Xena,
Sarah Connor, Padme Amidala, Honor Harrington, Mara Jade, Max Guevara, Red
Sonja, Mena, Arya, Ellen Ripley, Vin, Princess Leia, Trinity, and on and on goes the
list of kick-ass female protagonists in science fiction and fantasy. In 2011 Kameron Hurley thought to add her own to the mix with God’s War, first in the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy. Many
reviewers are hot on the book’s ‘original approach to gender, religion, and race’. This reviewer is far more skeptical about the actualities underpinning these
grand aspects of society. The novel 100%
succeeds in creating yet another pulp heroine, whether or not she
transcends storytelling to become something original, something human depends on perspective—or
perhaps just how much genre the reader has consumed.
God’s War is the brutally bloody and bloodily brutal
story of Nyx, government assassin, and, when the need arises, black market
mercenary. The war zone between her
homeland Nasheen and Chenja is so filled with the remnants of nuclear, biological,
and chemical warfare, any deserting soldier trying to sneak back into Nasheen
is caught and killed by Nyx and other bel dame assassins. A severed head is the
only proof needed to collect bounty. War is perpetual in Nasheen, and all men are sent to the front, leaving women to rule the streets
and society. Nyx is asked by the queen one day
to run a black ops mission that just might bring an end to the war. She crosses
the border into enemy territory with her team of operatives and there, at
times with only her strength and will to rely upon, comes face to face with the
cycles of internecine violence that have been the impetus of her life.
Corpses by
the roadside, unnameable filth clogging the gutters, cancers and open sores,
insects forever buzzing, dust clouding the air, threats to life and limb
constantly hanging above—God’s War is
DYSTOPIA, in case you didn’t notice. Overdoing itself, the story constantly tries to wedge in that onee last extra detail to sensationalize
the squalor and violence. It's as much an exercise in presenting the bleakest possible living conditions as it
is complex, neo-cyberpunk plotting. The
world imagined is so bleak, in fact, it makes the crux on which the plot
depends, meaningless. Why should anyone
care whether a villain seeks to make the world a shittier place if it’s already
as shitty as can be?
God’s War is a work of science fantasy (or as Farah
Mendelsohn calls it, “sword
and sorcery far future fantasy”). Bug magic permeates nearly every facet of
Nasheenian life. A forced device, the
reader is offered bug-fueled cars, bug-fueled telecommunication, and bug-fueled
healing magic that rarely synergizes with the visceral realities of the war
torn society, oppressive heat, killing, torture, blood, sweat, and tears
otherwise driving the plot. It is never
explained beyond one hand-wavy line: “altering
pheromones with thought to reprogram insects at the cellular level”. Bug
magic is nevertheless located in every nook and cranny of story. Insect tech not enough, however, Hurley introduces
shapeshifters—another particularly hand-wavy ingredient—to the stew. In case you missed all that, God’s
War is as genre as genre can
be.
And
therein, to me, lies the main problem with God’s
War. It wants to be both pulp and humanist. Hurley
herself explains: “I wanted Nyx to
have that bloody-mindedness that the best of our epic male bad-asses have,
without losing her complexity or humanity.” In hindsight, I’m sure Hurley can see the task
she set out for herself as impossible. You
can’t be uber-violent every moment of your day, live in a world 90% assassins, get
into one bloody duel after another, and still retain your humanity. Such characters and setups exist only in
comic books, and layering on ideas like: “I
kill because I love” (my quote, not Hurley’s) only gets a character to the
second dimension, not the third of actual people. There are moments Nyx garners the reader’s understanding
(the denouement perhaps the strongest), but the extreme inclusion of pulp
devices and violence fails to serve the story with believable commentary on being
human or to be in dialogue with anything beyond oh, another kick-ass heroine
and the classic “chase hero, capture
hero, torture hero, hero escapes or is rescued - repeat” formula that ensues. By simple comparison, George Orwell also
wrote a powerful dystopia, but it’s one the reader can relate to for its
plausibility and personal relevancy. God’s
War lacks this from every perspective save the main characters’ emotions. All else larger than life. Unable
to eat its cake and have it too, the result is the oxymoron: realist pulp.
But to address those hot reviewers takes. On the
surface, indeed, politics, religion, and race would appear to be on the novel’s
agenda. Nina Allen, in her Arcfinity
review of the novel, describes God’s War
as being a “brilliantly sardonic, sideways depiction of so many current aspects
of contemporary real-world conflict, racial oppression and gender politics”. This view is, in fact, incidental. Hurley cites Frank Herbert, China Mieville
and a handful of other writers as the inspirations for religion, race, etc. in
the novel, not contemporary world politics or research into the sects and
sub-sects of Middle Eastern religion.
And thank goodness, because if one of Hurley’s points was that Muslims
are lacking the wisdom to prevent perpetual war, the novel would be a travesty
of cultural appropriation. So again,
what outwardly appears like something purposeful reveals itself to be only a
means to an end—a violent, bloody entertainment end—upon closer inspection.
When collecting
my thoughts on God’s War regarding
gender, I kept going back to Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Secret History. Also a story about
a young woman fighting for place in a brutal world, at no time does the reader
doubt Ash is a woman, such is the power of Gentle's potrayal. Nyx, on the other
hand, could be a man for the majority of the novel. Sure, she sells her womb in the opening line,
but the fact it can easily be replaced with bug magic, not to mention she shows
no indications of settling down and becoming domestic, renders the sacrifice
meaningless. (See Bacigalupi’s “People of Sand and Slag” for just how meaningless such biotech renders the precocity
of the corporeal.) If I’m not mistaken,
there are other scenes wherein Nyx sacrifices herself to protect the team, the
implication being (though never directly stated, so perhaps I’m putting words
in Hurley’s mouth) that it’s a protective, womanly act, not that of the typical
lone male hero. But ask a male veteran whether
men are capable of feeling the need to protect the brotherhood by sacrificing themselves
in war, and see what they say. Seeing
the manner in which Gentle pulls off the ‘mother hen’ metaphor (for
lack of a better expression), Hurley’s character treatment is rendered neutral—neither
male- or female-centric. With
comparisons such as Ash available,
I’m not convinced changing the pronoun ‘she’ to ‘he’ would alter anything significant
about Hurley’s novel. It stars a kick-ass person, not a woman.
In the
end, God’s War is an ambitious book plot-wise
that I think many people are misinterpreting as something greater. The manner
in which politics, race, and religion manifest themselves an inch below the
surface but no deeper does not belie actual substance.
Hurley has done nothing beyond creating another larger-than-life heroine
with little real-world relevancy. Posing
as a work of extreme third wave feminism, its gender goals are likewise gutted by a pulp setting, devices, and plotting that never fully engages the complexities of
character. The bug magic,
shapeshifting, endless and unrealistic violence—none of it conflates with Hurley's character aims to achieve symbolic, allusive, or literary value. The book is instead an angry piece bent
on violence. Nyx lashes out at the
world, drawing others into her personal melee of confusion and lack of purpose,
but is unable to come to any meaningful resolution (perhaps for the later books
in the trilogy?). Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels are thus the
strongest analog to Hurley’s. Each use equivocal
ideologies, ultra-violence, might-makes-right, a murderous hero, and a dreary
depiction of existence as a means to releasing a barrage of blood, guts, and
gore that rights wrongs perceptible in escapist fiction. Unfortunately, dime a dozen is the value of
most fantasy heroines, and God’s War
does nothing to change the balance.
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