Flesh and Fire: Laura Anne Gilman
Dec. 30th, 2013 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silverflight8I am in the middle of typing a review of The Merchant of Dreams (Anne Lyle, historical fantasy set in Elizabethan England and then Venice, involving creatures from New World called skraylings) but I read Flesh and Fire today and well, I have to talk about this one first.
Back cover:
Jerzy, raised from his status of slave, becomes the apprentice of Malech unexpectedly. Like all his kind, Malech, a Vineart, can coax from wine true magic. Wines imbued with magic, called spellwines, can be used by anyone to do things like set and heal bones, create light without burning, or influence weather. However, the realm of temporal power is permanently blocked off for Vinearts--they are forbidden to do so by Sin Washer, a Jesus-like figure who broke the power of prince-mages a thousand years ago by blooding the grapes and is still worshipped today.
But things are not right--from all corners come news of petty plagues and harvest problems, sea-serpents attacking villages, and an entire island disappearing. In the isolated Valle of Ivy, where Vineart Malech has his vinyards, Jerzy studies at a frenetic pace. Hearing the news all together forms a disturbing picture, and Malech is concerned. Against all tradition, he sends Jerzy to another Vineart to try to understand what is happening, though Jerzy has hardly been a year under his tutelage.
I really enjoyed a lot of the worldbuilding and Malech himself. As a Vineart he is preoccupied first and foremost with the grapes--how they're doing, what the weather is like, how the slaves are treating them, what needs to be done, how they will affect the eventual spellwine he makes. The novel itself (past the prelude and introduction and the like) opens with Jerzy the slave (identified only as "the boy") overlooking the trampling of grapes and utterly petrified by the Master. Because of Jerzy's perspective, the importance of spellwines are set out right away: for the slaves, it's death to pluck a grape. Death to drink the wine at any stage. Death to waste or crush the grapes. Spellwines are only for the wealthy, although some people might drink ordinary wine that can't be turned into spellwine, on special occasions.
Since it is about wine, there was a lot of emphasis on the taste of it. Taste is a bit easier to describe in words than smell, but Gilman still had to use a lot of comparisons (smelling grass, stone, etc). Fortunately she avoided the usual idiom of wine tasting which frankly as an outsider I find ridiculous. It's mostly low-key: the taste is how Jerzy can identify what kind of spellwine it is, its purpose, possibly even is origin, but they taste the wines not really for aesthetic purposes but to use them as power.
Woven through the novel are the Washers--priest-like figures who preach about the Sin Washer. The parallels to Christianity are obvious but influence the characters' motivations, which is better. Sin Washer saved the land from devastation by splitting the power of the mages; Vinearts are therefore not permitted to take on secular power nor influence other Vinearts' yards. So Jerzy's short visit to Vinemaster Giordan raises eyebrows, not only because it breaks Vineart conventions but also because of how it skirts censure by the Washers.
Finally, there is the magic. Spellwine can be used by anyone who is told how; it is already refined and fermented so that someone who has never handled a grape can simply say the words and heal a broken bone. (This has conditions, though: most users can only heal injuries they know of, but more powerful Vinemasters may be able to do more.) The words are very simple--Gilman just uses plain English like "scour and clean" or the like, which I thought was fascinating. A lot of fantasy uses made-up languages or riffs off obscure/antiquated/dead languages to lend magic words more importance and to obscure their meanings, even though, translated into English, they are as concrete and familiar words as they come. Gilman just skips all that, going directly to English, which is refreshing, if occasionally a bit funny.
But in-universe: the difficulty in using magic lies in actually creating the spellwine, and both the economic value of the wine and the attachment Vinearts have to their vineyards play into the novel. All Vinearts are former slaves--it's never described exactly, but Malech happens to see Jerzy's actions during the harvest and Jerzy, terrified, lets slip intuition about wine. The magic system and the whole society are very interesting.
All in all it was excellent. Absolutely excellent. 10/10
Back cover:
Once, all power in the Vin Lands was held by the prince-mages, who alone could craft spellwines, and selfishly used them to increase their own wealth and influence. But their abuse of power caused a demigod to break the Vine, shattering the power of the mages. Now, fourteen centuries later, it is the humble Vinearts who hold the secret of crafting spells from wines, the source of magic, and they are prohibited from holding power.
But now rumors come of a new darkness rising in the vineyards. Strange, terrifying creatures, sudden plagues, and mysterious disappearances threaten the land. Only one Vineart senses the danger, and he has only one weapon to use against it: a young slave. His name is Jerzy, and his origins are unknown, even to him. Yet his uncanny sense of the Vinearts' craft offers a hint of greater magics within magics that his Master, the Vineart Malech, must cultivate and grow. But time is running out. If Malech cannot teach his new apprentice the secrets of the spellwines, and if Jerzy cannot master his own untapped powers, the Vin Lands shall surely be destroyed.
In Flesh and Fire, first in a spellbinding new trilogy, Laura Anne Gilman conjures a story as powerful as magic itself, as intoxicating as the finest of wines, and as timeless as the greatest legends ever told.
Jerzy, raised from his status of slave, becomes the apprentice of Malech unexpectedly. Like all his kind, Malech, a Vineart, can coax from wine true magic. Wines imbued with magic, called spellwines, can be used by anyone to do things like set and heal bones, create light without burning, or influence weather. However, the realm of temporal power is permanently blocked off for Vinearts--they are forbidden to do so by Sin Washer, a Jesus-like figure who broke the power of prince-mages a thousand years ago by blooding the grapes and is still worshipped today.
But things are not right--from all corners come news of petty plagues and harvest problems, sea-serpents attacking villages, and an entire island disappearing. In the isolated Valle of Ivy, where Vineart Malech has his vinyards, Jerzy studies at a frenetic pace. Hearing the news all together forms a disturbing picture, and Malech is concerned. Against all tradition, he sends Jerzy to another Vineart to try to understand what is happening, though Jerzy has hardly been a year under his tutelage.
I really enjoyed a lot of the worldbuilding and Malech himself. As a Vineart he is preoccupied first and foremost with the grapes--how they're doing, what the weather is like, how the slaves are treating them, what needs to be done, how they will affect the eventual spellwine he makes. The novel itself (past the prelude and introduction and the like) opens with Jerzy the slave (identified only as "the boy") overlooking the trampling of grapes and utterly petrified by the Master. Because of Jerzy's perspective, the importance of spellwines are set out right away: for the slaves, it's death to pluck a grape. Death to drink the wine at any stage. Death to waste or crush the grapes. Spellwines are only for the wealthy, although some people might drink ordinary wine that can't be turned into spellwine, on special occasions.
Since it is about wine, there was a lot of emphasis on the taste of it. Taste is a bit easier to describe in words than smell, but Gilman still had to use a lot of comparisons (smelling grass, stone, etc). Fortunately she avoided the usual idiom of wine tasting which frankly as an outsider I find ridiculous. It's mostly low-key: the taste is how Jerzy can identify what kind of spellwine it is, its purpose, possibly even is origin, but they taste the wines not really for aesthetic purposes but to use them as power.
Woven through the novel are the Washers--priest-like figures who preach about the Sin Washer. The parallels to Christianity are obvious but influence the characters' motivations, which is better. Sin Washer saved the land from devastation by splitting the power of the mages; Vinearts are therefore not permitted to take on secular power nor influence other Vinearts' yards. So Jerzy's short visit to Vinemaster Giordan raises eyebrows, not only because it breaks Vineart conventions but also because of how it skirts censure by the Washers.
Finally, there is the magic. Spellwine can be used by anyone who is told how; it is already refined and fermented so that someone who has never handled a grape can simply say the words and heal a broken bone. (This has conditions, though: most users can only heal injuries they know of, but more powerful Vinemasters may be able to do more.) The words are very simple--Gilman just uses plain English like "scour and clean" or the like, which I thought was fascinating. A lot of fantasy uses made-up languages or riffs off obscure/antiquated/dead languages to lend magic words more importance and to obscure their meanings, even though, translated into English, they are as concrete and familiar words as they come. Gilman just skips all that, going directly to English, which is refreshing, if occasionally a bit funny.
But in-universe: the difficulty in using magic lies in actually creating the spellwine, and both the economic value of the wine and the attachment Vinearts have to their vineyards play into the novel. All Vinearts are former slaves--it's never described exactly, but Malech happens to see Jerzy's actions during the harvest and Jerzy, terrified, lets slip intuition about wine. The magic system and the whole society are very interesting.
All in all it was excellent. Absolutely excellent. 10/10
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Date: Dec. 31st, 2013 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 31st, 2013 11:02 pm (UTC)