Review: A Choir of Lies
Nov. 27th, 2019 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dramaticironyIn much of secondary world fantasy, following Tolkien’s example, the pleasure comes from seeing good people struggle against sinister forces to right wrongs and restore order; a sometimes-sententious pleasure not dissimilar to that found in reading a classic mystery novel. And, not unlike the way the mystery genre expanded to include film noir, in fantasy you sometimes see complicated antiheroes making existential choices in dark, brutal world—think Elric or a Song of Ice and Fire
In A Choir of Lies, Alexandra Rowland uses a secondary world to do something different, and more relevant to our lives—showing people grappling with their own messy natures and complicated relationships. Where character is revealed in the way that people choose to confront (or avert their eyes from), the way their actions have spun out of control and beyond their intentions. Where virtues and weaknesses exist not only in individuals but also in communities and social structures.
I read Choir in in a day, in great, greedy gulps. It repays re-reading, as Alex packs in not only many vividly imagined characters (some of whom you will adore, and some of whom will break your heart) but also deft worldbuilding, independent stories, and a plot that with a wry, Galbraithian twist. It takes real skill to stitch economics, gender theory, poetics, fashion into a hopepunk page turner.
You can’t talk about Choir without mentioning the true humor in its structure—one skilled storyteller writing arch commentary in the manuscript written by another spinner of tales—neither completely reliable narrators, but both altogether sympathetic.
One of the very best SFF books of the 2019.
In A Choir of Lies, Alexandra Rowland uses a secondary world to do something different, and more relevant to our lives—showing people grappling with their own messy natures and complicated relationships. Where character is revealed in the way that people choose to confront (or avert their eyes from), the way their actions have spun out of control and beyond their intentions. Where virtues and weaknesses exist not only in individuals but also in communities and social structures.
I read Choir in in a day, in great, greedy gulps. It repays re-reading, as Alex packs in not only many vividly imagined characters (some of whom you will adore, and some of whom will break your heart) but also deft worldbuilding, independent stories, and a plot that with a wry, Galbraithian twist. It takes real skill to stitch economics, gender theory, poetics, fashion into a hopepunk page turner.
You can’t talk about Choir without mentioning the true humor in its structure—one skilled storyteller writing arch commentary in the manuscript written by another spinner of tales—neither completely reliable narrators, but both altogether sympathetic.
One of the very best SFF books of the 2019.
