Jay Lake Pre-Mortem Read-a-thon, Review the Sixth: MADNESS OF FLOWERS

MADNESS OF FLOWERS (The City Imperishable #2)
JAY LAKE
Night Shade Books
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The battle has been fought and won, and all have been transformed by the struggle. Imago of Lockwood has become Lord Mayor of the City Imperishable, though at a price beyond his wildest imagination. Bijaz the Dwarf has been imbued with a godlike power and a responsibility he scarcely understands. And Jason the Factor, resurrected from death at the hands of his sister, the Tokhari sandwalker Kalliope, has become the sula ma-jieni na-dia, the fabled Dead Man of Winter. When a beautiful mountebank arrives in the City Imperishable, offering to lead an expedition to uncover the lost tomb of the Imperator Terminus, she stirs up the mob with promises of treasure and imperial power... but what will her quest unleash? Political intrigue, adventure, and all-out war await the principles and inhabitants of the City Imperishable. Through it all, the City may endure, but none will remain untouched by the Madness of Flowers...

My Review: Oh damn. This is the last book set in the City Imperishable. No more adventures for Bijaz the newly minted demigod/dwarf, no more cruel rivalry between the Sewn and the Slashed...

I will miss annoying Jason the factor. I will miss obnoxious Imago the Lord Mayor, who gave me my new favorite blasphemy: "By Dorgau's infected nostril!"; and Bijaz most of all. Bijaz, now possessed of startling powers he spends most of the book learning how to cope with:

A thought came unbidden to his head. Enough fire. Transformation was easier than heat and light. His fingers brushed tons of paper. From the madness of insects he would make instead a madness of flowers.
With that, it was done. The paper exploded in roses the color of light and flame, twisting in a whirlwind as the reaper touched Bijaz's shoulder to claim back his fragment of the sun.

Oh hell yeah.

I will miss the cadence of speech that Lake created for his barbarians, the Winter Boys: "I am to be receiving ever more pointed letters from the south," the mercenary commander added. "Higher authority is to be calling me home." It rolls and swirls, this dialect, it feels natural and suggests the difficulties of speaking a language whose rules aren't in your bones. And yet it's not phonied up pseudo-archaic claptrap. Yeah, me likee.

I confess that Kalliope, sister to Jason the factor and a sandwalker/desert mage, made a pretty big dent in my enjoyment of the book. She was such a superior, self-satisfied character that it was hard for me to warm to her. When she meets Bijaz after he gains his startling new powers, her greeting is, "Must you hide in these ridiculous places?" Shades of Hermione Granger the Swot! And then, mere moments later, she utters this ponderous and condescending line: "To whom does a godling pray?"

I want a baseball bat and five minutes alone with her.

But that's part of the magic that Jay Lake weaves around me in this book, this pair of books. I care about the people I've met in the City Imperishable. I like some, don't like others, am constantly reassessing my responses to all of them in light of what they've done and what they're doing now...I respond to them, in other words, as people, not plot-forwarding devices.

Many, if not most, fantasy novels I've read (not a huge number) have the fatal-to-my-pleasure problems of Speechifying, giving long (or longer than my interest lasts, anyway) disquisitions on the whys and wherefores and whosomevers of The Problem or The Quest we're here to learn about. I think of it as the Robert Louis Stevenson Disease: Explain explain explain action recap. Repeat ad infinitum.

Ech.

And then there's the other fantasy novel failing, the Stock Character on the Stock Quest: Teenager with Special Hidden Powers meets Cutesy Sidekick, is thrashed by Evil Villain, recovers in Hidden Hovel with Obi-Wan Kenobi, and emerges to Thwart Evil Villain and become Super Ruler. Or whatever small variation on that theme and those characters the author has rung. Yes, yes, all quest novels are versions of that story. Put some effort into hiding it! Distract me and engage my attention elsewhere, so I'll trot along behind your people as they go through the paces, smiling instead of sighing.

That's what Jay Lake did in his creation of the City Imperishable. He recapitulated eleventh-century Byzantine history mixed with the iconic Star Wars quest and made me, the most cynical non-fantasy reader ever, like it. He did it by making me invest in people, believe their eccentricities were real and interesting, and told me enough about the world they live in for me to know that it wasn't my world but one a bit more interesting.

So, yeah. The city is.


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Jay Lake Pre-Mortem Read-a-thon, Review the Fifth

TRIAL OF FLOWERS (The City Imperishable #1)
JAY LAKE
Night Shade Books
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The City Imperishable's secret master and heir to the long-vacant throne has vanished from a locked room, as politics have turned deadly in a bid to revive the city's long-vanished empire.

The city's dwarfs, stunted from spending their childhoods in confining boxes, are restive. Bijaz the Dwarf, leader of the Sewn faction among the dwarfs, fights their persecution. Jason the Factor, friend and apprentice to the missing master, works to maintain stability in the absence of a guiding hand. Imago of Lockwood struggles to revive the office of Lord Mayor in a bid to turn the City Imperishable away from the path of destruction.

These three must contend with one another as they race to resolve the threats to the city.

My Review: What a trip. The back cover copy calls it an "urban fantasy," which to my mind doesn't conjure images of Perdido Street Station (which this book reminds me of) so much as it does Dead Until Dark et. seq. But the key factor here is to be found in the word "fantasy."

I read a fantasy novel.

There, I said it.

I not only read it, I enjoyed it. BUT DON'T FOR GAWD'S SAKE TELL ANYONE. I will swear an oath that you're lying and that you must be the one who hacked my account and wrote a glowing heap of praise for a book with dwarves, an ancient city declining under an empty throne, a reluctant hero...well, you see my predicament. I can't admit out loud that I liked this kind of guff. "The city is," runs the motto Lake gives the City Imperishable. Yeeesh, really? Portentous much?

But seriously, who wouldn't like a book with this in it:

There was nothing left of himself that he wanted, save the vague glimmer of peace that he found somewhere inside the violet smoke. Finally he understood the place to which his wife had long since retreated.
Sometimes, when the snow was not so deep and he'd managed a little soup or coffee, {he} thought about making his way {home} and apologizing to his wife. He wasn't sure she'd understand him though--the crap dust had begun to rot his teeth, getting in all too quickly through the breaks, and his tongue was always dry as leather and twice too big.

The abjection of a powerful character, the absolute fall, the hitting bottom with a resounding *crunch* is unsettlingly well-limned.

And some regulars among you might recall my utterances on the subject of majgicqk. They have been uniformly derisory and occasionally cachinnatory. But here again Lake subverts and alters my wall of defense against balderdash:

"Everything carries the seeds of its own opposition, in equal measure. Have you ever toppled a wall? ... You must press as much as it takes to move the stones. They react as they are pushed. What people care to call magic works the same way. No one calls lightning from the summer sky without burning a hole in something, somewhere."

When you put it that way....

The City Imperishable is, like all places and cultures, built on a bargain. The bargain has costs and it has benefits. Those who pay the costs aren't always the ones who reap the benefits. Each main character, Bijaz the dwarf, Imago the Lord Mayor, and Jason the fector, pays dearly for the City Imperishable to derive the final benefit: Remaining alive. But each of these men, in their turn, finds a greater benefit in his sacrifice. They become whole in their brokenness, and anneal the metal of their character, and in the testing of their different mettles, bring life raging anew through the City Imperishable.

The city is.


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