Eliott, Kate - Cold Magic and Cold Fire

[oyceter]

(books one and two of the Spiritwalker trilogy)

This is set in the late Regency period of a world in which the Roman Empire never completely toppled, mage houses are a powerful force from a long-ago alliance between West African and Celtic mages, people are making airships, revolutionary forces are in the brewing, the spirit world is close at hand, Camjiata (the Napoleon equivalent) is about to make a second attempt at empire, and oh yes, by the way, there's still a bit of the ice age going and did I mention the intelligent dinosaurs (called "trolls" by the humans in the world)?

Our heroine, Cat Hassi Barahal, gets entangled in mage house politics while also uncovering her own ties to the spirit world in book one. In book two, she ends up in Expedition, a trade city in the world's equivalent of the Dominican Republic which struggles to maintain its independence from the next-door Taino empire.

This is basically everything and the kitchen sink. The pacing in book one is kind of terrible; I didn't get into it until a revelation around the halfway point. Book two does much better, partly because there is much less journeying involved and way less worldbuilding to cram into your head, because if you couldn't tell, there is a heck of a lot of worldbuilding in these books. Some of it is less explicit than I would like (want more about the trolls!), but I find the eventual migration of various African peoples up north and the blend of African and Celtic society to be absolutely fascinating.

It's not even the biggest point of the world either, just the background! The books are basically about revolutionary and radical ideas and the spread of ideas about equality and property and rights, and I am really impressed that Elliott manages to make these ideas feel (afaict) true to the Regency time period we know and true to her own world. It's a great example of how fantasy doesn't actually have to be about the restoration of monarchical bloodlines, and I like that she does it in a way that doesn't use that much modern jargon about social justice or democracy (in the USian sense, not the Greek sense).

I did find that the characters suffer a little due to this. Cat has an extremely close relationship with her cousin Bee, but I often felt as though we were told that more than seeing it. Some of it is due to Cat getting separated from Bee for long periods in both books, and I'm hoping the third will have much more Cat-and-Bee adventures. Cat herself is a fine character but not one I am completely in love with (unlike, say, the women in Melina Marchetta's Lumatere trilogy), though I very much like that Elliott emphasizes both Cat's fighting ability and her skill with a needle.

Spoilers

• I was really not sold on the romance in book 1, but book 2 convinced me. I am a fan of wooing people via assorted tropical fruit. I am also a fan of romantic gestures via revolutionary principles, i.e. Andevai using his love of fashion to try and support indie tailors instead of the high-end stores in Expedition.

• I'm not really sure I liked the Master of the Hunt storyline. Part of it is due to me being bored with Celtic mythology thanks to overexposure, particularly when the heroine is of the spiritual/fey world and the human world.

• I have no idea what is going on with Bee by the end of book 2. Why was she hanging out with Camjiata again? In general, I like that Bee very clearly has stuff going on outside of Cat's adventures, but it's really awkward for the books to have her randomly appearing 3/4 of the way through with a convoluted explanation of how she got there.

• Yay, Cat gets to have sex with someone she doesn't love, enjoy it, and not get punished for it!

• Rory is hilarious.

• Haha, glad Andevai and not Bee is the one to get saved for book 3.

• I feel like I should have more to say about the racial bits of the worldbuilding, but I can't think of anything intelligent right now. I really like that there are multiple cultures in multiple places, so even the African migration north is composed of different peoples and etc. I also really loved Expedition. I'm still not entirely sold on having a Napoleon equivalent in the book, given all the other very large changes. Also, given all the changes, having the Napoleon equivalent there inadvertantly feels like it is the one bit of history that is inevitable.

• There is a lot of repetition, which might be good if you read the books over a long period of time, but I thumbed through quite a few pages while reading them back to back.

• It's kind of funny, given the title of the trilogy, but I actually find the spirit world component of the book to be the least interesting.

Links:

• starlady's reviews of Cold Magic (no spoilers) and Cold Fire (spoilers)

Comments

[laughingrat]

Wow, they sound like they have so much potential, but that the writing is its own obstacle. Hm.

[oyceter]

I'm leaning more toward the "solid but with flaws" side, just because the worldbuilding is so incredibly substantial, and because the plot moves pretty fast once you get past the first lull in book 1. Book 2 also has much more character development for some of the characters, which is nice.

[al_zorra]

I couldn't get past a lot of things in these novels, starting with but not confined to the model of regency English society - Napoleonic era manners, sartorial modes and mores and cultures and social statum and clothing even, in a world in which England and supposedly neither Christianity nor Islam exists. Especially since the Caribbean is also on the English colonial model, right down to its creole. That would have been OK -- except all the hype is this is a post-colonialist alternate history fantasy to show how things could have been without all that. I'm utterly bewildered by this.\

Love, C.

[oyceter]

I had issues with some things, such as the Napoleon-equivalent appearing, but I'm not sure I agree re: the other matters. I thought that Elliott did change the sartorial modes and social stratum and etc.; there's a big emphasis on African fabrics in particular and much of the social stratum revolved not only around class, but also matters of ethnic identity.

I don't really see Expedition as being set up on the English model of colonialism either, given the lack of plantations and the sugar-rum-slave trade triangle.

[al_zorra]

The trade and the creole languages and -- there is still slavery.

Love, C.

[al_zorra]

Also the place names of a lot of the places!

Love, C.

[oyceter]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the place names? Most of the ones we encounter in Europa seem to be Latin-based, which goes with the influence of the Roman Empire, and at least from the map for Cold Fire, most seem to either be based on what we know of various indigenous languages. I'm assuming that "Expedition" and whatnot are translated from whatever language Cat speaks to English.

Also, I think creole languages spring up wherever there is a place with a lot of trade from different cultures, and I didn't find Expedition as a trade center to be particularly English in notion, since there are many multicultural trade centers throughout history. Ditto what starlady says about slavery; it's very different from the slavery from the sugar plantations that sprung up during European colonization iirc.

[al_zorra]

But that's just it. We have all this latium-iberian-carthegenian framework. In the Spanish New World you will see there aren't Spanish creole languages. There are many linguistic history reasons for that, which begins with the stablility of the latin foundation of Spanish. In fact you don't even find an 'old Spanish' as you do old English or even old French, because of that long latin dominance of administration and everything else of language employed in status and governance.

Where you find the creoles are -- in the English colonies of the Caribbean, and in Haiti, what was San Domingue. And in Haiti, it's not a creole at all, it is kreyol, the language of Haiti -- though yes, most Haitians also speak French, just as they do in Martinique and Guadeloupe.

For examply, in our history Quisqueya is an alternate name for the Dominican Republic, the former Spanish colony which shares the same island as present day Haiti. And in Haiti you will find, for instance, Radio Kiskeya. In fact, Kiskeya is all over Haiti, the former French colony. Now the word appears to be etymologically from the Taino language, but the Qu spelling is very Spanish. And the creole form that the island speaks in the novel is so Jamaican in structure and form -- it isn't latinate. At least to my ears, it sounds as though I'm on St. Lucia, which though former a French colony, was taken by England in 1803, and kept it permenently due to the events of 1814.

I dunno -- it's just for me in terms of these novels the sound rings wrong to me,m and look of it feels also, as well as at odds with the original concept of creating a history without England, Islam or Christianity. Nor are these the only elements that grate for this reader.

Maybe I'd have been happier with more focus on trolls and dinosaurs and less on faeries in the New World , and two girls who argue which one of them is too sexy for her shirt -- "It's you!" "No, it's you!"

But maybe my problems are that I like my fantasies to be in the classical style -- meaning I don 't like mashups, which is taste, of courss. And then -- I know the Caribbean, Caribbean cultures and history, and the history of Africa the New World and slavery very well, with lots of boots on the ground, particularly on the Spanish and French former Caribbean colonies. And of course that means living friends in all walks of life, including linguists, musicians, historians and geologiest, who live on these islands. I also know and love Spain (as well as England, of course and Brasil and Colombia, etc.). In fact, my life partner is coming home for a long stay in Haiti this evening. All of this by way of explaining I'm not whimsical or arbitrary in how I read these books. And as I said, there are other elements that bother me very much too.

Love, C.

[starlady]

I'm not sure I understand the slavery objection--slavery was absolutely normal worldwide until the late 1700s, and was practiced in the ancient Mediterranean as well as in Africa. It would be really odd for there not to be slavery, given the world building framework.

[al_zorra]

Exactly!

[starlady]

For what it's worth (disclaimer: I love these books unreasonably), I didn't have oyce's problems with the writing. In fact, I thought they were some of the best books I read last year.

[ambyr]

You are inspiring me to give book 2 a shot.

[oyceter]

I like book 2 a lot more, due to a large part of it being set in Expedition, though YMMV?

[skygiants]

Hah, I actually thought the pacing in Book 2 was weirder than in Book 1 -- I mean, I enjoyed Book 2 more, but the pace felt pretty consistent to me in Book 1, and Book 2 has that initial hundred-page FRANTIC CHASE SEQUENCE CULMINATING IN SHARK-PUNCHING followed by another two hundred pages of leisurely intrigue.

[oyceter]

Ahahaha, I must mentally edited the frantic chases in the beginning to only 50 pages or so, because I do not remember it taking up quite so much of the book!

Also, shark punching = Cat wins for life!

[skygiants]

My main method of trying to sell people on these books has been "You don't understand, she LITERALLY PUNCHES a LITERAL SHARK! Also, dinosaur lawyers."

[oyceter]

Excellent sales pitch!! I am hoping for more dinosaur lawyers in the next book because.... dinosaur lawyers! What other reason do you need?!

[jinian]

DINOSAUR LAWYERS

THAT IS ALL

I really want more of these.

[lab]

((I've only read Cold Magic so far, so I am skipping your Cold Fire thoughts for now)) I feel like a bad person for not being able to get over the writing in book one, the worldbuilding should make up for it, but I put CM aside with a decidedly iffy feeling, even though I like the characters (with Bee and Andevai being my favorites, and Rory and Cat being ADORABLE PUPPIES) and the ~romance~... eh, I pretty much handwaved it, it felt very tucked on.

[oyceter]

I liked Cold Fire a lot more in general, probably because the was slower paced, though YMMV, especially depending on mood! I am kind of in a cracktastic adventures mood lately, which is funny because I spent four years not being able to focus on plot.

[sophia_helix]

I really wished I liked book 1 better, but I was so put off by the romance that the cool parts couldn't quite save it for me. I never warmed up to Andevai, even after the revelation of his Tragic Backstory, and that made me feel like the rest of the series wasn't going to work for me either. Which is too bad, because the world was really neat.

[oyceter]

FWIW, I really really disliked Andevai at the end of book 1, but she managed to sell me in book 2. I still frown extremely disapprovingly on all his book 1 behavior though.

[lenora_rose]

I'm about halfway through book one (Shortly after what I suspect is the big reveal everyone refers to), and I was enjoying it, including not having many problems with the pacing so far, and squeeing at the worldbuilding including the dinosaur lawyers (Only briefly met yet, but still awesome). Then I tripped on the casual line that the Americas (And was there an explorer named Amerigo to get there? It's not quite spelled the same, but it's still Amerik or some such, which implies the same name source...) were the continents to produce trolls instead of humans, and part of my brain went, "Wait, did she just delete a significant number of human cultures to fit in her Dinosaur lawyers?"

Then I thought maybe I was overthinking it. But it does nag at me. Not enough to stop reading just now, but I really hope for more detail. Tell me we get some further development of that.

[starlady]

The Caribbean certainly has its fair share of existent, non-colonized human cultures, as we see a lot of in Book 2. The continents are more ambiguous--it seems from the map in Book 2 that the trolls have taken over parts of what would be the northeastern US/Canada, along the rim of what is in Cat's world the glacial shelf. From the names on the map, is seems like there are a fair few Native American cultures extant on North America in this world, but that's all we know.

[lenora_rose]

Oh, good: I kind of noted that the Caribbean was a setting and didn't seem to be lacking in humans. But I really didn't want otherwise excellent worldbuilding to include the complete erasure of all the First Nations in one go.

[oyceter]

I did get super confused about the America name equivalent, because I remember that the name of the explorer she dropped didn't sound anything like it!

Like you, I was kind of wary to learn that there was a lot of troll country in the US-equivalent. From checking out the map it looks at least like there are quite a few large areas with various native peoples, so I was reassured from that. More detail would be really awesome though!

[thistleingrey]

I was really not sold on the romance in book 1

Hmm, now I'm trying to untangle why I was. Part of it is the use of topoi: from the start, Andevai's reactions can be misread by Cat's inability to stop and reflect, and I figured that Elliott would twist (mercilessly), so I guess I "misread" all of the cues correctly by luck, which let me roll my eyes at Andevai instead of disliking him? The cues do (or can) line up neatly into noble-hardass-who-can't-articulate-for-shit patterning--won't take advantage of his love interest but apt to flatten others, sometimes too much. What I wasn't sure I could trust is how Cat would come to be interested without self-compromise, but I think that that part works well enough, too.

Meanwhile, I don't like Rory and am not sure why. Feels a bit like plot device (felis ex machina?).

[oyceter]

Oh interesting! I read it as turning into a romantic relationship fairly early as well, but that was actually why I was so negative about the romance. Mostly I just didn't want yet another higher-social-class male romancing a woman that he has some measure of power over, a la every romance out there ever, so I was disappointed seeing that Eliott was going that route.

Book two works much more for me because it takes Andevai out of the setting where he has power and has him showing some radical thoughts.

[thistleingrey]

Ah, I see--that makes sense. One of my wild guesses was that Andevai's background be humbler than Cat's, to counterbalance and fuel his painful arrogance; despite the relative poverty of Bee's parents' household, the school that Cat and Bee attend is a chin-up kind of place, and Cat has good reasons for pride in her (adoptive) heritage. I realize now that it takes quite a long time for the narrative to substantiate it! Agreed that the power tilt is way too common.

That's good to know. Second-guessing the quasi-justification doesn't mean I want to see more of his arrogance, heh.