Strange and Dark As It Is
/The Stars Askew
a labyrinth of streets that climbed and descended up over archways and down into subterranean arcades. Tiny bars and rathskellers were scattered here and there. Some of the coffee shops were only holes in the wall, mantlepieces on which to place the coffee. Varenis was larger than Caeli-Amur—its buildings rose massively into the air, the crowds thicker and more impersonal—but this very fact seemed to lead to miniaturization: the exotic gardens, miniature bars, the rooms themselves seemed tiny and compressed.
Later, after Armand's ambition crescendos in betrayal, Davidson sends him via overcrowded boxcar to Camp X, where the author is free to craft a Soviet fever dream (similar to Peter Higgins' Wolfhound Century). Workers mine for the toxic bloodstone vital to thaumaturgical practices, and swallow heaping mounds of double-speak from Commander Raken, who tells them, “You will learn to embrace the freedom offered to you by work. All those fears and worries your old life brought will be eradicated.”Following Max takes us into more grisly territory. With him we tour the ruins of Lixus, a once-prized city of the ancients. Before the revolution, representatives of House Arbor had been sent to colonize Lixus and learn its secrets. Instead, their leader Karol went mad, and he now holds court at the foot of the blood orchids, giant carnivorous plants possessing “whiplike petioles,” a limited ability to walk, and vampiric desires.Yet nothing in The Stars Askew can out-weird the Elo-Talern. Davidson keeps them in the background, haunting his fast-churning narrative with the threat of prominence later. In one of their few scenes, he enlivens them with electric prose for a brief encounter with Max, whose
heart thumped rapidly at the sight of the strange creatures, long and thin like a fusion of spider and human. There seemed to be too many vertebrae in their wiry bodies, and their long horselike faces were composed of too many gaunt planes to be human. Some were robed, others half naked, their shriveled breasts and tiny genitals absurd and horrific to see. One group lay upon chaise longues, clasping tankards, their dead eyes staring at the roof. Over their robes and the floor, foodstuffs and liquid had spilled. Most had dried to dull yellows, reds, and oranges, but those that still retained a vestige of their former moisture were luminescent...
The Elo-Talern, whose scenes in Unwrapped Sky make for some grotesque, bizarre reading, are kept near death by a least-expected foe:
Across all surfaces grew lichens and molds in the most extraordinary colors: luminous greens, bright oranges, wild purples. In places, these had grown to monstrous proportions, towers and massive lakelike carpets. An entire corner of the hall was buried beneath a sea of crimson mold. Elsewhere, only the shadowy forms of groups of these spidery creatures could be seen beneath their horrid lime-green blankets.
Max could barely remember the sequence of events: dragging the air cart along the watery boulevards of Caeli-Enas, crabs scuttling along the cobblestones, fish darting around his feet, and the leviathan—the thought of it sent shudders into him—waiting there for him, spying him with its hundreds of roving eyes, ready to wrap him in its deadly tentacles. Then the conversation with the sentient Library beneath the oceans; the deal he made with Aya to escape the underwater world. From there the memories became even more fragmented: snatches in the ultramarine and emerald of the underwater world; bursting from the waters, gasping for air under the glittering lights of Caeli-Amur; staggering back to the seditionist base, this awful second personality in his head.
Kata is nevertheless the soul of this series. A killer even before the revolution, she's desperate to atone. She's befriended Dexion, the hammer-wielding minotaur with whom she shares Allen Williams' cover painting. There's also Henri, the orphaned child under her wing, and Rikard, the man she's at odds with yet growing closer to—they become family while she maneuvers Caeli-Amur's killer into the open. Yes, the city's realpolitik has hardened her, as does the novel's swiftly brutal finale, but amidst the worst of the horrors, she “could feel the hope inside her, a little spring emerging from the rocks of her heart, even though she knew it was misplaced.”Such moments, and there's a handful, are that much lovelier because Davidson has earned them. The inner lives of his characters sing out in every scene, and by the end, we're terrified for the citizens of Caeli-Amur. The legions of Veranis are poised to obliterate the Insurgents, who have been tempered by magic, chaos, and heartbreak. They are the “little people of history,” Aya says. “They're always the ones who are forgotten. Yet they're the ones who make the difference.” They also fill out damn good fantasy novels.____Justin Hickey is a freelance writer, and editor here at Open Letters Monthly.
