Krishna
What the hell is this? This lives up to all my beef about science fiction which runs amok. Essentially, the start is weird, the characters weird, the storyline weird. All the way through.
Nyx has sold her womb and seems to be on the run from “her sisters”. She hitches a ride with a cart pulled by cats which are as big as horses. Heard enough? Me too, almost, but I decided to plough on.
The story goes in the same vein where Nyx loses her womb. She sells its contents because she is in the smuggling business. Her blood sisters are after her and everywhere there are worms and insects. There are huge mutant bugs as big as dogs, hissing at people. Light is always given by glow worms which can be controlled to dim and brighten if you know magic. All people have bugs trailing them (spiders on hems or other bugs from everywhere). There are tons of lesbian relationships though the setting is Islamic and Arabic mostly. There is discussion of dark skinned and light skinned races.
In all totally stupid and meaningless. Wait, I forgot to tell you that all instruments are organic. Made of living tissue. What is the central theme that runs through all this? Nothing at all. It is a lot of verbal flood put down on paper while it occurs to the author I think, with no thought of sequencing of explaining the background. Perhaps during a feverish delirium because otherwise there will be some order in the thoughts.
God is mentioned as an afterthought and there is no sign of war. So why the title?
Nyx and a black boy called Rhys wander around everywhere doing practically nothing of import. Rhys is abused because of his skin colour and is unemployable and only Nyx will keep him. Now, the Queen calls Nyx for an errand and they go to the capital Mushtallah. Meet the Queen who has taken over from the old queen, who had abdicated for reasons unknown.
They smuggle themselves into Chenja as corpses. Then survive a standoff with the army. Then she gets kidnapped and her fingers cut off. Apparently she can get them all back in that world. It is brutal, violent, gritty but it is all done in a crazy bad way. You don’t get into the minds of the characters at all.
As if this is not enough, Nyx gets kidnapped and they cut off her fingers and try to kill her brutally. Apparently in their world of trained bugs, you can re-grow any organ within limits. Nyx lost an ear earlier and ‘got it back’ ; go figure. She is rescued by Anneke and Rhys with Khos, all part of her team
Taite is held by her enemies but her sister Inaya, a shape changes like Khos, turns into a bird and flies to Chenja. Khos sends message about the plans of his enemies and Rhys gets a transcript but gets immediately captured. The last few pages where they go to confront the evil magicians and bel dames are very good. But too little too late and the book leaves you feeling underwhelmed.
3/10
– – Krishna (Nov 2018)