Midway Through the Long Price Quartet
Aug. 1st, 2010 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluBooks read: A Shadow in Summer, and A Betrayal in Winter, Books 1 & 2 of The Long Price Quartet, by Daniel Abraham. Jo Walton recommended these. I pay attention when Jo recommends a book; she's a very discerning reader. She's also a good predictor of books I will like, which is quite useful. For me, anyway.
In the Long Price books, Abraham has created a rich, deep, complex, and believable secondary fantasy world very much unlike any I'm familiar with. The central, fantastical elements are the rare, leashed, andat -- djinn-like creatures with vast, if circumscribed and specific powers. Each andat physically resembles a human being, but is summoned out of the air, ex nihilo, by a masterwork of poetic description. A poet perfectly, precisely, and completely describes a being whose essence is a single concept, and by describing it, creates the thing described, which then has the power over the described idea. Once the poet has described the andat into existence, he holds that description in his mind for the rest of his life, and so controls the andat's powers and prevents it from returning to the nothing from whence it came. But the andat hate existing, and struggle against their poet keepers for all of their existence. Once an andat escapes back to non-existence, it is difficult, or impossible, for another poet to re-create, because the metaphor to describe it, the poem that instantiates it, can only be used once. And an imperfect poem will not bind the andat, and if that happens, the failed poet pays the price, usually in the form of some uncommonly horrible death.
So, the magical Maguffin: powerful genie slaves who can disappear into nothing and be lost forever if their poet keepers are not perpetually in control of them.
In the cities of the Kaiem, each city is ruled by a Kai, and is a city because it has an andat and a poet who controls it, answerable only to the city's Kai, and to the Dai Kvo, the master of the monastic order of poets. In Saraykeht, the andat is called Seedless, and its powers are harnessed to act as a sort of universal cotton gin, removing the seeds from the fibers of vast quantities of cotton, and thus making Saraykeht the cotton and weaving center of its world. though Seedless can do other things as well: blight crops, render people and animals infertile, cause the pregnant to miscarry. In Machi, the andat is called Stone Made Soft, and it is used to make the mines of Machi some of the most productive in the world, allowing the miners to follow seams of ore and metal through living rock without all the drudgery of breaking stone.
Outside the city states of the Kaiem are other nations, who who envy or revile the power and wealth that the andat bestow on their masters, and perhaps most envious of all are the warlike High Council of Galt, who make their money by making war on their neighbors, and are frustrated in their inability to attack the Kaiem.
Against this backdrop Abraham creates stories of political intrigue, industrial espionage, murder, love, loss, and coming of age, with a remarkably deft hand. The way the stories unfold surprises me over and over, and yet each action feels entirely right to the character who takes it. These are people guided by who they are, what they need, and what they believe. Not one of them is perfect, and indeed all of them fail, at one point or another. But one of the things that Abraham manages to put across is the fact that failure is seldom final, is seldom complete, is not necessarily the worst thing that can happen, and is often the first step in something else entirely. The friendships, the betrayals, the moments of intimacy that bind the characters together ring true and clean, even, perhaps most especially, when things go wrong and fall apart.
The books are initially slow moving -- the stories are told through multiple viewpoint characters, so there are a lot of introductions and a good deal of inclueing to be done to erect the world of the Kaiem. But the suspense builds steadily, not least because in each story, the disparate pieces of the puzzle that would unlock the plot are held by people who either know each other or at least know someone in common, and so you are held in an agony of suspense wondering if the pieces will come together before the plot is sprung.
In each case the endings are thoroughly satisfying, and the books stand up well independently of each other -- A Betrayal in Winter does not suffer from Middle Book Syndrome, except that it helps to have all the world building from the first book under your belt to understand how the institutions of the this world work.
I am very much looking forward to the next book in the quartet, to see where the larger story arc goes next. Highly recommended.
In the Long Price books, Abraham has created a rich, deep, complex, and believable secondary fantasy world very much unlike any I'm familiar with. The central, fantastical elements are the rare, leashed, andat -- djinn-like creatures with vast, if circumscribed and specific powers. Each andat physically resembles a human being, but is summoned out of the air, ex nihilo, by a masterwork of poetic description. A poet perfectly, precisely, and completely describes a being whose essence is a single concept, and by describing it, creates the thing described, which then has the power over the described idea. Once the poet has described the andat into existence, he holds that description in his mind for the rest of his life, and so controls the andat's powers and prevents it from returning to the nothing from whence it came. But the andat hate existing, and struggle against their poet keepers for all of their existence. Once an andat escapes back to non-existence, it is difficult, or impossible, for another poet to re-create, because the metaphor to describe it, the poem that instantiates it, can only be used once. And an imperfect poem will not bind the andat, and if that happens, the failed poet pays the price, usually in the form of some uncommonly horrible death.
So, the magical Maguffin: powerful genie slaves who can disappear into nothing and be lost forever if their poet keepers are not perpetually in control of them.
In the cities of the Kaiem, each city is ruled by a Kai, and is a city because it has an andat and a poet who controls it, answerable only to the city's Kai, and to the Dai Kvo, the master of the monastic order of poets. In Saraykeht, the andat is called Seedless, and its powers are harnessed to act as a sort of universal cotton gin, removing the seeds from the fibers of vast quantities of cotton, and thus making Saraykeht the cotton and weaving center of its world. though Seedless can do other things as well: blight crops, render people and animals infertile, cause the pregnant to miscarry. In Machi, the andat is called Stone Made Soft, and it is used to make the mines of Machi some of the most productive in the world, allowing the miners to follow seams of ore and metal through living rock without all the drudgery of breaking stone.
Outside the city states of the Kaiem are other nations, who who envy or revile the power and wealth that the andat bestow on their masters, and perhaps most envious of all are the warlike High Council of Galt, who make their money by making war on their neighbors, and are frustrated in their inability to attack the Kaiem.
Against this backdrop Abraham creates stories of political intrigue, industrial espionage, murder, love, loss, and coming of age, with a remarkably deft hand. The way the stories unfold surprises me over and over, and yet each action feels entirely right to the character who takes it. These are people guided by who they are, what they need, and what they believe. Not one of them is perfect, and indeed all of them fail, at one point or another. But one of the things that Abraham manages to put across is the fact that failure is seldom final, is seldom complete, is not necessarily the worst thing that can happen, and is often the first step in something else entirely. The friendships, the betrayals, the moments of intimacy that bind the characters together ring true and clean, even, perhaps most especially, when things go wrong and fall apart.
The books are initially slow moving -- the stories are told through multiple viewpoint characters, so there are a lot of introductions and a good deal of inclueing to be done to erect the world of the Kaiem. But the suspense builds steadily, not least because in each story, the disparate pieces of the puzzle that would unlock the plot are held by people who either know each other or at least know someone in common, and so you are held in an agony of suspense wondering if the pieces will come together before the plot is sprung.
In each case the endings are thoroughly satisfying, and the books stand up well independently of each other -- A Betrayal in Winter does not suffer from Middle Book Syndrome, except that it helps to have all the world building from the first book under your belt to understand how the institutions of the this world work.
I am very much looking forward to the next book in the quartet, to see where the larger story arc goes next. Highly recommended.
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Date: 2010-08-01 11:44 pm (UTC)