Blood over Bright Haven
M. L. Wang
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Centuries ago, five great mages traveled to a desolate valley filled with thousands of heathen Kwen tribes and, as directed and prophesied by God, raised up the city of Tiran. Here, under the protection of a magical dome, they are safe from the ravages of harsh winters and the Blight sent to punish the sinners who still reject salvation... but when hunting grows scarce and their numbers dwindle, Kwen tribespeople are often forced to risk the dangerous Crossing across the ice plains to Tiran. Those who survive live as little better than slaves in the city, toiling as menial laborers or dying in the magic-fueled factories, but at least they live - so long as they can earn their keep.
Sciona is everything a good Tiranish woman shouldn't be. While their holy book encourages obedience and docility and strictly defined gender roles, she instead embraces her religion's call to seek truth above all else. Her irrepressible curiosity and brilliance (not to mention a dash of ego that won't accept failure) drives her past all barriers until she stands on the threshold of history: becoming the first female highmage since Tiran's founding. Encouraged by an unusually indulgent mentor, Archmage Bringham, she sets out to make a name for herself and forge a path for future girls who, like her, dream of a life beyond the confines of motherhood or a meek life as a teacher... but her rise brings out the worst in her new peers. Instead of being given a proper student mage assistant, her superior, Highmage Renthorn, saddles her with a semi-literate Kwen janitor who happens to be standing nearby. But while Sciona fumes, she isn't about to let the "joke" set her back - and, to her surprise, discovers in Thomil a surprisingly keen intelligence, even though everyone knows Kwen are inherently dim and barely human. Together, Sciona and Thomil may revolutionize Tiran... or what they discover together may burn the bright haven to ashes.
REVIEW: I've read nothing but great things about this book, so even though I knew almost nothing about it other than that, I decided to see if it lived up to the hype. Remarkably, Blood Over Bright Haven holds up to its lofty reputation. Set largely in a city powered by industrial-scale magic that does everything from heat tea kettles to power street lights to drive mass transit, it tackles issues that resonate strongly in the real world, examining the rising human and environmental cost of unrestrained greed and the ways people rationalize systemic evils, especially when those evils get a stamp of "divine" approval.
From Thomil's desperate dash across the thin ice of the Crossing towards Tiran, as all but one of his remaining kin are literally peeled apart by the brilliant white light of the Blight before his eyes - sparing only young Carra, his niece - the desperation of life outside the haven dome is crystal clear... as is the life refugee Kwen face when they do pass through, as the man is nearly tossed back out when the guards think he might not be able to earn his keep. To the Tiranish born within the city, however, things look quite different - not just to scholars and mages like Sciona, but to the working poor like Sciona's cousin Alba, a faithful champion as Sciona ruthlessly pursues glory beyond the glass walls of her people's expectations of women. The scholar is so single-minded in her pursuit of greatness that she often doesn't notice the people around her - not just the Kwen, who are as good as invisible to most Tiranish (as is fitting a "lesser" people who, according to the holy texts, brought the Blight on themselves by rejecting fealty to the one true God), but her own neighbors. Still, it's all worth it when she earns her white robes as a highmage... even if it means enduring Renthorn and other highmages constantly trying to cut her back down to an acceptable womanly size and shape. When she ends up with "Tommy" the janitor instead of a proper Tiranish assistant, she handles the problem the way she's always handed mockery and obstacles set in her path by condescending "colleagues": she determines to show them up by turning the tables on her tormentors and transforming what should've been a liability into an asset. But she's never paid much (or any) attention to the Kwen of Tiran, and has a lot to learn now that she's stuck with one for several hours a day. Sciona finds her prejudices and assumptions constantly challenged, first when the semi-literate floor sweeper picks up the basics of spellcrafting (which has parallels to computer programming) so rapidly, and further as she's forced to consider her world and privilege from his point of view. Her piety and her ambitions keep her blinkered for quite some time, though; when she does start to open her eyes, she becomes convinced that she must be the first person to truly "see" the problems of the city (otherwise someone would've surely done something about it by now, wouldn't they?), and therefore that she, with her superior Tiranish mind, can fix things... a "white savior" notion that backfires terribly and leads to more uncomfortable revelations for the new highmage. This isn't the only point on which she must undergo an education; the reader can guess early on the true cause of the "Blight" and the true purpose of several religious edicts related to magic, but watching Sciona figure it out is interesting enough. She tries clinging to her faith, in her God and in the system, but they both fail her at crucial times.
Thomil, for his part, has many assumptions about the Tiranish in general and mages in particular. For ten years, he's scraped a living from the scraps left to his kind on the city streets, struggling to raise Carra in a way that both honors her heritage - the two are the last survivors of their tribe - and keeps her safe, even as he knows both goals are incompatible and ultimately impossible. He knew better than to interact with Tiranish, but can't help but be pulled in by Sciona's sheer force of personality. Still, the woman is so frustratingly, devoutly Tiranish, even when her own people have kicked her in the proverbial teeth repeatedly for defying their expectations. Why can someone he recognizes as so intelligent be so completely hoodwinked about the greater ills plaguing her profession and her civilization?
As the unlikely duo confront the problems facing them, they grow closer, even when they clash. Their cultures have diametrically opposed viewpoints, giving them different tools to cope with a world as riddled with problems as the one they're stuck living in; Sciona in particular must dig deep into Tiranish holy texts and histories, re-evaluating assumptions and dogma she has unthinkingly absorbed in her ultimate pursuit of truth... but what is she to do when her God supposedly claims truth is the highest calling of his faithful but self-delusion is what she's being sold by her elders? There are no easy answers here, and no quick fixes for injustices and atrocities that have been so thoroughly baked into Tiran for generations, warping society and religion, even convincing otherwise bright minds to ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears and consciences to perpetuate a machine that seems too big, too complex, too seemingly inevitable and unstoppable to ever be challenged. There are shades of the classic Ursula K. Le Guin short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", though the resolution Wang offers feels more cathartic.
Once in a while, the story felt just a trifle "on the nose" as it confronted the problems of systemic inequalities and fundamentalism/fanaticism's fusion with government and capitalism to create a multiheaded monster. Within this setting, Blood Over Bright Haven offers characters confronting their situations with nuance and complexity, wrestling with the eternal problem of whether intent trumps effect in the ultimate balancing of a life's scales: if a good person whose actions inadvertently lead to bad things is more worthy of eternal paradise than a bad person whose actions inadvertently do good. It's a story that is very relevant to our world today.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Master of Djinn (P. Djèlí Clark) - My Review
Blood of the Old Kings (Sung-Il Kim) - My Review
The Bone Shard Daughter (Andrea Stewart) - My Review
