Post-postmodern Fantasies

[mtvessel]

Aug 2016
Sorcerer to the Crown – Zen Cho - Pan Books, 2016 / Spiderlight – Adrian Tchaikovsky - Tor.com, 2016
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I appreciate the arts but have little time for most contemporary manifestations of them. The main reason for this (apart, of course, from the time wasted due to Sturgeon's law) is that art, music and dance appear to have stopped evolving, instead diversifying into myriad forms of individual self-expression. Art is no longer a conversation between the artist, their predecessors and contemporaries, but a monologue - "look how clever, original and talented I am!". As most artists are not particularly profound thinkers, what new insights they have tend to relate to the minutiae of the social milieu in which they live, and for me their effusions generally lack analytical interest and deep emotional meaning.

Fortunately, the same is not true of genre fiction. One can tell this by the fact that identifiable styles and trends exist, for example steampunk, grimdark and Scandinavian noir, which can be analysed and, more importantly, moved on from. As a result, modern genre fiction, even when it is not startlingly original - and the two books to be discussed here have deeply familiar settings and character types - can still be interesting and worthwhile in a way that the artworks considered for the Turner Prize, for example, are not.

The setting of Sorcerer to the Crown is eighteenth century England with fairy magic. The two protagonists are the eponymous sorcerer Zachary Wrythe, a young man catapulted into a senior position by the untimely death of his guardian, and Prunella Gentleman, an extremely go-getting orphan with an un-lady-like talent for spells. Zachary is under political pressure to provide magical support for the government's foreign policies, which is a problem because the supply of magic is drying up for reasons that are initially mysterious. He is also threatened by jealous and cutthroat rivals from within the Society of Magicians. How will he cope? And will Prunella be able to help?

This may sound like yet another tired set of variations on Susanna Clarke's flawed but enjoyable take on Jane Austen in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and her numerous imitators, but there are a few differences. For a start, Zachary is black, the son of African slaves, and Prunella is mixed race. This immediately distinguishes it from Clarke's work, where the only non-white character is rendered agentless for much of the book. Similarly, Prunella's refusal to let traditional female roles define her, except when it suits her to do so, is heavily played up. This makes this book an interesting critique of the regency magic sub-genre, highlighting the subconscious biases of the (mostly white) authors and showing how it could be done better, just as recent TV series such as Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Supergirl have done for superheroes. There are a few flaws - Zachary's passivity in the face of the dangers he faces takes gender role reversal a bit too far, Prunella's behaviour sometime teeters on the edge of annoying, and the ending is predictable - but it's still a worthwhile read.

Spiderlight is a take on the fantasy subgenre of the group quest. This derives from roleplaying and its world is similarly stereotyped, with gods-derived light and dark magic that affects beings created by the other side. Wizardly magic is neutral and is the origin of the main character, a spiderling minion called Nth who is metamorphosed into a human so that he can guide a party of adventurers who are on a quest to defeat the dark lord Darvezian.

Having a monster in human form as an NPC (non-player character) member of the party is a quite brilliant idea and I wish I had thought of it when I was running D&D-style adventures back in the day. It works particularly well here as Nth creates plenty of opportunity for backchat and resentment amongst the archetypal but nonetheless nuanced party members (Dion the cleric, Harathes the fighter, Cyrene the archer, Penthos the wizard and Lief the rogue) as well as plenty of amusing mise-en-scènes as they try to pass him off as a human in the taverns and cities that they visit.

The world, its characters and the witty dialogue are strongly reminiscent of David Eddings' Belgariad books, but Nth's presence questions and subverts the straightforward Manichean good/evil dichotomy found in them and in so many other fantasy novels. For Nth has the feelings and instincts of a sentient spider and finds the imposition of a human body an intolerable burden, which makes what was done to him distinctly morally murky. In addition, some of his companions perceive him as a monster and an agent of evil, and use this to justify some pretty awful behaviour (Harathes, I'm looking at you). So who are the good guys really?

I have called these novels post-postmodern fantasies because they question the assumptions of their genres (and build those questions into the plot) while still sticking rigidly to their conventions. Both writers clearly love and are trying to emulate the books from which their inspiration derives, but not in an uncritical way. The results are interesting novels that are familiar enough to engage the reader and different enough to make them think. No doubt in twenty years time their unexamined assumptions will in turn be undermined by future fantasists. But for now, they are state of the art.