Souldancer: Chapters 5-8

Damus and Nahel approach the water shrine hoping to use Xander to book passage with his father's caravan, but are turned away by the acolytes. When a murder is reported, Damus trades Nahel's tracking services for a meeting with the Nesshin. While he waits, Damus encounters a Guild Master, Arcanadeus, who has a proposition for Damus. Meanwhile, out in the desert, Nahel tracks the murderer to a cave. Inside, he finds and kills a Gen shapeshifter.

Xander wakes inside the shrine, and is greeted by Damus, Nahel and the pontifex. They discuss the werewolf Gen, attempting to reason its origin. Arcanadeus interrupts, questioning Xander before offering the exile the opportunity to join the Guild - and a chance to prove himself as a man. Xander accepts, and, in the process, becomes a desert guide to Damus.

Nahel uses a Mystery to reanimate the wolf-Gen for questioning. After blaspheming for a bit, the Gen reveals himself to be Night Gen, under the thrall of Hazeroth, a prince of Hell. His Night Tribe has been promised Mithgar itself in return for finding Souldancers for Shaiel. Afterwards, Arcanadeus says that the means to oppose the Night Gen are at Teran Nazim.

The party leaves Medvia after Xander finds a way to cut their travel in half. To pass the time, Damus tells of the land of Vale and the Journey to Save All Souls, the yearly feeding of the unwanted to the last fire of the Cataclysm in Ostrith. Nahel reveals that he has met the charred from this ritual. The group arrives at Teran Nazim, going underground to enter the complex. Attacked by giant insects, Arcanadeus sets a working and the party runs away.

*****

Of interest is Nahel's statement that he used to work for Midras, but had to change jobs. Right now, little has been revealed of Midras's legends, or how the other gods relate to the creation gods of Zadok and Thera. In Nethereal, references to the creator and his murderous daughter peppered the setting for chapters before their legends were revealed. Midras appears to be in a similar position here in Souldancer.

Navkin has done well for herself since the Cataclysm, ruling the Light Gen kingdom of Avalon from its seat of Seele, which, even if it weren't located in Hell, still maintains its connotations to the soul and one of the most unsettling groups of Secret Kings in anime.

The Night Tribe's other name, isnashi, is the same as that for a legendary Brazilian cryptid more commonly known as the mapinguari.  This red-furred monster is known for its stench, its roar, killing cattle, and ripping out tongues, attributes and deeds assigned to the Night Gen shifter. These particular flaws are likely tied to Shaiel, as the uncorrupted shifters received their power from Faerda. And since Almeth has been trumpeted as an avatar of that goddess, I expect that he will have similar powers.

Nessh, the Nesshin, death worms, the desert, and reverence for water do resonate with the Fremen of Dune. This idea is also driven home by the illustration of a Souldancer that Brian Niemeier commissioned, as the bright blue eyes and the stillsuit-inspired armor evoke the book and the movie.

From his name (or is it a title?) alone, Arcanadeus reveals that he is of the Guild. However, which faction is he a part of? In Nethereal, we saw three different factions, the Guild proper, the Arcana Divines, and a group of secret kings pulling the strings of both. The Divines were the faction who created the Exodus by shackling the saragasso god Elathan and the nine souldancers used to recreated Thera. It's still early to know if the Arcana in his name points to a deeper mystery of the Divines or the kings, or if it only refers to the arcane workings of the Guild.

Finally, just when I got a little too comfortable with the tale of a misfit finding what are likely to be his teachers and father/brother figures, Damus remind us that this is a Soul Cycle book. The ritual that Jemai embarked on in chapter 4 is indeed the Journey to Save All Souls, and his willing sacrifice and impending scalding at the hands of the last ember of Cataclysm is more in line with the horrors of Nethereal than just a shapeshifting beast. Yet Brian is not profligate with his viewpoint characters in the way that Robert Jordan and other epic fantasists are. I'm not writing Jemai off yet.

Souldancer: Chapters 1-4

Xander Sykes is traveling by desert caravan to see his father, enduring abuse from his rival, Sem. The caravans meet prior to arrival at Medvia, where Nesshin youth prove themselves before the council. But Xander will not go there, nor will he be Nesshin, for his father exiles him from the tribe. Swept up by emotion, Xander flees into the desert and passes out.

He awakens in the middle of the night, abandoned by those who should have searched for him. A pack of caninids stalks then pursues him. At the end of the flight, Xander is saved by a green-cloaked stranger, but the exile's own strange power also slips its leash.

In Medvia, Gen artifact hunter Damus Greystone waits with his malakh guard, Nahel. He learns of a single Nesshin wandering into town from the desert and goes to investigate.

Xander wakes up in Medvia's Shrine of Water, treated by the local pontifex. A strange mark tattoos the exile's shoulder, one that neither priest nor boy recognizes. The pontifex expresses amazement at the news of Xander's exile, then dreams sweep him up once more.

Half a world away, an orphan is sent on a ritual pilgrimage in search of a pillar of fire. Jemai finds it in one of the ruined cities and closes in on the perilous Tower Graves... 

***

The Nesshin are a tribe of nomadic desert traders previously associated with the world of Tharis, as a quick search of Nethereal reveals. They are closely tied to the mysteries of Zadok and Thera. So what are they doing on post-ruin Mithgar?

At this moment, Souldancer has echoes of the typical shounen adventure. Represented by Naruto or My Hero Academia, these boy's adventures take a gifted young misfit, usually bullied by a rival, and through circumstance and adventure, force the little brat to grow up and find his place in a society that he will eventually save. If Nethereal is a guide, this process will mix supernatural horror, body horror, and other nightmares into Xander's bitter poison of maturity.

During the discussions of Nethereal, Brian Niemeier revealed the influence of the classic video game Final Fantasy VI on the story. At the time, I chose not to investigate too closely to avoid revealing spoilers, as not only did the climax of Nethereal bear many similarities to what would at first glance appear to be the finale to that video game's story, but Nethereal and Souldancer mimic a key feature of the game. A confrontation in the a land that is the source of magic for Final Fantasy VI creates a cataclysm that not only scatters the party, but ruins the world. This cataclysm divides the game into two stages, a World of Balance and a World of Ruin. And, after a time-skip of months and years, the story resumes, but with different perspective characters. Thera's rebirth at the end of Nethereal scatters the crew of the Shibboleth and ruins the worlds of the Soul Cycle. Now, twenty-five years later, the story starts again, this time with a Nesshin exile with hidden powers. And, like Celes in Final Fantasy VI, Xander is already gathering some familiar faces from the previous tale.

When last we saw Sulaiman, he had been body-swapped into Teg's body, and, thanks to a vile poison, transformed into an unthinking monster that only Khorne could love. That he now walks free and in his own mind is not only a shock, but due to the actions of unnamed liberators. Now he walks the deserts of Mithgar in search of a way to make Thera pay for his world's desecration. Fortunately, the green-cloaked priest of Midras has a chance to work out his mad on an ancient enemy about to cross his path, Hazeroth.

Damus serves a female liege from Avalon searching for word of her daughter. Is this Navkin?

Perhaps Jemai might become one of Xander's allies. Right now, though, his vision quest/fetch quest offers us the first sight at what is left of the cities of Mithgar. If my reading is correct, at least one skyscraper survived Thera's flames.

Souldancer - The Teens

Sole dancers, you see.

During the teen portions of Souldancer our Guildsman betrays the trio to a creepy pranadrinker, but meets his comeuppance when they survive thanks to Xander's mysterious powers.  They escape from the Isnashi hunters by using a magictech portal that drops Nahel and Damus off in a vast Guild space, but drops Xander off in the clutches of a terrifying nightmare...of sorts.

And thus we meet the souldancer herself.  Astlin, a girl who hap a portion of her soul ripped away from her by the Guild has been living in the ruins of a metropolis, eating the old and infirm, sacrificed to her for generations.  It isn't until Xander shows up and treats her with compassion and pity that she manages to control her desire to feed.

We are also introduced to Szodrin, a Night Gen who seems to be working for the Guild, but when we met him he was in Guild-jail, and it turns out he knew Xander's mother and his been looking for Xander for his own reasons.

Which is all a convoluted way of saying that Brain Neimeier might be crafting more detailed and intricate plots that any author working today.  His books are woven through with so many threads, it can be hard to keep track, and you often find yourself wondering about the significance of what you're reading.  There are moments where I have to remind myself to be patient - all will be revealed in due course.

When we realize that Astlin is a telepath who has lured Xander into a trap, I found myself wondering why we spent so long inside her imaginary world.  It seemed like a waste of words, until you realize that she isn't just another monster, but a key player in the story.  We needed to see her world, to get to know her, so that when she is revealed to be the vessel for a portion of Thera - a role she struggles with - we have a little compassion for her, and have a reason to root for her.

That sort of reveal takes time to set up, and Neimeier shows tremendous patience in laying all of the groundwork in order to maximize the power of the reveal.

Souldancer: Prologue

In the eternal realm of Kairos, Gen hero Almeth Elocine has been spurred to action, to intervene in history to mend its wrong course. He is confronted by an old friend, Cleolin, who stabs him when Almeth will not relent from his course. For his treachery, Kairos removes Cleolin, while Almeth falls down and waits...

Almeth Elocine is mentioned twice in Nethereal. The first time, Jaren namedrops him when mentioning how strange it was to talk to Sulaiman, a priest of Midras and an adherent of a religion purged by the Guild. Since Almeth is Gen and the Gen were also purged, perhaps Midras-worship is a Gennish religion. The second time is during the gossip accompanying the Exodus's return from Hell, where rumors of Almeth Elocine's return spread. I suspect that a "king under the mountain" myth might surround Almeth, similar to how the twin stories of King Arthur and Francis Drake will return in England's time of direst need. But the Gen genocide and Cleolin stabbing him are arguments against that particular myth. What is certain is that Almeth Elocine will return to the Soul Cycle again.

Kairos as a name for an eternal realm is also a poignant choice. One of the two words ancient Greeks used for time, it is used for a multitude of meanings depending on context. These include "a period or season, a moment of indeterminate time in which an event of significance happens," and "a propitious moment for decision or action." In this latter sense, kairos has many of the same connotations as the idea of schwerpunkt. However, the term also has history in science fiction and fantasy as the name for the series of books by Madelene L'Engle that include A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet.  She would describe kairos as:

Real time, God’s time. That time which breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, that time we do not recognize while we are experiencing it, but only afterwards, because kairos has nothing to do with chronological time. In kairos, we are completely unselfconscious, and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we’re constantly checking our watches for chronological time. The saint in contemplation, lost to self in the mind of God is in kairos. The artist at work is in kairos. The child at play, totally thrown outside herself in the game, be it building a sand castle or making a daisy chain, is in kairos. In kairos we become what we are called to be as human beings, co-creators with God, touching on the wonder of creation. This calling should not be limited to artists, or saints, but it is a fearful calling.

And the books of her Kairos cycle all deal with the events of a time apart from time and how those affect chronological time. Likewise, the stabbing of Almeth is likely to have chronological ripples, although what those might be have yet to be seen.

May Brian forgive me, as I know that the Wheel of Time is not quite so beloved in Puppydom as it once was, but this prologue reminded me of the prologue of The Eye of the World, with the same sense of betrayal, broken friendship, and sorrow that introduced Lews Therin Telamon in that story.

(I know I started late, and started slow, but who doesn't love a challenge?)

Souldancer - The Early Chapters

Souldancers, you see.

This book is a beast.  Clocking in at 500 pages, and being behind on a lot of other lit-crit analysis, your old pal Jon just isn't going to be able to give you the measured doses of full analysis this month.  Instead, I'm going to play loosey-goosey and throw down my impressions as we roll along.

With that ado a-done, let's get to it.

Looks like Xander is our main character this time around, and he's a Nesshin.  The Nesshin are one of my favorite rarities in science-fiction - a desert nomad people who aren't just arabs with the serial numbers filed off.  There are certain necessities that all desert dwellers will share, such as a reverence for oases, but you don't often see a fully realized culture that feels as natural and yet un-earthlike as the Nesshin.

Our pal Xander gets booted from the clan by a loving father who thinks he's capable of so much more, and in his dream-quest to escape the desert he shows the reader that dear old dad might just be on to something.  He's got a bit of the

Sulaiman makes an appearance.  Wait.  Isn't that the guy from the first book?  Checking the archives reveals he was one of the living people Jaren encountered in Hell.  He was the priest who led the freehold and wound up stealing Teg's body before being killed by Vaun.  So this is a prequel.  Got it.

Damus Greystone, another Gen, and his wookie-pal, Nahel.  Actually a malakh, a half-man, half-wolf, are looking for an ancient artifact and think they know where to find it, but they need a guide, and Xander needs a job.  It's a match made in heaven.  All they need is a Guildman to -

Wait again.  I just spent the last book learning to hate the Guild, what is our adventuring party doing working with the Guildsman Arcanadeus.  Oh right, prequel.  They aren't so bad just yet.  From the sounds of things, they haven't obtained their monopoly yet, but they aren't well liked, either.  So we'll just have to keep an eye on this guy and make sure he stays loyal.

The Gen have been liquidated though, so we know Avalon is currently hiding out in Hell, and that makes Damus a rarity.  He and Nahel's first adventure is a little investigation into some demonic activity out at the farm, and after beating back an attack of shapeshifters, they drag a corpse back to town for a little speak with dead mono-a-mono, and we learn that the shapeshifter was a Night Tribe Gen working for a big bad voodoo man named Shaiel, who "is the Void".  They might have learned more if it wasn't for that meddling kid, Xander.

Okay, just writing all that out was a big help.  I think I might actually have this now.

The Soul Cycle - Reading on Nightmare Mode

We here at the Puppy of the Month Book Club have a knack for picking the first book of a series.  We've done it with The Swan Knight's Son, The Chronicles of Amber, catskinner's book, and Nethereal.  It's high time we revisited at least one of those universes, and none of them are as deserving as Brian Neimeier's.  It was the very first Puppy of the Month, and it only took ten months to get to the sequel.

That's really too long.

Not just because it's too good of a series to languish that long, but because this is a challenging series to read.  Frankly, Nethereal kicked my butt.  Brian's writing is deceptively dense and is thoroughly riddled with multiple references and layers of meaning that completely escaped my typically shallow reading.  It wasn't until Frisky and Nate oined in the conversation and started pulling on threads that I realized how knotted were the stitches that made up the Nethereal sweater.  They introduced me to whole new dimensions in reading, and pushed me to approach the Book Club - and my other writing - with considerably more intellectual rigor, and to devote more time and thought to my own posts both here, at my blog, and over at Castalia House.

Consider the prologue to Souldancer.  At its surface it's the story of two characters meeting in an inter-planar nexus of time.  I know that it's largely unrelated to the work that follows, and that only because I listen to Brian's podcast, Geek Gab,  I don't actually believe that it has no relation to the story.  Having experienced Nethereal, I dig deeper, and this is what I surmise:

Almeth Elocine is a Gen who refuses to leave his people "in thrall to an upstart fiend."  He intends to rewrite history, and his human friend Cleolin Redbeard has come to stop him.

Although vague and cryptic, this short prologue reminds us of how the universe of Souldancer operates.  Above all things is the white well, from which the substance of life flows.  This substance, prana, can be shaped into Workings leaving us with this universe's equivalent of mana and spells.  The prana flows down through the universe, through the mundane world of the Middle Stratum, which contains the spheres of the planets, to be captured in the Void.  We are reminded that the last of the Gen were trapped inside a level of Hell, bound there by a pact with a demon.  We are also reminded that the Guild runs things in the Stratum through a near monopoly of Workings.  Through that monopoly, they exercise near total control over the ships that ply the aether between spheres.

It's a complex world, and one that requires reference to the glossary for first time readers, and for those coming back into it after a long absence.  While the characters and action come to life during a casual read, this is a book that becomes so much more richly rewarding for those willing to put in a little effort.

I'm glad I've got a few friends to share this with, because I'm not sure I could go it alone.

Congratulations to the Puppy Hugo Finalists

The good people over at Vox Popoli have announced a fresh injection of works worthy of selection as the Puppy of the Month.  Titles of note include:

• Best New Writer: J. Mulrooney, "An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity"
• Best Short Story: "An Unimaginable Light" by John C. Wright
• Best Novelette: "Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By the T-Rex" by Stix Hiscock
• Best Novella: "This Census-Taker" by China Mieville
• Best Semiprozine: Cirsova

Speaking only for myself, I can only pray neither of my compatriots here at the blog select Stix Hiscock's work for in-depth analysis.  Technically, it's eligible but I'd rather read something by the grossly over-rated China Mieville than...oh.  Nuts.

Although not particularly suitable for what we do here at the Book Club, the following finalists are worth a mention as well:

Best Fanzine: Castalia House Blog
Bear in mind that all three of the contributors to the Book Club contribute to the Castalia House blog.  I think I speak for all of us when we say its an honor to be a part of the most exciting conversation in science-fiction and fantasy of our times.

Best Fan Writer: Jeffro Johnson
This is the man who is largely responsible for the Book Club.  He is the SF/F world's Moses, leading us out of 30 years of bondage and into a glorious new promised land full of fun and exciting works that are far more reflective of the tastes of fans of SF/F who live west of the Hudson River.

Best Editor - Long Form: Vox Day
The man behind the Rabid Puppies and the man who was first to recognize Jeffro's talent and vision needs no introduction.  As one of the best editors working today, and one of the most entertaining personalities inside the world of SF/F, there are two things you can be sure of: 1. that his work will be regularly featured at the Book Club, 2. the 2017 Hugo Awards will generate significantly more entertainment value than they would have without his presence.

I know a number of people nominated the Book Club on their ballots this year, and to you I can only say thank you.  We didn't make it onto the Finalists lists this year, and in the event the full data is released it may just turn out that the Book Club was a victim of the E. Pluribus Anus rules change.  Which will be gratifying, if true.  It means that the analysis we provide threatens the powers that be to a sufficient level that they literally re-write the rules of the Hugo Awards to keep us away from their private soirees.

That might just be the highest compliment we could receive.