Abraham, Daniel: An Autumn War
An Autumn War (2008)
Written by: Daniel Abraham
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Pages: 422 (Mass Market Paperback)
Series: Book Three of Four
This book was read as part of Jawas Read, Too!'s "Summer of Series" reading challenge. To learn more, click here.
Note to all readers of ANY book: never, ever, EVER read the summary of a book in a series that comes AFTER a book you have no read if you do not intend to be spoiled. Because I read the summary for The Price of Spring, fourth and final book in the Long Price Quartet, before I read the third, An Autumn War, and that, my friends, was a mistake. A big, big mistake, because shocking things happen in this book, and they aren't shocking at all if you already know it's coming.
So that's my word of warning. Spoilers are evil. :) But let's talk about An Autumn War anyway.
The premise: copied from the back of the book: The cities of the Khaiem have lived in peace for generations, protected by the magical powers of the andat. They have no need of armies or fortifications or the burdens of war. But after centuries of complacency, all that is about end. Galt, the ancient enemy of the Khaiem, has a new leader: the charismatic, principled, obsessed general Balasar Gice. Armed with a secret weapon that can strip the Khaiem of their unique defenses, he has amassed the greatest army the world has ever seen. His goal: the permanent destruction of teh andat and the cities they protect.
Only Otah Machi, ruler of the great city of Machi, sees the precipice on which his world stands. He has no choice but to gather the cities of the Khaiem together in a struggle for which they are not prepared. As total war descends upon the cities of the Khaiem, Otah must face the slaughter of his nation, and the one desperate chance to save it. But the price of winning the approaching war may be worse than losing it. . . .
Review style: whereas the second book of this cycle had a Shakespearean vibe going on, I find this book carries a certain King Arthur-esque weight to it, and I want to talk about that comparison. A little more examination of the role of women in The Long Price Quartet, discuss the format of each book in the series so far, and then talk about random stuff. :) How's that for detail? Yes, there be spoilers, and please, for the love of everything pure and good, DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW if you haven't read this book. Just skip to "My Rating" and thank me later. :)
Before I get into the stuff I promised, I want to take note of a particular trend:
In the first book, A Shadow of Summer, we saw the Khaiem at its most traditional. Life was good, normal, traditional, and formal. As a result: the poses drove me absolutely-freaking-batty.
In the second book, A Betrayal of Winter, the Khaiem was still pretty traditional, but it was in a transition, and the poses weren't quite as irritating as before. They were there, mind you, and everything was formal and whatnot, but they weren't as prominent. Mind you, because the position of the Khai was in flux, things were in transition. Fewer poses.
In the third book, An Autumn War, tradition and formality has come to an end. As Khai, Otah resists tradition, and even that doesn't matter as the root of it all is obliterated by a single andat. And then war destroys everything. And the poses become half-assed or non-existent. People are posing who aren't natives and therefore don't have the nuance; people are posing using gestures that don't fully mean what they should, and then there's people trying to pose while their hands are busy with something else. By the end, people really aren't posing at all.
I bring this to your attention because I think Abraham has been very deliberate with his use of poses. It starts out overwhelming at the height of tradition, and now that tradition has been obliterated, the poses have dwindled to nothing.
I look forward to seeing how all of this works in the final book of the series, and if the poses still reflect the nature of society.
So, I had an OMG-WTF-ARE-YOU-DOING? moment at the start of the book when I read pages 21and 22, when the narrative alluded to Kiyan, Otah's only wife, having an affair with Sinja, the captain of Otah's armsmen. After noting that the women so far in this series can't seem to stop themselves from cheating, you can imagine why this information nearly made me stroke out. Furthermore, it angered me enough to kind of want to put the book down. It certainly didn't make me want to read further, that's for sure.
But I did, because I wanted to finish this series. And while we never get the specific details about Kiyan and Sinja, we know that Sinja is hopelessly in love with her, and that she tells Otah that she and Sinja were never lovers. But there's still SOMETHING there. I don't know if it's love or a shared kiss or a very deep friendship, but there's something enough that made Otah think it was truly an affair, and I'm so not clear on the details.
In the end though, what seems like Abraham trying to piss me off turns into a kind of Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere triangle, but twisted. Here, instead of Guinevere being in love with Lancelot, Kiyan seems to be pretty devoted to her husband and is moved to the threat of murder at Sinja's apparent betrayal of Machi. And of course, Lancelot never betrayed the kingdom, did he? Sinja always played on the side of the winner, with only Kiyan as his compass at the end. He knew the woman would never forgive him, let alone love him, if he let her son be slaughtered. So in the end, he was true to Otah and Machi, but it was never a loyalty that ran very deep.
Sinja was a pretty complicated character, and I oscillated between being engrossed by his actions and motivations and being VERY frustrated with them. Part of it's because Abrahams is one of those smart writers who doesn't spell everything out. He's showing, not telling, and letting the reader infer the truth. That's a great sign in a writer, but there's a part of me that wished he'd given us a wee bit more here, because when the reader has such a negative reaction to something, like I did earlier, you need to make sure you're able to reverse that negative reaction, and in my opinion, sometimes you can only do that with hard answers/truth/telling. That said, he did ENOUGH that I'm happy to believe that whatever was between Kiyan and Sinja, it was never an actual affair. I believe that they weren't lovers, but I wish Otah wasn't the sort who didn't want to know the full truth and details, because my outrage NEEDED that.
Also, there was a point in the narrative that made me wonder if Danat was actually Sinja's son and not Otah's. But by time I wondered that, I couldn't find Danat's age, so I can't say for sure one way or the other, but considering the importance of sons in this series, let alone this novel, that's a possibility you don't want to leave hanging.
I've been increasingly vigilant in regards to the role of women in this series. I'm still not completely appeased either, despite Kiyan seemingly still faithful. After all, the andat that destroyed the wombs of the Khaiem and the seeds of Galt was in the form of a woman, so while andats are made as a reflection of everything the poet is and fears, it's still a little jarring. Yet, we saw some improvements here: Eiah, Otah's daughter, ends up apprenticing to a physician and actively embraces the role that started out as a means of punishment. And when Otah leaves the city to save the Dai-kvo, Liat and Kiyan team up in order to keep the city alive and floating through winter, and that was an excellently positive step. I look forward to seeing the role of women in the final book, but I'm a little worried too. It's an odd thing, because Jo Walton, whose book reviews have always led me to believe she's something of a feminist, LOVES this series. So women can't be THAT bad here, right? That's what I keep telling myself, but I keep having my doubts.
There's an interesting thing to note about the endings of each of these books: they end with someone on the run and/or leaving. The first, it was Otah. The second, it's Idaan (I wonder if she'll be back in the fourth book?); here, it's Maati and Cehmai. It didn't hit me until I read this particular book, but what an interesting pattern. I'm not sure what to make of it yet, let alone if anything DOES need to be made of it, so just consider it an observation at this juncture. :)
Despite being spoiled for the ending of this sucker (stupid, stupid, stupid!!!), I was pretty gripped by everything that happened. Talk about making that very first prolog, that long, seemingly insignificant prolog, a catalyst for the entire freaking series. My mind is STILL reeling from that revelation, and I'm tempted to dig out my copy of A Shadow in Summer and re-read the sucker, but I think I'll wait until I'm done with the series as a whole before I do that. But it's really heady stuff, knowing that Maati was always doomed to fail as a poet, knowing that what he thought was a breakthrough is deflecting the price was only protecting himself (and/or the poet), which made the price so much worse for everyone else. There's poetic justice (pun intended) in Sterile's price: now the two warring nations have to combine in order to survive, which makes me anxious to read the resolution in the final book. I want to see what kind of culture comes out of a merging of both, because both cultures have their positives and negatives, and like Otah, I think Balasar was right in that the andat were something to be feared, because they are products of men, and men are inherently flawed. That, and andats allowed society to become soft, and that's something no nation should be, no matter how anti-war any one is. At least, that's my humble opinion, especially when it comes to fantasy-world nations. :)
I did like Balasar Gice as a character. He's pretty fascinating, and I loved the subtle taint of supernatural that dogged him: he carries the ghosts of his dead, and it's more than just guilt: it's real, and it was proven when he lost men during the night and dreamed about more ghosts joining him before learning he'd actually lost those men.
Also, I really liked his name. :)
These books also make me hungry. I've grumbled over Martin's excruciatingly long detailed passages about food, but here, Abrahams makes it work. Maybe it's because he's very select in how he describes things, and what's he's describing sounds just so gosh-darn tasty! I want to TRY some of the stuff he describes, dang it. :)
In what I'm not sure is exactly a twist on the epic fantasy genre, I like how the revelation that Otah has a bastard son would be a GOOD thing in the eyes of the Khaiem, because they want their bloodbath. Traditionally, unless it's The Song of Ice and Fire (where we want a bastard son to take the throne from Joffrey), bastards are considered a threat to the kingdom and must be eliminated. Here, they're welcome. Though Kiyan's reaction to Nayiit did throw me a bit: surely Otah had told her about his past with Liat and the son that might be his? Or did he let Kiyan assume the son was Maati's for the protection of his own family? Now that I think about it, the latter is pretty probable, so I won't fault Kiyan's reaction too much.
Last but not least, a giggle on page 196:
"Keep an eye on Ajutani."
"Both, when I can spare them."
And if that doesn't remind you of Gandalf's promise to Bilbo in the FILM The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, well, then, you're just not as obsessed with that movie as I am. :)
My Rating
Worth the Cash: I think this book would've made it to "Must Have" had I not been spoiled for the big climax, so while it's not fair to judge a book based on my being spoiled, my emotional reaction does often tie into the rating, and here, the emotional reaction wasn't as strong as it would've otherwise been. Still, it's an excellent series so far that I'm quite pleased with. While I'm still mulling over the role of women in society and the parts they play in the plot, there's no denying that Abraham has created a solid, developed world with solid, well-developed characters who grow and change with each book. What's more is just how much impact the prolog of the very first book of the series is still playing in the overall story, and I have to say just how much this impresses me. Fantasy fans should definitely give Abraham's series a shot, but don't read the books out of order. Start with A Shadow in Summer, and you'll be just fine. Abraham is quickly becoming one of those "must read" authors for me, and I can't wait to read the conclusion to the series.
Cover Commentary: Stephen Martiniere does a beautiful job with these covers, and this one is no different. The colors are perfect for the "autumn" setting, and my only complaint of this cover is just how much space the title and the author's name takes up on the cover. I'd rather see the art! :)
Next up: Glimmerglass by Jenna Black