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5.0 out of 5 stars
(4.5) Difficult but rewarding, March 12, 2009
This review is from: Riversend (Paperback)
Speculative fiction sometimes gets a bad rap for being nothing but "escapism." While there are certainly plenty of "just for fun" books in the genre, what people sometimes forget is that sci-fi and fantasy have often been a place where writers can experiment with unusual prose styles and tackle controversial themes that might not go over well in mainstream, "realistic" fiction. Sylvia Kelso's _Riversend_ is an ambitious novel, blending dense, lyrical prose with a thought-provoking look at gender roles and unconventional relationships, and it's a good story to boot.
The prose is not going to be for everyone. It took me a little while to catch the rhythm of it. The narration is poetic and filled with sentences that are often long, descriptive, comma-laden, and sometimes fragmentary, as in this description of the character Alkhes: "Worse than outland; rankless, nameless, certainly spy, probably mercenary, possibly renegade." Sometimes Kelso doesn't use antecedents for her pronouns, and characters will have long internal monologues about "he" and "him" without saying who they mean, leaving the reader to use other cues to figure out who is being described. Dialogue is oblique; characters' conversations are filled with unspoken nuances. It makes perfect sense to the characters, but I, as the reader, sometimes had to puzzle over it for a few minutes to make sure I'd caught everything. This is not a novel you can read quickly or while tired. Riversend made me work for everything I got out of it, but I feel that I was rewarded.
There are moments when the prose is just gorgeous:
"A cold, austere beauty (the hills) have now, the shedding trees stripped, skeletal between the viridian or snow-silver of pine and hellien, the grass a tawny silk that plays like cat fur under the slicing winds. Their eddies sketch out the range front, contour after contour, crest, valley, spur beyond. Drawing your eyes to the horizon, where already the peaks are blanched with snow."
The plot centers around Tellurith, a House-head leading her clan to a new home after the collapse of the corrupt matriarchy from which they came. Throughout Riversend, Tellurith's task is to make tough decisions and forge alliances that will allow her House to survive. Her goal is to create a new society in which the sexes are equal. Yet even within Tellurith's immediate family, it's rough going.
Tellurith's two husbands, Sarth and Alkhes, come from vastly different backgrounds. Sarth, in his previous life, was a pampered but disenfranchised husband, living in the male equivalent of a harem. Alkhes was a military general from an empire where men are dominant. Both men bring cultural baggage to the relationship, and Kelso uses them to explore the ways that a sexist culture damages both the oppressed gender and the privileged one.
Riversend is narrated through the eyes of Tellurith, Sarth, and Alkhes, each of whom is keeping a journal, as they face the obstacles that threaten Tellurith's dream. There are conflicts within the House, tensions with the villagers of Iskarda, and eventually, a return of Alkhes' past in the form of a summons to Riversend, capital of the empire of Dhasdein. Their story has its ups and downs, its moments of joy (I loved the Midsummer's Night scene!) and of tragedy, and is always compelling. The ending makes a sequel possible but not necessary.
If there's any criticism I would make, it's that sometimes the prose does feel a little overwritten in places. And, I wonder whether the three main characters, whose backgrounds are so different, would all write their journals in the same writing style. However, I think there need to be authors out there who are willing to challenge the current prose conventions, even if the results are mixed.
A final note: Please don't do what I did. PLEASE READ _AMBERLIGHT_ FIRST! I didn't, and spent too much time at the beginning of Riversend playing catch-up. Kelso does fill the reader in on the backstory, but I made unnecessary work for myself, trying to piece together the events of _Amberlight_ at the same time as I was acclimating myself to the prose style. Read _Amberlight_ first.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A Wild Ride, February 12, 2011
This review is from: Riversend (Paperback)
This book is an imaginative, extravagant, opulent, lush, women-centric romance. One important aspect of the story is a culture where many of the basic assumptions are the opposite of those common in the world we know. Which means that in this book and the first book in the series, Amberlight, women have a dominate role, while men are restricted to subservience. Women are professionals, they are warriors; men are -- literally, confined to towers and are only lovers and spouses. Ornamental sexual objects. In this book we find the women-dominate status quo beginning to break down, to be replaced with a more egalitarian society.
Using this provocative premise, Kelso creates a diverse catalog of romantic situations which are likely to intrigue and provoke many readers. For instance, the story's main protagonist balances two husbands, and after a minimum of drama, they share the same bed! The two men eventually kindle their own sexual relationship as well. Then there is the sadistic relationship between one of the husbands and another woman. And so on. I should note, least anyone misunderstand, that these situations are recounted with great restraint and no anatomical detail, all in very good taste! Provocative but not at all explicit. I wrote `most readers' -- but of course everyone has different proclivities. I found the diversity of romantic relationships intriguing, but I would have been more personally amused, for instance, by a relationship between two of the women! Maybe Kelso will get to that in the next book, or maybe I missed it since I haven't read the first book.
This is a remarkable, innovative, provocative book, but I do have some reservations with it. I'm of the opinion that the most involving novels will almost always have one central viewpoint character. This sort of structure lends itself to a more immersive narrative. Riversend shifts between diary entries by three main characters: the two husbands and their wife. This structure is not without charm, and I can imagine that the writer couldn't resist getting into the heads of each of her characters, and not a few of her readers will find it perfectly fascinating; but it creates a disjointed narrative, and doesn't allow for sustained reader immersion. While I'm whining about this aspect of the book, I have to add that while these main characters are fully and interestingly developed, the voices they use in their diaries are pretty much identical, or at least so it seemed to me. I have to assume that all three characters wrote their diaries with, well, Sylvia Kelso's voice. Which is poetic and lyrical and vastly interesting and entertaining -- although sometimes so complex as to be a little hard to understand! -- but this one style didn't reflect the diverse nature of the different characters. And there is a monotonous tendency for each diary entry to begin with an overheated exclamation of surprise and/or distress.
My one other reservation is also technical. I think (as a recreational reader but also as a bookseller) that any book published as a stand alone artifact, a single volume, and available for sale by itself, should be comprehensible to a reader without having to read any prior volumes. As I mentioned, Riversend is the second book in a series which began with Amberlight. It was difficult at times to know what was happening. I think the characters and their backgrounds were well explained, and that is important, but some other basic information was rather challenging. Just what happened to the nation/country/city state called Amberlight? It came to an end in that first book I didn't read, but it doesn't seem to have been conquered, so then what? -- but perhaps I misunderstand. And there seems to be a -- what, rock formation, ore deposit, what? -- which is a source of energy and inspiration, and perhaps is sentient as well. Obviously, I remain confused. I want to suggest that a glossary of author-invented words would be useful. None the less this book was an exciting ride!
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