Book: A stranger in Olondria
Oct. 1st, 2013 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Sofia Samatar
Details: (c) 2013 Sofia Samatar; Pub 2013 Small Beer Press; ISBN 978-1-931520-77-5
Verdict: A stranger in Olondria is a fascinatingly original take on hero quest fantasy.
Reasons for reading it: Mainly because Jo Walton listed it as one of the decade's most exciting works of fantasy. It's Abigail Nussbaum's review that convinced me to bring the book up to the top of my to-read pile.
How it came into my hands: I went on a spree buying stuff to put on my e-reader for when I was travelling to Canada and I can't remember which store exactly sold me aSiO.
The internet seems to be excited about the fact A stranger in Olondria challenges the obvious Eurofantasy clichés. And I can certainly agree with this impression, it's not Eurofantasy at all, and it's also not an Orientalist "exotic" setting. This is a world which gives a strong impression of being as diverse as the real world (though it's a short book, it doesn't at all get bogged down in descriptions), with a number of different cultures that don't map directly onto any mundane world cultures. The setting felt more genuinely foreign than almost any other fantasy I've read. The language is dense and beautiful, if occasionally a little ponderous; I wasn't at all surprised that Walton mentioned that Samatar comes from a poetry background.
In some ways aSiO is absolutely the classic fantasy plot, where a younger son leaves his backwards rural town and sets off for an adventure in the big city where he learns about magic. But it manages to present a really fresh take on that sort of Bilungsroman style. Jevick has special powers but isn't the Chosen One. His quest is not about finding the magical mcguffin to save the world, it's to find the inappropriately buried body of his countrywoman and give her a decent funeral according to their culture of origin. So the stakes are personal rather than global, but I cared enough about Jevick that that didn't detract from the excitement of the book. There were a few sections where I felt like the book had degenerated into travelogue, with a bit of the protag just bouncing about from one imaginary location to another and the plot not really moving forward. But most of it is exciting and pacy and with a lot of unexpected twists.
The worldbuilding is what really makes aSiO stand out. Not just the locations, but the various cultures are really strongly evoked. They're very multi-dimensional, it's not that people in each location visited have a characteristic cuisine and style of dress and notable taboo, everywhere has various religions and politics and class / caste tensions and some beliefs that are so engrained that only an outsider notices that they're not merely common sense as well as some beliefs that they're supposed to hold but not everybody accepts unquestioningly. The isolated village in the middle of nowhere is not just somewhere for the protagonist to leave; in fact the early sections set there were one of my favourite parts of the book.
I wasn't entirely sure if aSiO is supposed to be a commentary on colonialism; certainly it works as a story in its own right, and within the frame of the story it's pretty clear we're meant to assume that Jevick really does have a relationship with a ghost. I definitely agree with Nussbaum that what aSiO does with books and reading as magic is nuanced and not at all the obvious direction that you might expect that theme to take. There's no Good versus Evil, just a bunch of cultures which sometimes manage to coexist and sometimes clash, and all of them cause some damage in the way that real cultures do.
I'm certainly convinced that aSiO is really innovative in genre. I didn't absolutely adore all of it, but it's a very strongly written book.
Details: (c) 2013 Sofia Samatar; Pub 2013 Small Beer Press; ISBN 978-1-931520-77-5
Verdict: A stranger in Olondria is a fascinatingly original take on hero quest fantasy.
Reasons for reading it: Mainly because Jo Walton listed it as one of the decade's most exciting works of fantasy. It's Abigail Nussbaum's review that convinced me to bring the book up to the top of my to-read pile.
How it came into my hands: I went on a spree buying stuff to put on my e-reader for when I was travelling to Canada and I can't remember which store exactly sold me aSiO.
The internet seems to be excited about the fact A stranger in Olondria challenges the obvious Eurofantasy clichés. And I can certainly agree with this impression, it's not Eurofantasy at all, and it's also not an Orientalist "exotic" setting. This is a world which gives a strong impression of being as diverse as the real world (though it's a short book, it doesn't at all get bogged down in descriptions), with a number of different cultures that don't map directly onto any mundane world cultures. The setting felt more genuinely foreign than almost any other fantasy I've read. The language is dense and beautiful, if occasionally a little ponderous; I wasn't at all surprised that Walton mentioned that Samatar comes from a poetry background.
In some ways aSiO is absolutely the classic fantasy plot, where a younger son leaves his backwards rural town and sets off for an adventure in the big city where he learns about magic. But it manages to present a really fresh take on that sort of Bilungsroman style. Jevick has special powers but isn't the Chosen One. His quest is not about finding the magical mcguffin to save the world, it's to find the inappropriately buried body of his countrywoman and give her a decent funeral according to their culture of origin. So the stakes are personal rather than global, but I cared enough about Jevick that that didn't detract from the excitement of the book. There were a few sections where I felt like the book had degenerated into travelogue, with a bit of the protag just bouncing about from one imaginary location to another and the plot not really moving forward. But most of it is exciting and pacy and with a lot of unexpected twists.
The worldbuilding is what really makes aSiO stand out. Not just the locations, but the various cultures are really strongly evoked. They're very multi-dimensional, it's not that people in each location visited have a characteristic cuisine and style of dress and notable taboo, everywhere has various religions and politics and class / caste tensions and some beliefs that are so engrained that only an outsider notices that they're not merely common sense as well as some beliefs that they're supposed to hold but not everybody accepts unquestioningly. The isolated village in the middle of nowhere is not just somewhere for the protagonist to leave; in fact the early sections set there were one of my favourite parts of the book.
I wasn't entirely sure if aSiO is supposed to be a commentary on colonialism; certainly it works as a story in its own right, and within the frame of the story it's pretty clear we're meant to assume that Jevick really does have a relationship with a ghost. I definitely agree with Nussbaum that what aSiO does with books and reading as magic is nuanced and not at all the obvious direction that you might expect that theme to take. There's no Good versus Evil, just a bunch of cultures which sometimes manage to coexist and sometimes clash, and all of them cause some damage in the way that real cultures do.
I'm certainly convinced that aSiO is really innovative in genre. I didn't absolutely adore all of it, but it's a very strongly written book.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-02 09:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-02 10:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-21 01:28 pm (UTC)http://sofiasamatar.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/a-conversation-with-kiini-ibura-salaam.html
You can feel really smug about spotting that, now :-)