The conceit of this epic fantasy is that there exist a series of parallel worlds. A person can travel between these worlds only if the version of themselves in the other world is dead. With one of these worlds on the brink of collapse, and with a large number of people eager to escape the catastrophe, a lot of people in a neighboring world are going to have to die to make this happen. Plans to make them die are already quite advanced when we join the story.
Given what I knew of Hurley, I was expecting something a little bit different. I was not disappointed: this is not your run-of-the-mill fantasy set in some version of medieval Europe. There are walking trees and carnivorous plants. People ride bears and dogs (no horses appear) and live in dwellings made from crafted plants. At least one culture practices ritual cannibalism. Magical powers derive from satellites whose presence in the sky waxes and wanes. And the social structure ticks all of the social justice boxes: most characters appear to be black or brown of skin; there are multiple genders with their own pronouns and some characters can transition between genders; polygamous and polygynous relationships are common; many possible sexualities are represented; at least one culture (the Dhai) requires explicit consent before any physical touching.
Into this rich and complex environment are thrown a large cast of viewpoint characters. There is Lilia, born in the collapsing world, and sent to the other by her mother for reasons not initially clear. There is Zezili, a half-Dhai general charged overseeing the murder of large numbers of Dhai slaves. There is Ahkio, brother to the ruler of the Dhai. And Roh, a friend of Lilia. There is Maralah, a warrior in service to the Patron of the country of Saiduan, and Taigan whose similar service post-dates some earlier disgrace. There is Anavha, Zezili’s husband/sex-slave. And then there are Kalinda, Ghrasia, and others I am probably forgetting.
If all of that sounds overwhelming, that is because it is. Trying to keep all the details of this world in my head, wondering which, if any, were going to be essential to the story down the line, I struggled to get into the story for the first 75% of the book. The process of immersing myself in the book was further frustrated by some issues of craft. There is an old rule of thumb for science and fantasy writing that when you are inventing terms and names you should try to make them distinctive; one way to do this is to have names start with a different letter. Hurley, unfortunately, seems to be obsessed with the letter ‘d’: there are the country and people of Dhai, who are called Daijin when enslaved in the country of Dorinah whose empress is Daorian. One of the clans in the country of Dhai is Daora and another is Dasina. Roh falls under the influence of a character named Dasai. Ahkio ascends to the position of Kai (OK, it doesn’t start with ‘d’ but it appears to rhyme with ‘Dhai’), head of the Dhai nation. Zezili owns a slave named Daolyn and rides a dog named Dakar. Another character is called Driaa. The prose is also lacking in sparkle. In fact, reading it can be slog, as in the opening to chapter 17 “The churning mud sucked at Zezili’s boots as she slogged across the remains of the camp.”
I also struggled to suspend my disbelief about the world. There is a reason why carnivores are not used as beasts of burden in our world: the economics of feeding them would make it prohibitively expensive. The dogs in Hurley's world eat meat, but where does it come from? Where are the large herds of herbivores that would need to be slaughtered to keep the bears and dogs that carry everything around fed?
I kept plugging away at this book hoping that it would get better ... and it did ... significantly in the last 50 pages. Finally, I was able to keep all of the characters and places straight in my head (it helped that the focus narrowed to a smaller number of viewpoints). And the book ended with some hints at exciting developments in the next book. Since this means I will probably give the sequel a try, it elevates the rating from 4 out of 10 ("bad") to a "not bad" ...
R4 Rating: 5 out of 10.
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