The epic fantasy market is bursting the shelves these days. So many titles appearing in fact,
micro-genres have splintered off as writers are forced to greater lengths in
achieving originality. Thinking to add
her own imaginative world to the fray, in 2014 Kameron Hurley penned The Mirror Empire (Angry Robot books), first in the Worldbreaker series. Combining the magic and visuals of mmo gaming
with an epic fantasy mindset atypical for its superficial treatment of gender
but quite familiar for the quests, grasps at power, and kingdom sweeping wars
beneath, fans have a new title to chew over in deciding whether the genre has
reached its saturation point, or if there is is room for one more on the
shelves.
Set on a sprawling, diverse world, The Mirror Empire capitalizes on ‘epic’. Multiple cultures located in multiple lands
using multiple types of magic in multiple battles and feuds that extend beyond
good vs. evil, Hurley throws the contemporary conception of epic fantasy upon the
reader. In one region resides a society
grouped in clans that bears a strong resemblance to those of samurai/ninja
stories, right down to the Japanese names.
Trained assassins wielding various steel and biological weapons, magic
assisting those whose star is in the ascendant, and sedition and subterfuge continually
in the shadows, the clans’ future is about to change as the ruling empress lies
on her deathbed, her unprepared brother waiting in the wings. In a land far to the north, a matriarchal
society exists, and one of its leading generals, Zezili, has just received a strange
command from her queen. Unquestioningly
devout, Zezili follows the orders perfectly and sets about slaughtering her
kingdom’s working class. But when she
sees the dead’s blood used for arcane magic, a whole new world reveals
itself—literally and figuratively. And
lastly, when a young girl named Lilia and her mother are attacked by marauders,
the mother is forced to send her daughter through a portal into an alternate
world to save her. Arriving at a temple,
Lilia grows up amongst other youths her age, but remains determined to find her
mother. When chaos arises around her, a
chance opportunity appears, and she is taken on a journey with a mysterious dark
assassin who wields magic beyond the wax and wane of stars. Lilia’s own powers slowly unleashed, her
mother draws closer one tumultuous step at a time.
Myriad sub-stories spun off from those above, The Mirror Empire is plot spaghetti. One almost needs to take notes to track all
of the names, places, titles, factions, and groups. But only ‘almost’. When looking at the larger picture, The Mirror Empire is standard epic
fantasy, and for as confusing as a planet’s worth of nomenclature can be, the
paths of genre are so familiar one can walk them with eyes closed. There is a girl with undiscovered powers, hidden
books of secret lore, assassins lurking, quests, neologisms, kingdom feuding
with kingdom, alternate worlds, symbol puzzles to be solved, beasts of the
fantastic, colorful magic systems with spells and wards, and yes, plans for
genocide. Almost everything the fans of
the genre love is implanted in the novel, right down to its classic zingers. “I’ll find out who killed her, Nasaka, if I
have to burn this whole temple down around me.” is one, and another is: "He could take her life, but she would
always have his heart", as well as this doozy:
Ahkio closed the book. “What
if I told you I’d heard someone say that Kirana killed herself? Why would a
person do something like that?”
Ghrasia touched his hands.
“To save someone they love.”
While there will be many who cite the color and vividity of the
magic system as the best part of The
Mirror Empire (indeed it is appealing), the manner in which Hurley
interleaves the storylines remains its greatest success. Nothing routine (first character A, then B,
then C), the narrative moves between the various viewpoints according to
need. It is this ‘need’ which Hurley has
a firm grasp of. I imagined the story
arcs like buckets with holes in them that Hurley ran amongst to keep filled
with water, return trips dependent on the size of the hole. No bucket allowed to go empty, the overall
pace of the novel is never allowed to slow, while the ebb and flow of
individual stories move to complementary rhythms. For a novel with such a large number of
sub-stories, this is a real achievement.
But for as nicely balanced as pace and plotting are, there
remains a noticeable gap in background detail.
I’m not referring to the fictional history of the people or lands: this
receives perfunctory treatment such that the reader learns enough to understand
the motivations and movements of characters.
What I’m referring to are the subtleties of setting and character.
One of the things that makes George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series as
immersive as it is, is its sense of person and place. When a scene needs this detail, when it
doesn’t, what should be added here to offer verisimilitude, where a tangible
element the reader can relate is added, a tiny reminder to jog the reader’s
memory about an important plot point, etc.—all are taken care of “in the
background” by Martin. As a result the reader slowly builds an image of the world
in their mind for easy reference when off-screen names or lands are mentioned. This sense of person and place—the reader’s mental reference book of the novel—is not
fully constructed in The Mirror Empire. Easy to overlook due to the brisk plotting,
rarely does Hurley stop to describe a place beyond a few details, take a quick break
to look at the broader scope, rehash where things stand, or, most importantly,
crack open a character beyond the second dimension. More like outlines than finished pieces (the
cover art in this case is representative), the significant elements of The Mirror Empire are loosely not fully
singularized, which leads to problems identifying with character and place
while reading.
And the evidence is in the page count. Where Martin needed roughly 700 pages to
introduce the reader to the players, gameboard, and gameplay of A Game of Thrones, Hurley uses
400—despite the fact she has just as many characters, kingdoms, and
interrelationships at stake (really).
I’m not one to yammer for longer epic fantasy these days, but Hurley’s
book is one that, while effectively relating gameplay, could have done with
more in-depth treatment of its players and gameboard such that the size of the vision
could be better realized in the mind’s eye.
As it stands, it’s likely the reader will often have thoughts such as “Kairana? Which one was that, again? The one feuding with Nagana, or the assassin
protecting the Patron?” Few clues
ladled the reader’s way after initial introductions, a lot of time is spent keeping
the characters and settings in place mentally, rather than relaxing and enjoying
what is a truly sprawling, epic story. (For
the record, I’m not saying Hurley should imitate Martin, but if one looks at
all of the ‘great’ epic fantasies of such scope, they will find said background
details in place.)
If not for being grandiose epic fantasy, then The Mirror Empire will garner some
attention for its play with gender. Like
with Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, however,
I’m not sure the treatment is beyond skin deep.
One of the cultures in the novel has four personal pronouns for ‘he’ and
‘she’ that identify passiveness and aggressiveness in a personality. But, 1) the pronouns are never shown to the
reader (i.e. as neologisms), 2) are mentioned only a few times, and 3) have only
the effect to give the reader the brief impression the culture under discussion
is more formal and complex. Given a
large part of the book is about power struggles, the potential is wasted. There are likewise neuter characters called
ataisis. But again, just window
decoration. There is little discussion
of how they interact with people or examination of the resulting relationship
complexity which would draw out the potential meaning of having a neuter gender
in society. And thirdly, there is a
character which morphs back and forth between male and female. But besides a snide comment about how
troublesome urinary tract infections are, little else is done with the
idea. By comparison, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness utilizes a
neuter humanoid species to rigorously examine what gender means to the
individual and society. It is the
premise of her novel, rather than a tertiary feature. Given this counter-point, the alternate
gender aspects of The Mirror Empire feel
more like candy tossed to the politically correct crowd rather than a hearty meal
that would serve real discussion on the underlying meaning of gender and
gendered language. (And yes, fantasy
does have a strong circle of academics eagerly looking for substantive
material.)
I described Hurley’s debut novel God’s War as a work of extreme third wave feminism. An effusion of blood and gore initiated by a hero
intentionally female rather than male, the novel possessed a dearth of anger,
but not in a way that progressed cultural ideals. (Given the radical quantity of pointless
violence in the bleakest of dystopias, it was perhaps even a regression.) The
Mirror Empire likewise seeks to play such games; several commonly held
gender roles in genre are inverted. Case
in point: Zezili, a strong female warrior, and her husband, a popinjay she
controls to the point of slavery. Their
relationship is identified per the following:
“His first night with Zezili,
she made him strip in her bedroom in her country house. She cuffed him across
the mouth, drawing blood. She told him to kneel. He was so startled, he did not
even cry out.
She took his chin in her hand
and said, “You’re mine. All of you. Every bit of you. You’ll service my
sisters, because it’s proscribed. But never forget you’re mine.”
By reversing the stereotypical husband/wife relationship as
such, Hurley passionately hammers a female peg into a male hole. But one wonders: should there have been such a
hole to begin with? In other words, just
because a man plays greedy, egocentric power games in genre does it make it
acceptable for a woman to do so, also? Is
the scene above an enlightened depiction of a male/female relationship? Does it progress mutual respect, gender
relations, or a balanced feminist agenda?
Or is it just a kid sticking his middle finger up at a passing car,
knowing he won’t get in trouble for it?
The inversion of gender roles accomplishes little if super-dominance
and ill-treatment are still the result. Not
until the underlying terms of power in the relationship are dealt with in comprehensive
fashion can any real commentary be made. Thus, the bottom line of The Mirror Empire is that it doesn’t require a great deal of
imagination to create a character or society on paper for which gender is
perceived differently or is functionally different than the real world. What requires real imagination is to flesh
that alternate reality out, to explore its implications for the deeper meaning,
and then make them apparent in individually and socially relevant
terms. Significantly bound up in plotting, magic, power games, violence, and the
more commercial side of genre, Hurley’s novel does not accomplish this in any meaningful
fashion. (It’s possible I’m speaking too
soon, and Hurley may develop Zezili’s relationship with her husband in the
coming books, but for the moment, this is how it appears.)
Thus, is The Mirror
Empire a standout on the epic fantasy market today? The conclusion: depends how you view the
novel. If one looks at its entertainment
qualities, the answer is yes. Dressed in
the vibrant colors of grimdark samurai, it features an extreme variety of
characters and settings, and will satisfy the reader looking for a complex
world with action. The quests, revenge,
blood feuds, sword fights, magic, genocide, etc. is what the genre is stereotyped
for. At a minimum it will be comfort
food, and at maximum ‘an original take on epic fantasy’. But if one looks deeper than the skin, they
find little that stands out. For as well
as Hurley handles pace and scene transitions, a better job could have been done
singularizing the characters and settings such that when names appear, one does
not have to rifle unconfidently through weak impressions to find at the desired
person or place. More importantly, the
gender treatment takes only the first step.
It is a paper exercise. The
second step (examination or discussion of gender in a cultural or societal
context with meaningful purpose) doesn’t happen. For its continuation of the “strong will
always overpower the weak” mentality and sustained depiction of blood and gore,
The Mirror Empire, like God’s War, most closely resembles
Richard Morgan’s writing. Where Morgan
made the switch from cyberpunk/noir to epic fantasy, from the Takeshi Kovacs novels to Land Fit for Heroes, so too has Hurley,
and will therefore be of interest to those who enjoy his novels.
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