Sedia, Ekaterina: The Secret History of Moscow
The Secret History of Moscow
Writer: Ekaterina Sedia
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 303
The title and the cover of this book had always caught my eye, but I also kept reading so many reviews calling this one of the best fantasies of the year that I had to get my hands on it. Got it last year as a gift from filmfreak as a birthday/Christmas present, which was nice of her. I just wish I'd gotten around to reading it sooner.
The premise: Galina has always been the crazy one of the family; she's even been hospitalized for schizophrenia. So when she sees her sister Masha turn into a jackdaw and fly away, she doesn't tell anyone. That is until she meets a cop who's investigating a string of disappearances around Moscow and saw the very same thing himself. Together they seek out answers, and discover that there's more to the city of Russia than meets the eye. A secret city lies just beneath, a city of magic, exiled deities and fairytale creatures, where the missing become immortal. And unfortunately, the two different Moscows are starting to collide.
Spoilers ahead.
Unfortunately for me, I'd heard too many reviews stating this was one of the best fantasy releases of 2007. My expectations were obviously a bit high, and I disagree with those reviews. That's not to say it's not a very promising debut. It's good, and it deserves the attention it gets provided it's not built up to be the next best thing to sliced bread.
But what makes it so noteworthy? First, there's the setting of Moscow. Sedia manages to do in this book what Lukyanenko couldn't in The Night Watch: she made me want to know more about Russia, about Moscow, and all the history and myths that have made it what it is. It's always a pleasant surprise to come across a book that makes you feel this way. In many ways, this book deserves to be in the same class as Charles de Lint or Neil Gaiman for the ability to take myth and entangle it with the very reality of city life. That's why I think so many people are praising this book.
And there's something to be said for the prose. It's a smooth read with some really lovely descriptions and turns of phrase. The structure of the story reminds me of a simpler version of Valente's The Orphan's Tales, in that for most of the book, nearly every new character brings a new story, a new history to the bigger picture. Sometimes those stories and histories interrupted the current storyline, but I think I understand what Sedia is doing, especially in relation to her title: these are the stories and histories no one knows anything about, and in their own way, they help bring the current story to its climax.
The story itself is rather simple. Someone from the Underground is helping someone else on the surface world by bringing magic where it doesn't belong. This magic allows the surface world person to turn people into birds for whatever reason (to gather information, but why, I was never certain, and I was never certain how certain people were chosen for this magic), and because the magic is slipping into the surface world, the corruption of the surface world is slipping into the Underground and it must be stopped.
Galina is the focal point of the story. It's her motivation to find her sister that brings all of the other POV characters together, and each POV character is wrapped up in his or her own story, and helps for their own reasons, even if those reasons are nothing more than they have nothing else better to do. At first I wondered if there might be a chance at a romantic spark between Galina and Yakov, but no luck, and as the book progressed, I didn't want there to be. He had his own demons, and was the cop in charge of seeking out the missing people, and in the end, he's become whole enough to try and put his past to rest. A nice touch.
All the other characters return to their prospective realities once the story is over, mostly. During the great transformation that turns the birds back into people, Masha is unable to transform as someone else's soul has been shoved down her jackdaw throat. The only way she can be made human again (the magic used previously is all used up) is for her to be put into a human body, and Galina, who really has no future, trades places. It's a rather fitting ending, and an appropriate one. It was a suitable sacrifice for that character, and it made a rather slow book a bit of a sharp, poignant one at the end.
I say slow: often events unfolded without any real logic behind them. For the life of me, I'm still puzzling over the sudden appearance of Likho and Zlyden and how they were responsible for this whole mess, though I think it's more of my ignorance of the myth and stories than anything. Yes, Sedia could've thrown me a bit more of a bone, but it really wasn't necessary. Stuff happened, I accepted it, and kept reading, though I will say there was little to drive along my interest, save for the fact I wanted to read more fantasy set in an unfamiliar world. The characters weren't one-dimensional, but they weren't fully-fleshed real people that I could really get my hands on. The voice, while lovely at times, wasn't addictive. But it told a nice story, so I'm glad I got through it.
My Rating
Give It Away: it's a promising debut that promises to put Ekaterina Sedia in the same ranks as Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, and Catherynne Valente, if it hasn't put her there yet. It's not a book I'll keep and cherish forever, but I liked enough of what I read that I want to read more of Sedia's work. Sedia strikes me as the kind of writer who's going grow and improve with each story and book she writes, and I look forward to reading her other projects. The Secret History of Moscow is definitely DIFFERENT as far as urban fantasies go, and fans of de Lint and Gaiman should certainly check this out. Me, I'm just pleased Sedia's ignited my curiosity to learn more about Russia, Moscow, and its history and myth, and that's a powerful thing to pull off. A good read, though a bit slow, but with lots of promise, especially in the prose.
Next up:
The Company by K.J. Parker (ARC)