The Winged Histories

Sofia Samatar's work is a revelation. Her prose has only become richer and more assured between her debut novel and this follow-up. The Winged Histories gives the stories of four women whose stories are linked by the events that shape them (and that they help to shape). The contexts of the complicated class and national histories the inform these women is described in such clear detail that I feel that I know them all, their histories and their inner realities. Amazing, incredible, lush, emotionally rich, politically fascinating, this is one of the most satisfying novels I have picked up in ages. It begs the reader in each moment to consider how histories are created, and the costs and inequalities behind how we all must fight to be a show more part of history, however it gets written show less

A Stranger in Olondria could be loosely called a tale of what happened when a foreigner, enchanted by that country's literature, came to live among its inheritors and found they might not be quite what he expected.

The Winged Histories is also very much about that written and narrated legacy. Stories, histories, who gets to tell and transmit them beyond just the local equivalent of "the victors" or "dead men of high status" (not quite "dead white men" here since as far as I remember everyone seemed to be some shade of brown), why and how, their infinite wealth and complexity.

The book is divided into four parts with a protagonist for each. All women though a fifth man, Prince Andasya, features indirectly yet prominently as a brother, show more friend, love, and also the one the History of Olondria with a capital H will likely remember as the instigator of the major events it is likely to record.
Which he isn't, quite.
While far from just an empty figurehead or a puppet in the hands of the women of the family, he was also far from alone in it, as you will learn if you listen to the voices of others enmeshed in said events and many lesser and unrecorded events beneath the notice of History, yet ones without which the picture is staggeringly incomplete or maybe even false.

I nearly bounced off the first part, the one dedicated to the maiden of the sword Tavis.
It's as wonderfully written as everything else, but each chapter is headed by an excerpt, the first of which brought me to a screeching halt within maybe 2 lines because the tone was obviously either prophetic or hagiographic. I'm not too spoiler-averse while in the process of picking a read, but the author themselves handing me the cheat sheet of what will happen is a bit too much so I exercised my reader's discretion and skipped those excerpts.
It turns out I could have been more trusting. Yes, this is a book about who tells (hi)stories and how they do it and the interplay between them, and the author knew what she was doing but I didn't know that yet. And the experience was rather interesting anyway. Without the prophetic/hagiographic bits to tell you (maybe not quite accurately anyway) where all this is headed the main text feels a bit like the point of view character is wearing side-blinders and almost entirely lacks or rejects any projection into the future... a bit unusual and irritating.
But in a sense maybe she does live aimlessly for a long while after her escape, and despite being the linchpin of most of what will unfold, she only realizes what she really wants to do and how she might accomplish it as it emerges through accumulated present experience and remembrance of things past.

The second part is the tale of Tialon, the daughter of a priest of the Stone. Said Stone is covered with a multitude of tiny engraved sentences from various ages in many languages and for many purposes. It is a rather transparent but fascinating stand-in for any holy text you might care to name, or even recorded history in general, and what happens when people try to confiscate, control and manipulate the reading and telling of it in the name of a higher purpose for all-too-human ends.
Unnecessary hint : it's not pretty.

The third part is the tale of Seren, a young nomad woman whose tribe Tavis came to live with for a while before and after the uprising.
A singer and loremaster but one whose traditions dictate that only men compose their great tragedies while women craft lighter songs, she's gently prodded into reconsidering, to this reader's delight.

The fourth and last is the tale of Siski. Her struggle might seem at first somewhat petty and cowardly (or even non-existent), but it neatly ties events together.
And all things considered, while not putting herself in direct physical danger or hardship like her cousins who ran off to become soldiers, she may have been facing more directly and staving off forces no less formidable than the other protagonists.

Namely, the closest thing to an antagonist in the book : the matriarch of the family three of the five protagonists belong to, the one who placed them like so many chess pieces before some began to chomp at the bit and unravel her carefully laid dynastic plans.
I suppose a number of readers will love to hate the old woman and the character is not badly done, but for this reader she was soundly overwhelmed by what she was a mouthpiece for. I can't really remember her name or what she was supposed to look like, she simply was the incarnation of every person messing with the lives of others in the name of the biological/holy drive to cover as much territory and grab as many resources as they can for their own bloodline and those most like them.

Though the eyes of many will concentrate on the sound and fury and apparent inconclusive failure of the uprising, she and what she stands for are IMO the real dragon in the story, more than the Olondrian who really just crept in with their money and whose nobility some locals were more than happy to marry into, or the few if strategically placed zealots of the Stone.
Siski was the one who almost fell into the dragon's trap as she was barely becoming a woman, the one who remained longest and most vulnerable under its stare, its pressure to take a husband, the right husband as planned for her, to breed, to surrender her children to further dreams of wealth and power while being made to have none of her own. show less

This book is a slow start but the momentum builds quickly to a startling and wrenching finish. Sofia Samatar is an AMAZING writer. Like, her prose is gorgeous and will wreck you and create an image that you will be haunted by long after you've put the book down. I think her choice of four female narrators throughout civil unrest was a smart choice, as it demonstrates the effects of war on women civilians. The narrative polyphony is broken up into four books, so you don't have to try and identify which woman is speaking. That said, this novel reminds me a lot of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, which is all about mourning the loss of something or someone.

Many thanks to my sister, who gave this a rave review. I think this is a contender for show more best book I've read this year. show less

I dream of fantasy like this: intelligent, exploratory, effortlessly inclusive-stroke-diverse -- because not to be is part of the staleness we are tired of in fantasy. Ideas fantasy that is alive with immediacy of story, with exquisite skills in characterisation and in writing. Let her continue to take nine years to write a book (as she says of her two fantasies) and distill her work to this.

Can I smear tears on a piece of paper and call that a review?

This was GORGEOUS and emotionally bruising and so so wonderful and engaging and many other perfect words. There is so much world-building, a fascinating mythology, and beautiful language (I'm trying not to yell about Seren's little language lessons). There are amazing epigraphs, which I'm always a huge fan of. Samatar winds the stories of four very different women through a monumental period of Olondrian history, and it's one of the best reading experiences I've had in the last year.

Poetic and bloody, lovely and dark, this is a book to be SAVORED, and I will be re-reading it again soon, at a much slower pace. (And then maybe I'll write a much better review for this amazing show more book.) show less

The Winged Histories is a difficult book to review. Much like A Stranger in Olondria, it's full of gorgeous, dense prose. Prose that can often be too dense, and often led to me losing interest and nodding off.Undeniably well-written, I feel this is a book that's easier to appreciate than it is to actually enjoy. It's full of myth, reflecting on the past, and stream of consciousness. Only rarely do we get traditional straightforward storytelling, and it leads to a plot that's hard to follow and doesn't grab attention. I appreciate this book, and Samatar's got some of the most beautiful writing in the genre, but this one really just didn't grab me like Stranger in Olondria did.

Something strange happened to me with this book. I enjoyed the style and the prose, poetical, precise, with some beautiful sentences, and I also think the structure was interesting and promising, with those four women telling four different pieces of the story of the war in Olondria, until the puzzle, the novel, is completed. But, despite all that, the plot and the characters didn’t resonate with me at all, and I had to force myself to keep on reading.
I liked “Stranger in Olondria” slightly better, and although it’s not indispensable, I’d recommend starting with that first book, and if you like it, go ahead with “The Winged Stories”, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too.