
“In downthread server farms couched in remnant icebergs’ hearts, she circles back upon her tail.”
I wanted just a little more understanding, especially early on.

I found the idea of upthread being the “stable past” and downthread being the “fraying future” so counter-intuitive, I had to keep checking my notes. Obviously the pages have a gravitational pull from top to bottom (“How strange to uncover things in sequence”, Red says of books), but I visualise the threads of the past hanging below the present. My fault, but distracting.

Image: Braided sweet grass (Source.)

Quotes

• “Most strands lack Atlantis altogether, knowing the place only through dreams and mad poets’ madder whispers.”

• “I want to be a context for you, and you for me.”

• “Threads of time sing with the light, swift footfalls of… soldiers.”

• “Moss breathes fumes of sleep.”

• “Pollen thickens the air with wisdom.”

Image: Fan art, by Kori Michele (Source.)

I’ve added line breaks to these, but not changed the words.

“London… one strand over -
is the kind of London other Londons dream:
sepia tinted, skies strung with dirigibles.
The viciousness of empire acknowledged
only as a rosy backdrop glow redolent of spice and petalled sugar.
Mannered as a novel,
filthy only where story requires it,
all meat pies and monarchy.”

“The dreams towards which she rocks him…
will spiral tendrils of possibility from this strand into others,
send tremors to shift and shake the future’s boughs in Garden’s direction.”

“As the great Gallumfry lists planetward,
raining escape pods,
as battle stations wilt like flowers tossed into film,
as radio bands crackle triumph
and swiftskimmers swoop after fleeing voidtails,
as guns speak their last arguments into mute space,
she slips away.”

“I wick the longing into thread,
pass it through your needle eye,
and sew it into hiding somewhere beneath my skin,
embroider my next letter to you one stitch at a time.”

“Space here is sick.
Thick.
Slick.
She drowns in cloying honey-heavy light.
Her passage through vacuum feels like sliding over meat…
Far away and too, too near shines a sun that is an eye with a great hourglass pupil like a goat’s,
sweeping space for weaknesses to improve, exploit…
Thick fluid space opens.”

Dedicated, recommended, tempted - or not

This is dedicated “To you. PS. Yes, you.” Perhaps Blue’s recommendation of Travel Light is to me as well as Red. GR says it’s a fantasy with a strong female lead, written by a Scottish Victorian. Back to temptation.

The TV rights have been optioned, with the original writers doing the scripts. I don’t want to see concrete manifestation of characters and worlds that are so ethereal, but curiosity may win. show less

This was the most beautiful book I have ever read. When I say that, I mean this was both beautifully written and just beautiful as a whole. The story follows two agents on opposite sides of a war that spans through time and space. They start writing letters to each other, taunting and entertaining themselves through this everlasting war, through feathers, a bee sting, a wave in the ocean. Eventually these letters become love letters being exchanged by two lovers on different dimensions at show more different times.

You follow these two women on their relative wars when they find each letter, while they help build and destroy empires, cause a sign of prophecy to a lone man that will build a shelter needed in thousands of years. Along with this strange form of friendship and relationship, you also get an insight into each Red’s agency and Blue’s garden and their individual worlds.

Getting this understanding makes the love that grows between the two seem so much more vast and complex. This book describes love in such a brilliant way that I didn’t know what to do at times but hold this book close to my heart.

The love in this book is the definition of everlasting love. They knew each other before they met. They knew before they knew each other. This is what I mean by this book is beautiful as a whole, because not only is the writing absolutely gorgeous, but the story is the most brilliantly beautiful story I’ve ever read. It feels wrong to categorize this as a romance or sci-fi novel because it’s so much more. It’s romance, it’s magical realism, it’s sci-fi, it’s poetry, it’s classic, it’s so much more than just one thing just like the love it creates.

I strongly recommend everyone to read this book just to experience it. This is also a book that will make you want to go back to page one to read it again after finishing. Everything is connected. Their love has always and will always exist. show less

What a wild ride! Two time travelers on opposite sides of a war keep crossing paths. Through different strands they write beautiful letters to each other. The worlds they describe are completely unique and despite the sci-fi elements, it’s pure poetry. Red and Blue dance around each other from a distance while trying to hide their connection from their commanders. This is an adventure and love story worth diving into.

“Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one show more person trying to save the world to another.”

“I have built a you within me, or you have. I wonder what of me there is in you.” show less