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nextboldmove's review
4.0
This is one of my very favorite comfort books. It's a retelling of the French Revolution, but with magic, and it's really well done on top of that. Lots of authors, in writing in historical or historically-based settings (I'm looking at you, Phillipa Gregory...) cheat on making their main characters likable by setting aside any and all inconvenient beliefs of the day. The hero or heroine is the Lone Voice of Morality, somehow living in a culture and never adopting ANY of its beliefs that might be unpalatable to a modern reader. Paula Volsky resists that urge, and Eliste is exactly a product of her upbringing and her culture. The lessons it takes to bring her around, to help her grow up, are the central story of the book. It's a story that couldn't be told if Eliste were already in possession of modern morality; it would be a BORING story.
But in this case, we get to watch this character change and grow as her refined society falls apart, crushed by the weight of its inherent injustice. It's a fascinating rendering. Highly recommended.
But in this case, we get to watch this character change and grow as her refined society falls apart, crushed by the weight of its inherent injustice. It's a fascinating rendering. Highly recommended.
myrful's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
It was a very very very long read. But I really did like Volsky's style despite the miles of description at some parts. Even those bits had me reading every word which is why this book took me so long to finish.
Eliste, the main character, is haughty and prideful but she is also good hearted and kind. Because of that, I really do like her because of how well she's written.
Volsky is a merciless author who crafts a very beautiful story. There was a lot of presumptuous vocabulary but it didn't feel out of place because Eliste, being the main character, probably does think that way. It might bother some people a lot like it did to me in the beginning but, later I found myself really enjoying it.
The romance is to die for!
Edit: It's been a week and this book is STILL haunting me after I've finished reading it. Normally, I read a book and then I read another and another and the last book I've read diminishes in my mind next to the book I'm currently reading. But I've read two books and neither of them have replaced Illusion.
I guess I really did love every word of it even if it did sometimes go on for hours. Illusion took me a while to finish because I kept wanting to savor every single word.
And now the storyline and characters are stuck in my head!
When I rated the book, my instant dislike of all the words had made me unsure about whether or not it was worthy of five stars. Since it's still around in my head, I'm going to up the rating.
Eliste, the main character, is haughty and prideful but she is also good hearted and kind. Because of that, I really do like her because of how well she's written.
Volsky is a merciless author who crafts a very beautiful story. There was a lot of presumptuous vocabulary but it didn't feel out of place because Eliste, being the main character, probably does think that way. It might bother some people a lot like it did to me in the beginning but, later I found myself really enjoying it.
The romance is to die for!
Edit: It's been a week and this book is STILL haunting me after I've finished reading it. Normally, I read a book and then I read another and another and the last book I've read diminishes in my mind next to the book I'm currently reading. But I've read two books and neither of them have replaced Illusion.
I guess I really did love every word of it even if it did sometimes go on for hours. Illusion took me a while to finish because I kept wanting to savor every single word.
And now the storyline and characters are stuck in my head!
When I rated the book, my instant dislike of all the words had made me unsure about whether or not it was worthy of five stars. Since it's still around in my head, I'm going to up the rating.
kittyfoil's review
2.0
This book started so well. It had a really engaging hook. The author gets the reader really invested in Eliste, her uncle, and Dref. Then I got past the beginning and the middle dragged, and kept dragging. Nothing interesting is actually happening in the Shereen court because Eliste is not interested in it, even when the revolution is happening. When it switches perspective to the revolutionaries, I had a difficult time caring about their plight. It was at this point that I wondered why this book is written as a fantasy because it is not as if the plot needs magic. This could easily have been historical fiction and it would have made more sense. The world building is confusing if you have any context for the French revolution, but maybe I was overthinking it. I ended up skipping 100 pages and it turns out I didn't miss much, when the author finally gets around to reuniting Eliste with Dref. But at that point, I was disinterested in finishing the book.
miss_annette's review
I love purple prose. I can lost myself in descriptions of dresses or food but this book is testing my patience. The characters are all one dimensional except for the main character. I think I will put this book down for now.
fyoosha's review
4.0
Like most dense high fantasies from the early 90s, Illusion takes some time to get started. It moves leisurely, taking us through a period of two years in a whopping 674 pages. But I didn't mind the length and I didn't mind the sometimes uneven pacing, and that was wholly because of the writing.
Before I get into anything else about this book, I have to stress the quality of the writing. Reading Illusion felt like reading a literary classic from the 19th century. Everything about the writing was so elegant, so old-world, so formal, so eloquent...from the very first page I was hooked, drawn into this world through the evocative and elegant syntax. I wish I could write like Paula Volsky. God, her writing is everything I aspire to. I was drinking it in as I read, sometimes going back and rereading various phrases just to marvel at the way she could make something so utterly simple sound so grand.
Illusion is heavily inspired by the French Revolution (and maybe the Russian Revolution as well). In the country of Vonahr, the privileged Exalted, some of whom possess magical powers, live lavishly and oppress the serfs who are tied to their estates. Tension is brewing in the country, however, thanks to rising taxes and food shortages, and the popular writings of revolutionaries criticizing the monarchy. Throughout the book we witness the start of the revolution, the fall of the monarchy, and the reign of terror that follows. We see all this mainly through the eyes of Eliste vo Derivalle, an Exalted young woman who starts out the book highly prejudiced against non-Exalted and slowly learns humility by the end of the novel.
As I said, the book is somewhat unevenly paced. We spend literally hundreds of pages setting up the world and getting Eliste to the capital of Vonahr, where the revolution will be centered, and while none of this is boring, it's perhaps not as gripping as it might have been. While Eliste is blinded by her privilege, we the readers can feel the tension brewing and expect something to happen, and when it does it is fantastic - but then things slow down for another couple hundred pages. Then, when Eliste, caught in the throes of the reign of terror, is forced to go on the run, the pace become electrifying; I sped through three hundred pages in a single day. Then the pace slowed down again, then picked up in the last sixty or so pages. To be fair I'm sure it's difficult to maintain tension and interest for nearly 700 pages, but perhaps the book could have been shorter.
Given the length of this book, I also wanted the worldbuilding to be stronger. We learn virtually nothing about Vonahr's religion, history, or customs; the focus is very much on the present. We do learn a bit about Exalted magic, and here Volsky introduces an intriguing system that blends some science fiction with magic in the form of sentient machines that can communicate with Exalted. It's a bit strange and not explained very specifically, but I think that was intentional. It was definitely interesting and vaguely unsettling to think of inanimate objects being imbued with consciousness.
What I liked about Eliste is that she's a very ordinary sort of heroine. That is, she's been raised as a privileged girl and she has all the skills (or lack thereof) to show for it. So she never wields swords or fights, but she still gets the chance to show how spirited she is when she fights off a would-be rapist and a guardsman hoping to drag her to prison. She is clever and resilient, and though she is dripping in entitlement, she's not an inherently bad person: she's sympathetic to the plight of serfs even as her ingrained prejudices tell her she shouldn't be, and her maid is more of a friend whom she treats with respect. Her maid, Kairthe, is allowed character development of her own, and has one character-defining moment towards the end of the novel that nearly brought me to tears.
Two other fascinating female characters include Zeralenn, Eliste's grandmother, and Aurelie, her cousin. Zeralenn, former mistress to two separate kings, is a formidable and stubborn woman clinging to her honor and her ideals. She reminds me a bit of Ned Stark, sacrificing her life for her honor, and while she is by no means someone to be admired in all her facets, as she is even more entitled and prejudiced than Eliste, she is nevertheless a fascinating character whose stoicism in the face of disaster is astonishing. Aurelie, meanwhile, is a chatty, somewhat air-headed teenager who will do whatever it takes to survive, including sacrificing her honor and her ideals. Though Eliste and Zeralenn scorn Aurelie for her decisions, it's hard to hate the young woman for doing what it takes to survive (even if she is occasionally annoying).
Though Illusion does have some of the trappings of 90s fantasy, I was pleasantly surprised at how much agency Eliste was given despite Vonahr being a patriarchal society. That is, she can't do much, but she's resourceful with what she's given. Volsky places Eliste through the ringer in a way few authors are willing to - I'm reminded a bit of George R.R. Martin - but Eliste handles herself extremely well, especially given her pampered lifestyle, and this leads her to being a thoroughly likable heroine.
Clearly, this book is not perfect, but I loved it anyway. I even bought myself a copy because I knew I would want to return to the writing again and perhaps try to learn from it. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey it took me on, the characters it introduced me to, and even the romance! I highly recommend this book for all lovers of fantasy and literary writing. This is definitely going to be one of my more memorable books of this year!
Before I get into anything else about this book, I have to stress the quality of the writing. Reading Illusion felt like reading a literary classic from the 19th century. Everything about the writing was so elegant, so old-world, so formal, so eloquent...from the very first page I was hooked, drawn into this world through the evocative and elegant syntax. I wish I could write like Paula Volsky. God, her writing is everything I aspire to. I was drinking it in as I read, sometimes going back and rereading various phrases just to marvel at the way she could make something so utterly simple sound so grand.
Illusion is heavily inspired by the French Revolution (and maybe the Russian Revolution as well). In the country of Vonahr, the privileged Exalted, some of whom possess magical powers, live lavishly and oppress the serfs who are tied to their estates. Tension is brewing in the country, however, thanks to rising taxes and food shortages, and the popular writings of revolutionaries criticizing the monarchy. Throughout the book we witness the start of the revolution, the fall of the monarchy, and the reign of terror that follows. We see all this mainly through the eyes of Eliste vo Derivalle, an Exalted young woman who starts out the book highly prejudiced against non-Exalted and slowly learns humility by the end of the novel.
As I said, the book is somewhat unevenly paced. We spend literally hundreds of pages setting up the world and getting Eliste to the capital of Vonahr, where the revolution will be centered, and while none of this is boring, it's perhaps not as gripping as it might have been. While Eliste is blinded by her privilege, we the readers can feel the tension brewing and expect something to happen, and when it does it is fantastic - but then things slow down for another couple hundred pages. Then, when Eliste, caught in the throes of the reign of terror, is forced to go on the run, the pace become electrifying; I sped through three hundred pages in a single day. Then the pace slowed down again, then picked up in the last sixty or so pages. To be fair I'm sure it's difficult to maintain tension and interest for nearly 700 pages, but perhaps the book could have been shorter.
Given the length of this book, I also wanted the worldbuilding to be stronger. We learn virtually nothing about Vonahr's religion, history, or customs; the focus is very much on the present. We do learn a bit about Exalted magic, and here Volsky introduces an intriguing system that blends some science fiction with magic in the form of sentient machines that can communicate with Exalted. It's a bit strange and not explained very specifically, but I think that was intentional. It was definitely interesting and vaguely unsettling to think of inanimate objects being imbued with consciousness.
What I liked about Eliste is that she's a very ordinary sort of heroine. That is, she's been raised as a privileged girl and she has all the skills (or lack thereof) to show for it. So she never wields swords or fights, but she still gets the chance to show how spirited she is when she fights off a would-be rapist and a guardsman hoping to drag her to prison. She is clever and resilient, and though she is dripping in entitlement, she's not an inherently bad person: she's sympathetic to the plight of serfs even as her ingrained prejudices tell her she shouldn't be, and her maid is more of a friend whom she treats with respect. Her maid, Kairthe, is allowed character development of her own, and has one character-defining moment towards the end of the novel that nearly brought me to tears.
Two other fascinating female characters include Zeralenn, Eliste's grandmother, and Aurelie, her cousin. Zeralenn, former mistress to two separate kings, is a formidable and stubborn woman clinging to her honor and her ideals. She reminds me a bit of Ned Stark, sacrificing her life for her honor, and while she is by no means someone to be admired in all her facets, as she is even more entitled and prejudiced than Eliste, she is nevertheless a fascinating character whose stoicism in the face of disaster is astonishing. Aurelie, meanwhile, is a chatty, somewhat air-headed teenager who will do whatever it takes to survive, including sacrificing her honor and her ideals. Though Eliste and Zeralenn scorn Aurelie for her decisions, it's hard to hate the young woman for doing what it takes to survive (even if she is occasionally annoying).
Though Illusion does have some of the trappings of 90s fantasy, I was pleasantly surprised at how much agency Eliste was given despite Vonahr being a patriarchal society. That is, she can't do much, but she's resourceful with what she's given. Volsky places Eliste through the ringer in a way few authors are willing to - I'm reminded a bit of George R.R. Martin - but Eliste handles herself extremely well, especially given her pampered lifestyle, and this leads her to being a thoroughly likable heroine.
Clearly, this book is not perfect, but I loved it anyway. I even bought myself a copy because I knew I would want to return to the writing again and perhaps try to learn from it. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey it took me on, the characters it introduced me to, and even the romance! I highly recommend this book for all lovers of fantasy and literary writing. This is definitely going to be one of my more memorable books of this year!
schenior's review
5.0
Have you ever read The Goblin Emperor and thought “More class warfare please!”? Alternatively, have you ever read The Powder Mage Trilogy and thought “Needs more fancy dresses and magical guillotine!”*? Well, search no longer.
(* Tbf I’m only on chapter 6 of Promise of Blood, fancy dresses may be incoming.)
Paula Volsky’s Illusion is a sort of fantasy retelling of the French Revolution, mixed with a dash of the Russian. The country Vonahr is divided into several classes, with the Exalted firmly on top and their serfs on the bottom. The Exalted used to possess great magical power, primarily that of creating magical illusions, as well as the ability to give mechanical creations sentience. By the time of the book’s setting however, these powers seemed to have mainly faded, and in fact there’s rumours that they’ve lost their magic completely. This, of course, makes it finally possible for the subjugated classes to dream of overthrowing their masters…
The protagonist of Illusion is Eliste vo Derrivalle, a seventeen year old member of the Exalted. She starts off as spoiled and breathtakingly arrogant as the rest of her class, but also shows an innate streak of decency from the start when she helps a serf childhood friend escape torture. Her journey goes from the highest heights to the lowest depths, from being a lady-in-waiting to the queen herself to starvation and near-freezing on the streets. Eliste is an interesting character to follow, as the narrative doesn’t shy away from showing the effects of her bigoted upbringing on her character (she’s no abolitionist and in fact considers serfs closer to animals than humans). At the same time, she has just enough strength of will, cleverness, and even kindness that I readily sympathised with her even before she got thrown onto the street and was forced to reexamine all her beliefs.
She’s joined by other interesting characters of the revolution: her eccentric Uncle Quinz, one of the last powerful magicians; her grandmother Zeralenn vo Rouvignac, who possesses a cool grace and an unbendable iron spine; Shorvi Nirienne, who dreams of a peaceful revolution, and Whiss Valeur, who demands reparations for centuries of subjugation in both coin and blood. There’s also the mob, which plays a large enough role to be counted as its own character: it reflects the mood of the city, at times capable of sympathy and desiring justice, at time purely vengeful and bloodthirsty. And of course there’s Kokotte, the sentient, magical guillotine (/Iron Maiden) mentioned earlier, who craves worship and adoration.
In my opinion, the book explores the ideas of social classes and revolution very well. The Exalted’s dehumanisation of the serfs is sickening, but at the same time Eliste and her grandmother believe firmly in noblesse oblige. The common people are perfectly just in rising up, but the republic they build after is marked by paranoia, corruption, and everyday executions. As a side-note, I liked that the intersection of sexism and class wasn’t ignored: Eliste’s life is in general incomparably more dangerous on the street, but the threat of sexual assault shadows her both before and after the revolution. Volsky is also fantastic at building up tension - you can sense shit’s gonna go down from the very start, but the atmosphere is built gradually, full of smaller injustices and reactions to them, until it’s finally too much and the clouds break into wrath. The glorious republic built after mirrors the problems we see in post-tyrannical regimes both in history and today.
Alright, I realise that my review makes the book sound gloomy and dark, and to a large extent I guess it is, but it’s actually also a very hopeful book! There’s good or admirable qualities to be found in most of the characters, including the mob, and the overall tone is “Well that last try was a fuck-up but that doesn’t mean we can just give up!”, both from the country as a whole and from the indomitable Eliste. I also found myself weirdly invested in the romance, which, while set up quite well, only really takes place in the last ~5th of the book. Poor Eliste, I cackled a lot at her romantic plight. So altogether, I highly recommend this book!
The only problem is that it's currently out of print. BUT not to worry: you can borrow the ebook from the Open Library, which means it’s afaik available for free to people anywhere in the world (or at least it works here in Germany).
(* Tbf I’m only on chapter 6 of Promise of Blood, fancy dresses may be incoming.)
Paula Volsky’s Illusion is a sort of fantasy retelling of the French Revolution, mixed with a dash of the Russian. The country Vonahr is divided into several classes, with the Exalted firmly on top and their serfs on the bottom. The Exalted used to possess great magical power, primarily that of creating magical illusions, as well as the ability to give mechanical creations sentience. By the time of the book’s setting however, these powers seemed to have mainly faded, and in fact there’s rumours that they’ve lost their magic completely. This, of course, makes it finally possible for the subjugated classes to dream of overthrowing their masters…
The protagonist of Illusion is Eliste vo Derrivalle, a seventeen year old member of the Exalted. She starts off as spoiled and breathtakingly arrogant as the rest of her class, but also shows an innate streak of decency from the start when she helps a serf childhood friend escape torture. Her journey goes from the highest heights to the lowest depths, from being a lady-in-waiting to the queen herself to starvation and near-freezing on the streets. Eliste is an interesting character to follow, as the narrative doesn’t shy away from showing the effects of her bigoted upbringing on her character (she’s no abolitionist and in fact considers serfs closer to animals than humans). At the same time, she has just enough strength of will, cleverness, and even kindness that I readily sympathised with her even before she got thrown onto the street and was forced to reexamine all her beliefs.
She’s joined by other interesting characters of the revolution: her eccentric Uncle Quinz, one of the last powerful magicians; her grandmother Zeralenn vo Rouvignac, who possesses a cool grace and an unbendable iron spine; Shorvi Nirienne, who dreams of a peaceful revolution, and Whiss Valeur, who demands reparations for centuries of subjugation in both coin and blood. There’s also the mob, which plays a large enough role to be counted as its own character: it reflects the mood of the city, at times capable of sympathy and desiring justice, at time purely vengeful and bloodthirsty. And of course there’s Kokotte, the sentient, magical guillotine (/Iron Maiden) mentioned earlier, who craves worship and adoration.
In my opinion, the book explores the ideas of social classes and revolution very well. The Exalted’s dehumanisation of the serfs is sickening, but at the same time Eliste and her grandmother believe firmly in noblesse oblige. The common people are perfectly just in rising up, but the republic they build after is marked by paranoia, corruption, and everyday executions. As a side-note, I liked that the intersection of sexism and class wasn’t ignored: Eliste’s life is in general incomparably more dangerous on the street, but the threat of sexual assault shadows her both before and after the revolution. Volsky is also fantastic at building up tension - you can sense shit’s gonna go down from the very start, but the atmosphere is built gradually, full of smaller injustices and reactions to them, until it’s finally too much and the clouds break into wrath. The glorious republic built after mirrors the problems we see in post-tyrannical regimes both in history and today.
Alright, I realise that my review makes the book sound gloomy and dark, and to a large extent I guess it is, but it’s actually also a very hopeful book! There’s good or admirable qualities to be found in most of the characters, including the mob, and the overall tone is “Well that last try was a fuck-up but that doesn’t mean we can just give up!”, both from the country as a whole and from the indomitable Eliste. I also found myself weirdly invested in the romance, which, while set up quite well, only really takes place in the last ~5th of the book. Poor Eliste, I cackled a lot at her romantic plight. So altogether, I highly recommend this book!
The only problem is that it's currently out of print. BUT not to worry: you can borrow the ebook from the Open Library, which means it’s afaik available for free to people anywhere in the world (or at least it works here in Germany).
rhodered's review
2.0
Re-read after many years. I remember liking the rich details. They are still rich. What I didn't recall, and am sure I did not entirely realize at the time (which is both scary and emblematic of my generation's indoctrination) is HOW FRIKKIN SEXIST IT IS. Piles of lameness due to sexism... yet you can see the author struggling out from under them. Making feminist stabbing motions with her pen. Only to be toppled by the pile of sexism again.
This is the internalized misogyny my generation is still dealing with. And I suspect many of the women who are younger than us are as well.
The heroine is smart, educated, energetic and practical. She steps up to take action - against her bigoted father, against the most powerful man in court, against the most powerful man in the criminal underworld, against a despotic tyrant, etc - and each time she either fails and a man has to save her or only she succeeds in some passive, lucky manner.
Her role throughout the book is largely reduced to waiting. Literally sitting in rooms and waiting. While life goes on outside the window. Although she changes circumstances multiple times, including at book's end, her future will clearly consist of waiting again while other people take action.
Also, slut shaming - tons of it. One key female character is cast as an amoral, stupid, selfish person with no sense of elegance, love or class. She also doesn't mind having sex without love or marriage if it will save her life. However, our heroine refuses to have sex to save her own life. No! She would rather die!
I would love to talk with the author now and get her insights into how she's changed as she's grown and feminism has (hopefully) taken better hold. I'd love to know how she would write this story now. Bet it would be different.
The details and the prose though - well done.
This is the internalized misogyny my generation is still dealing with. And I suspect many of the women who are younger than us are as well.
The heroine is smart, educated, energetic and practical. She steps up to take action - against her bigoted father, against the most powerful man in court, against the most powerful man in the criminal underworld, against a despotic tyrant, etc - and each time she either fails and a man has to save her or only she succeeds in some passive, lucky manner.
Her role throughout the book is largely reduced to waiting. Literally sitting in rooms and waiting. While life goes on outside the window. Although she changes circumstances multiple times, including at book's end, her future will clearly consist of waiting again while other people take action.
Also, slut shaming - tons of it. One key female character is cast as an amoral, stupid, selfish person with no sense of elegance, love or class. She also doesn't mind having sex without love or marriage if it will save her life. However, our heroine refuses to have sex to save her own life. No! She would rather die!
I would love to talk with the author now and get her insights into how she's changed as she's grown and feminism has (hopefully) taken better hold. I'd love to know how she would write this story now. Bet it would be different.
The details and the prose though - well done.
joannerixon's review
5.0
There aren't many books that I keep and re-read; this is literally one of like ten books that I own and wouldn't just stick in the Little Free Library next time I move so I don't have to carry a heavy box. I'm glad I came back to it, because it holds a lot of feelings.
On a technical level, this book breaks a lot of the rules of contemporary fantasy. The writing is dense, lurid, complicated--even impenetrable. Volsky loves semi-colons! But then, so do I. As a writer, it's valuable to remember that some of the 'rules' I follow are really, truly only suggestions. If I love purple prose, and Volsky loves purple prose, maybe it's okay to write some purple prose from time to time.
I re-read this book over the past couple of weeks for pandemic comfort purposes, for the first time in years, and I've been recommending it to almost everyone I know. It honestly kills me that it isn't more well-known, because I think it deserves a place in the fantasy Hall of Fame alongside, like, THE NAME OF THE WIND and WHEEL OF TIME. It has everything: political corruption, wildly unjust social structures, revolution, violence and blood, a main character with one of the most perfect redemption arcs I've ever read.
I actually want to talk about Eliste vo Derrivale a bit. At the beginning of the book, she's the kind of spoiled teenager who slaps her servants and tells people to their face that she thinks their bloodline is inferior to hers. She's also the kind of person who thinks life should be fair and hates violence--and is willing to risk getting slapped and/or grounded by her father to intercede for the boyfriend of the same servant she slapped. She's complicated. She's ignorant. Volsky absolutely does not flinch away from describing the corrupting effect of wealth and power and privilege, describing in agonizing detail just how prejudiced and cruel Eliste can be.
And then Eliste gets put through the wringer. She learns the truth about the social spheres of the rich and powerful, including finding herself in a position of powerlessness (because she's inferior by magic, money, age, gender, social rank) like the position she's put other people in. She finds herself coerced and assaulted by a man she looked up to, who is respected in her community. She learns about revolutionary ideas. She reads banned books, and discusses them with people.
Things get worse, of course. She has intimately personal encounters with the hardships she and her class have visited on their serfs. She starves, she shivers, she gets bitten by bedbugs, she gets grabbed and pushed around and chased and dumped in ice water in the winter. She nearly dies of exposure and then gets sent to jail for vagrancy! And the whole time, she wrestles with her prejudice. She realizes how wrong she was, that she's not better than the people she thought were beneath her.
And she changes. Her change is realistic: she's still the same person, she's still prissy and judgmental. But her beliefs and values shift. And because of that, she is able to go from spoiled and useless to genuinely heroic. She protects the secrets of the Revolution under torture! She's still complicated: the Revolution is messy and flawed, and she has vocal doubts about it. Her loyalties are more to people than to ideas. She still believes in propriety and presenting the right face to the world.
On twitter this week there was a thing going around asking people "White leftists, what radicalized you?"
For me, the easy answer is that I'm queer, so. The more complex, but still easy answer is that I'm just neuro-atypical enough to not be susceptible to crowd hysteria, so I was the odd one out at the Pentecostal church I was raised in, so I had to build my own worldview.
The more truthful answer might be that I read this book at an impressionable age and learned that it was possible to be redeemed from a life of privilege. I wanted to be a hero, and I figured if Eliste vo Derrivale could become a revolutionary I could too. And here we are.
On a technical level, this book breaks a lot of the rules of contemporary fantasy. The writing is dense, lurid, complicated--even impenetrable. Volsky loves semi-colons! But then, so do I. As a writer, it's valuable to remember that some of the 'rules' I follow are really, truly only suggestions. If I love purple prose, and Volsky loves purple prose, maybe it's okay to write some purple prose from time to time.
I re-read this book over the past couple of weeks for pandemic comfort purposes, for the first time in years, and I've been recommending it to almost everyone I know. It honestly kills me that it isn't more well-known, because I think it deserves a place in the fantasy Hall of Fame alongside, like, THE NAME OF THE WIND and WHEEL OF TIME. It has everything: political corruption, wildly unjust social structures, revolution, violence and blood, a main character with one of the most perfect redemption arcs I've ever read.
I actually want to talk about Eliste vo Derrivale a bit. At the beginning of the book, she's the kind of spoiled teenager who slaps her servants and tells people to their face that she thinks their bloodline is inferior to hers. She's also the kind of person who thinks life should be fair and hates violence--and is willing to risk getting slapped and/or grounded by her father to intercede for the boyfriend of the same servant she slapped. She's complicated. She's ignorant. Volsky absolutely does not flinch away from describing the corrupting effect of wealth and power and privilege, describing in agonizing detail just how prejudiced and cruel Eliste can be.
And then Eliste gets put through the wringer. She learns the truth about the social spheres of the rich and powerful, including finding herself in a position of powerlessness (because she's inferior by magic, money, age, gender, social rank) like the position she's put other people in. She finds herself coerced and assaulted by a man she looked up to, who is respected in her community. She learns about revolutionary ideas. She reads banned books, and discusses them with people.
Things get worse, of course. She has intimately personal encounters with the hardships she and her class have visited on their serfs. She starves, she shivers, she gets bitten by bedbugs, she gets grabbed and pushed around and chased and dumped in ice water in the winter. She nearly dies of exposure and then gets sent to jail for vagrancy! And the whole time, she wrestles with her prejudice. She realizes how wrong she was, that she's not better than the people she thought were beneath her.
And she changes. Her change is realistic: she's still the same person, she's still prissy and judgmental. But her beliefs and values shift. And because of that, she is able to go from spoiled and useless to genuinely heroic. She protects the secrets of the Revolution under torture! She's still complicated: the Revolution is messy and flawed, and she has vocal doubts about it. Her loyalties are more to people than to ideas. She still believes in propriety and presenting the right face to the world.
On twitter this week there was a thing going around asking people "White leftists, what radicalized you?"
For me, the easy answer is that I'm queer, so. The more complex, but still easy answer is that I'm just neuro-atypical enough to not be susceptible to crowd hysteria, so I was the odd one out at the Pentecostal church I was raised in, so I had to build my own worldview.
The more truthful answer might be that I read this book at an impressionable age and learned that it was possible to be redeemed from a life of privilege. I wanted to be a hero, and I figured if Eliste vo Derrivale could become a revolutionary I could too. And here we are.