Wed 5 Jul 2006
This is a fine, beautiful, almost perfect book. My husband knows Grimsley’s writing from his extensive reading of gay fiction, and I happened to run across this novel while perusing the small sci-fi section at our local queer bookstore. The basic premise from the jacket almost reads like a Saturday morning cartoon — a technological, futuristic humanity encounters a “primitive” world on the other side of a gateway where “magic” operates. But this story is anything but cartoonish, and this multilayered, sophisticated novel reminds me of favorite authors such as LeGuin and Delaney (those comparisons I found were made in the jacket reviews, but I was making similar comparisons in my head as I was reading).
Grimsley’s story follows Jedda Martele, a woman from the overcrowded and futuristic world of Senal, a colony of Earth in the distant past. Jedda is also a trader, and has extensive knowledge of the world of Irion, on the other side of the gateway that bridges the two worlds. As the story unfolds and the inevitable conflict between the two cultures comes to a head, Jedda herself becomes the pivotal character, caught between powerful personalities who wield potent powers. She also finds herself falling in love with the powerful female leader of Irion, and as in all such stories, must make a choice between two worlds.
Grimsley’s style here avoids obvious uses of exposition, so readers encounter many questions about the nature of the two worlds, the peoples involved, the place names, and so on, and in one sense the entire novel is a working through of those questions. What kind of place is Irion, which is a flat, not round world (with edges), but who shares the sky of Senal? What is the nature of the “magic” that is possible on Irion, and what does it mean for Senal? Who made Irion, if it was made, and for what purpose? While this technique can be frustrating early on, a reader’s patience is rewarded. I couldn’t wait to dive back into this book, and I was keenly interested in how these questions were answered as the story unfolded.
This novel is also a meditation on the nature and uses of language, and is a novel of ideas as much as of characters and events. Grimsley’s notions of the intersections between langugae, thought, and reality are very intriguing, and reminds me of similar explorations by LeGuin and Stephenson. I’m curious to know how Grimsley developed his central notion of “magic” as a special form of consciousness made possible by certain kinds of language, and definitely want to see how he develops these ideas in future works.
A treat to be savored!