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Feb. 16th, 2014 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo Kage Baker died in 2010, and in 2011 I found out that three posthumous novels of hers had been published, and I read two of them; as expected, one was mediocre, and one was the actual embodiment of everything that went wrong with the Company books.
And then I waited for a while, because I had one Kage Baker book left and I was full of hope about it and I was not prepared for that hope to be shattered.
But now I've finally read The Bird of the River, and it turns out that the last present Kage Baker left me is something I've never gotten from her before: a book of hers that I can wholeheartedly love and RECOMMEND TO PEOPLE, WITHOUT CAVEATS.
The Bird of the River is set in the same world as Kage Baker's other fantasy novels, The House of the Stag and The Anvil of the World, both of which I've read and ... are not books that I can talk about without huge caveats. Fortunately, The Bird of the River stands alone.
Eliss's mother is a deep-sea diver who's been down and out for a while due to a growing drug problem; Eliss is determined to get her a job, which is how Elissa, her mom, and her brother Alder end up on a barge traveling upriver to make sure that the waterways stay passable by clearing out snags that could wreck other boats.
More than anything else, the book is Eliss' coming of age story. There are two main threads, of which the first is Eliss' relationship with her ten-year-old younger brother. Alder is mixed-race, and because of that he comes in for a lot of negative attention. As Eliss starts to find her place, Alder is becoming more and more uncomfortable with his -- and even though Eliss feels like all they have is each other, Alder is starting to feel like that's not enough.
The other is thread is ... sort of the actual plot, although that doesn't mean it receives more attention than the other thread; plot is kind of secondary in this book. Anyway, it has to do with a dead body they find on the way, and increasingly frequent bandit attacks, and a young semi-hemi-demi-nobleman named Krelan who has signed on as a scullery assistant for ~mysterious purposes~. When Krelan sees that Eliss is extremely good at noticing things, he asks her for help. When Krelan first enters the book, he seems like he's going to fill the role of witty and dangerous upper-class love interest, and ... he sort of does, but the class stuff is significantly more complicated than that, and this is emphatically not a Cinderella story. (Also, Krelan and his terrible duck-moustache are adorable.)
The Bird of the River is not exactly a perfect book, and while I love Alder and Eliss' whole complicated and bittersweet relationship (SO MANY SIBLING FEELINGS!!!), its handling of race is not particularly revolutionary. All the same, this kind of quiet, low-key fantasy novel about the lives of ordinary people -- in which the stakes are not world or even country-shaking, and NO ONE IS SECRET ROYALTY, and we are expected to take the life of a diver on a river-barge as important, because it is -- is exactly the kind of thing I want to see more of, and so rarely do.
I'm so glad I saved this book. It's the best present Kage Baker could have left me.
And then I waited for a while, because I had one Kage Baker book left and I was full of hope about it and I was not prepared for that hope to be shattered.
But now I've finally read The Bird of the River, and it turns out that the last present Kage Baker left me is something I've never gotten from her before: a book of hers that I can wholeheartedly love and RECOMMEND TO PEOPLE, WITHOUT CAVEATS.
The Bird of the River is set in the same world as Kage Baker's other fantasy novels, The House of the Stag and The Anvil of the World, both of which I've read and ... are not books that I can talk about without huge caveats. Fortunately, The Bird of the River stands alone.
Eliss's mother is a deep-sea diver who's been down and out for a while due to a growing drug problem; Eliss is determined to get her a job, which is how Elissa, her mom, and her brother Alder end up on a barge traveling upriver to make sure that the waterways stay passable by clearing out snags that could wreck other boats.
More than anything else, the book is Eliss' coming of age story. There are two main threads, of which the first is Eliss' relationship with her ten-year-old younger brother. Alder is mixed-race, and because of that he comes in for a lot of negative attention. As Eliss starts to find her place, Alder is becoming more and more uncomfortable with his -- and even though Eliss feels like all they have is each other, Alder is starting to feel like that's not enough.
The other is thread is ... sort of the actual plot, although that doesn't mean it receives more attention than the other thread; plot is kind of secondary in this book. Anyway, it has to do with a dead body they find on the way, and increasingly frequent bandit attacks, and a young semi-hemi-demi-nobleman named Krelan who has signed on as a scullery assistant for ~mysterious purposes~. When Krelan sees that Eliss is extremely good at noticing things, he asks her for help. When Krelan first enters the book, he seems like he's going to fill the role of witty and dangerous upper-class love interest, and ... he sort of does, but the class stuff is significantly more complicated than that, and this is emphatically not a Cinderella story. (Also, Krelan and his terrible duck-moustache are adorable.)
The Bird of the River is not exactly a perfect book, and while I love Alder and Eliss' whole complicated and bittersweet relationship (SO MANY SIBLING FEELINGS!!!), its handling of race is not particularly revolutionary. All the same, this kind of quiet, low-key fantasy novel about the lives of ordinary people -- in which the stakes are not world or even country-shaking, and NO ONE IS SECRET ROYALTY, and we are expected to take the life of a diver on a river-barge as important, because it is -- is exactly the kind of thing I want to see more of, and so rarely do.
I'm so glad I saved this book. It's the best present Kage Baker could have left me.
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Date: 2015-04-16 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-04-16 10:26 pm (UTC)