Book Review: Bone Dance: A Fantasy for Technophiles by Emma Bull

Speculative fiction has long had a love affair with post-apocalyptic fiction—just in this last year alone M. R. Carey’s massive hit The Girl With All the Gifts took the science-fiction and fantasy communities by storm. But sometimes even the big releases in genre can end up left behind by history, and unfortunately this seems to have happened to Bone Dance by Emma Bull.

Emma Bull’s best known work is War for the Oaks, a hit novel that helped pioneer what we think of when we imagine urban fantasy: spunky female lead, contemporary real-world setting, and mythical creatures hidden from modern society. She has written other works, including Finder and her 2007 effort, Territory. Bone Dance, a science-fantasy, was released in 1991 and went on to be nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. So how is the novel itself?

The plot is set in a world after a nuclear war between the Americas. It’s hard to put into words, and I don’t want to spoil anything, so I recommend just reading a spoiler-filled review or, better yet, check it out for yourself. Unique for a fantasy effort, its magic involves both technology (it is subtitled A Fantasy for Technophiles, after all) and Louisiana Voodoo. Creatively, each chapter is named for a Tarot card. Most of Bone Dance’s setting is left unexplored outside of some of the characters’ backstories, so I found the sense of place to be one of the novel’s more disappointing aspects.

In terms of characters, they are well-drawn. Our narrator is Sparrow, a character who is neither man nor woman (though it has a fantasy explanation, so it’s iffy regarding representation); they're also asexual. Sparrow makes a living as a trader, and we find out rather quickly that Sparrow has had their mind taken over, which led to Sparrow losing hours with no memory of what happened. I’ll admit that Sparrow was my favorite character in the book: they’re smart, resourceful, brave, have issues with commitment and friendship that I related to immensely, and possess a great sense of humor. Bull also crafts other great characters: Sherrea, Frances Redding, Mick Skinner, China Black, and Theo. This book also serves as proof that writing a novel from a first-person perspective of someone who’s not female doesn’t keep/excuse you from passing the Bechdel test. (It also passes Kelly Sue DeConnick’s “Sexy Lamp Test,” so it’s a pretty feminist book.) While the story belongs to Sparrow, the other characters add their own agendas and backstories to the narrative, making them well-rounded—at least, well-rounded enough. 

Bull's prose is well-done, over all. There's a good balance in sentence structure and her descriptions are colorful, but she narrowly avoids purple prose. Sometimes, I felt she got a bit over descriptive, but these times were minor. 

There are problems—the pacing can be off; some of the swearing got excessive; Sparrow’s narration reaks of white privilege with the description of characters assumed white until they specify; Sparrow being the only non-binary character in the story, plus it being down to a speculative element; the black characters felt kind of Magical Negro; the implied rape vibes I got in one of the chapters made me extremely uncomfortable, and I don’t think it was handled adequately.

All things said, Bone Dance is a solid work. It’s not without its flaws, but it still works as entertainment due to its action, world-building, characters, and mystery. Even more importantly, it holds fairly relevant themes for a modern speculative reader: the right to choose your own identity rather than the one that was forced on you and not conform to what is seen as the default (in this case, cis male and heterosexual). I’d recommend it with some reservations.

Score: 3.5/5

Book Review: The Drowning Girl: A Memoir by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Fantasy fiction has long been crossed over with other genres, including romance, its sister genre, science-fiction, horror, and the supernatural. Caitlin Kiernan has made a career of mixing her dark fantasy works with a sense of horror, though it never consumes her work. Kiernan, a longtime author and trained paleontologist, received a great deal of acclaim for The Drowning Girl, winning the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel. After having read the reviews, I decided that a novel that got so much buzz and so many award nominations had to be experienced myself. Having read it and given it some time to digest, I can certainly proclaim it an unforgettable work that any lover of literary fantasy or experimental fiction in general should experience at least once. 

The novel, as the subtitle implies, is structured like a memoir in that our protagonist, India Morgan Phelps (called Imp), narrates her “ghost story” like a memoir she’s writing down months after the main events in her story take place; it is not finished, however. Like any story or life in general, Imp’s ghost story continues long after the event that set everything into motion. Structured into ten chapters with interludes for other writing Imp does, including short stories, Kiernan uses the novel to explore the concept of the unreliable narrator in a way that confused me more than any other instance—this was most prominent in chapter 7 (be warned—Imp rambles incoherently almost the whole chapter and it almost made me quit the book).

Our narrator, Imp, is a sympathetic and well-rounded protagonist. Born into a family where she’s inherited schizophrenia from her mother, who in turn got it from her mother, and so on, she struggles throughout the novel to tell reality from her own fantasies, all while connecting the dots of her ghost story. Her voice shrines through in a way that feels authentic to her experiences but also assured. Another strong character is her girlfriend, Abalyn, who Kiernan uses to ground Imp. Abalyn is there to offer support, to show someone who, like Imp, is also an outsider (she is a transwoman) but not as much as Imp so that even Abalyn sometimes doubts her girlfriend’s own testimonies. There is also the mysterious Eva Canning who may be a werewolf, a mermaid, or something else entirely. Kiernan injects her narrative with just enough of Imp’s backstory to help bring to life her late mother and grandmother to help flesh them out but also add context to Imp’s own character. Essentially, the character work is masterful and handled with grace and care. 

The plot I will not say much about lest I spoil any of the various twists and turns. The titular Drowning Girl in the novel is a painting by Phillip George Saltonstall. First encountered by Imp on her eleventh birthday, the painting is referenced several times and is essential to the mysteries of the plot. 

The prose in this work shines. Every word is well-placed. In some ways it is lyrical, and in others it truly feels like a memoir written by someone. That perfect balance adds to the personal and haunting elements of the novel. 

Perhaps my favorite element of the novel was its sense of place. The novel is set in Providence, Rhode Island, which is where Caitlin Kiernan herself lives. It shows in the details—the streets named, the sense of history, the cultural idioms unique to the area. . . . All this profoundly helped me immserse myself in this work.
 

Most of what I say has been articulated better before by many reviewers (see this review by Elizabeth Bear or this review for Strange Horizons ) but The Drowning Girl is a true masterwork. It, to me, should be held up as a novel of the fantasy genre up there with the best of authors like Angela Carter and Ursula Le Guin for its ability to play with narrative, memory, fantasy, and the inner struggles of its characters. It won't be for everyone (there are some sex scenes in the later chapters that slip into purple prose territory that I found myself skipping); the slow pace and the rambling narration may be a turnoff to some readers. However, like any great art, its broad appeal to fantasy readers and even to those outside genre should help it continue to find an audience for many years to come. I highly recommend it.

Score: 5/5