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A review by siavahda
The Velocity of Revolution by Marshall Ryan Maresca
5.0
HIGHLIGHTS
~everyone uses motorcycles and it is always sexy
~monogamy??? never heard of it
~the mushroom goddess is in the radios
~all the radios
~the most mouthwatering tacos ever
~magic drugs
~when the system breaks you down, break the system
This is, without question, one of the best books of the year.
To start with, this is dieselpunk fantasy, which I don’t run into too often – the magic in Velocity is intimately and powerfully tied to speed, the kind of speed which can only be achieved with the help of an engine, and so everything from motorcycles to trains have their own magical (and arguably spiritual, within the context of the story) significance. And that’s a brilliantly interesting concept all on its own, when so many storytellers choose to pit magic against technology, casting fantasy and science as some kind of enemies; instead, here, they’re intertwined, each a vital half of the whole.
(And for the record? Where ‘steampunk’ is most often used as a descriptor for a specific aesthetic, and as a term has kind of lost any connotations of rebellion-against-the-system, when Velocity calls itself dieselpunk, it means punk. The clue’s in the title: this is a book that is all about questioning and fighting against the system, up to and including tearing it all down to start over. It’s punk as hell.)
The book’s blurb does a pretty good job of summing up the basic story: Wenthi is a police officer, one of the first people with native blood to make the cut. This is probably in large part because his mother is a very important woman, but also helped by the fact that Wenthi completely buys into the status quo, which has his country beggared as all its resources are sent abroad to their ‘allies’, and the population is divided up into a caste system which can be summed up as: the more native blood you have, the lower down you are on the ladder of ‘people who matter’. Wenthi has absolutely drunk the kool-aid, to the point of being freakishly calm and accepting even when he’s mistreated or abused because of his ethnicity. Whoever’s running the propaganda, they’re clearly very good at it.
When his superiors realise that, for whatever reason, Wenthi can slip through the magical warning system used by the rebels – one which means they can always feel the cops coming, and thus always slip through their fingers – he’s sent undercover. With one invaluable resource: a mind-link to an imprisoned rebel that will make his true identity impossible for the rebels to detect.
But honestly, that doesn’t capture even a fraction of the awesomeness that is this story.~
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
~everyone uses motorcycles and it is always sexy
~monogamy??? never heard of it
~the mushroom goddess is in the radios
~all the radios
~the most mouthwatering tacos ever
~magic drugs
~when the system breaks you down, break the system
This is, without question, one of the best books of the year.
To start with, this is dieselpunk fantasy, which I don’t run into too often – the magic in Velocity is intimately and powerfully tied to speed, the kind of speed which can only be achieved with the help of an engine, and so everything from motorcycles to trains have their own magical (and arguably spiritual, within the context of the story) significance. And that’s a brilliantly interesting concept all on its own, when so many storytellers choose to pit magic against technology, casting fantasy and science as some kind of enemies; instead, here, they’re intertwined, each a vital half of the whole.
(And for the record? Where ‘steampunk’ is most often used as a descriptor for a specific aesthetic, and as a term has kind of lost any connotations of rebellion-against-the-system, when Velocity calls itself dieselpunk, it means punk. The clue’s in the title: this is a book that is all about questioning and fighting against the system, up to and including tearing it all down to start over. It’s punk as hell.)
The book’s blurb does a pretty good job of summing up the basic story: Wenthi is a police officer, one of the first people with native blood to make the cut. This is probably in large part because his mother is a very important woman, but also helped by the fact that Wenthi completely buys into the status quo, which has his country beggared as all its resources are sent abroad to their ‘allies’, and the population is divided up into a caste system which can be summed up as: the more native blood you have, the lower down you are on the ladder of ‘people who matter’. Wenthi has absolutely drunk the kool-aid, to the point of being freakishly calm and accepting even when he’s mistreated or abused because of his ethnicity. Whoever’s running the propaganda, they’re clearly very good at it.
When his superiors realise that, for whatever reason, Wenthi can slip through the magical warning system used by the rebels – one which means they can always feel the cops coming, and thus always slip through their fingers – he’s sent undercover. With one invaluable resource: a mind-link to an imprisoned rebel that will make his true identity impossible for the rebels to detect.
But honestly, that doesn’t capture even a fraction of the awesomeness that is this story.~
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!