[XMA]≡ Libro Mirror Empire Kameron Hurley 9780857665553 Books

Mirror Empire Kameron Hurley 9780857665553 Books

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Mirror Empire Kameron Hurley 9780857665553 Books

So I finally got to Kameron Hurley’s The Mirror Empire, which has been hanging out on my Kindle for some time now. But with the sequel, Emperor Ascendant, due out in a few weeks, I figured it was time to pull it up. And I’m glad I did, since even if I had some issues, The Mirror Empire turned out to be a (mostly) engaging story set in a fascinating world filled with an intriguing crew of characters and cultures, most of which play with “traditional” gender roles.

The setting premise is a universe of parallel (or “mirror”) worlds that over time move closer and farther to one another, that distance affecting the ease of travel between worlds. The astronomical geography (akin to astrology, really) is also the basis of the novel’s magic system, as certain people known as “jistas” can use the satellites that orbit their planet to perform magic, their power waxing and waning with the satellites’ appearance in the sky. Now in ascendance is Oma, the dark star not seen for several millennia. Its prior arrival brought chaos and violence and this time appears to be no different, as one race invades their counterparts in another world in an attempt to flee their own dying one.

The Mirror Empire is set in that invaded world, home to three (that we see) lands. Siduan, ruled by the Patron, is facing the brunt of the invasion and losing pretty badly, while it is unclear at the start just what, if anything, the other two lands even know about the otherworldly attack. Those two lands are Dhai, a small country settled by former slaves (also called Dhai) and ruled by the Kai; and Dorinah, the brutal empire that still runs on Dhai slaves, ruled by an Empress.

The world as presented is richly complex. People ride large bears and dogs, herds of dangerous walking trees roam the countryside while other plants are just as mobile and deadly, blades sprout from forearms, fortresses/holds are living organisms. Meanwhile, gender is fluid in some cultures, with one culture having three and another five (female passive, female assertive, male passive, male assertive, ungendered). And Taigan is someone even a bit more different, in that he/she changes gender in cycles. Adding to the complexity are the family/kin relationships. For example, in Dhai one can have multiple spouses, each of whom brings his/her own kin connection.

In terms of characters, the main POVs include:
• Lilia: a young girl who is an omajista (unknown to her early on) who seeks to come into her own power and avoid becoming a pawn in larger events

• Ahkio: the new Kai of the Dhai people, who must also find his way into power, though in his case political not magical, as he tries to deal with threats both internal and external

• Rohinmey (Rho) a young Dhai novice who dreams of a life of glory and adventure

• Taigan: a Saiduan assassin/magic-user

• Zezili: a Dorninthian general (though of mixed-race) tasked by her Empress to exterminate all the Dhai in the slave camps

This is not an exclusive list, and Hurley does a nice job offering a wide spectrum of views in terms of sides, personalities, genders, and ages. Each has a singular voice, Rho’s youthfulness for instance distinguishable from Lillia’s, even if both fall into the somewhat familiar coming-of-age character type. My two favorites are Taigan and Zezili. The former for the sense of “apartness” the character feels and the latter because she I’d say grows the most, or at least must rethink her place and prior beliefs the most. I also like that Hurley doesn’t feel the need to make her characters “likable.” When ordered to basically exterminate the Dhai, for example, Zezili has no real moral qualms; her concern is about the impact the genocide will have on her people’s economy and lifestyle. The cultures are just as rich as the individual characters, with a sense of both breadth and depth in their traditions, their mores, their familial, racial and political structures.

Interestingly, the strengths of The Mirror Empire are sometimes also its weaknesses. The world is richly complex, but at times that enjoyably challenging complexity edges over into a lack of clarity. This is less of an issue with the just-as-complicated plotting, as the characters themselves are often at sea in terms of what is happening and why, so in this case any confusion felt by the reader simply, um, “mirrors” the same feelings by the characters. That said, readers can expect to be challenged by the shifting settings, the number of characters, the similarity of names, the intricacy of the whose on whose side questions and the like. I don’t mind a challenge, but I do think the novel bogs down thanks to the intricate plotting and the number of POVs. Though the characters feel individual, we shift amongst them so much that I can’t say I truly felt much for any of them. Their plots might have engaged me, but the characters themselves less so. Some streamlining would have gone a long way toward a clearer, tighter, sharper, and more consistently compelling story. And, as has been my usual complaint lately, I’m pretty sure the book didn’t fully deserve its length.

The gender fluidity is a welcome bit of originality and outside-the-box thinking (something one expects to see more of in a genre such as fantasy/sci-fi), but sometimes seems a little too easily glossed over. The gender inversion is equally welcome, with gender roles often flipped, women being more powerful than the men. But I felt Hurley was hitting this point too hard in spots, waving the flag of “See?! See?!” rather than letting the inversion play through naturally. Zezili’s husband, for instance, is a painted doll left to molder at home (where he cutes himself) while his wife goes out a-soldiering. But he really pushes the edge of absurd caricature, and a near-rape scene feels wholly gratuitous. Now, I’m the first to agree that female characters are also presented as caricatures, and there’ s no need to convince me that rape is far too often gratuitous, but I like those characters/scenes about as much as I liked these — that’s to say not at all — and if this was merely to make the point more clear, I’d say Hurley should have trusted her audience more. We didn’t need the hammer.

The Mirror Empire has more than its share of flaws, and I do wish it had pulled me in more than it did, and sooner (the last quarter really had me pretty fully). But I’ll take a flawed work of intelligent ambition, one with layers of complexity and depth, filled with images and concepts, over a too-safe, easy-to-swallow, same-old same-old fantasy. I look forward to the sequel and just hope the execution matches the ambition a bit more closely.

(originally appeared at fantasyliterature.com)


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Mirror Empire Kameron Hurley 9780857665553 Books Reviews

SOME authors save the impossible slog toward a slightly-slower death for the middle of the series. Everyone understands the point of the Order of the Phoenix and The Empire Strikes Back. It has to get dark to make the triumph more delicious. Bold move, making the dark the first book. At 560 pages of unsympathetic leads, murderous plants, dynastic scheming, and child murder, Hurley gets tough with the reader right away.

I think this book has a lot of merit. The magic system is relatively fresh. The world has varied geography and languages and history and culture. There are some interesting commentaries on tribalism, mixed children, dehumanization, gender, and what makes effective leadership. There are some interesting omissions -- no horses! Almost no rape! (those are not equivalent in weight, but about equally common in genre) I really enjoyed the worldbuilding on a lot of levels, although I am not living anywhere with that many murderous trees. The arctic wastes for me!

All of that said, this book is unremittingly, unflinchingly bloody. Of our four main viewpoint characters, the body counts are
* Hundreds, plus at least one little kid
* Thousands of refugees, hundreds of soldiers
* Around ten, but he wishes it were so much more, bloody mayhem is way more fun than anything else in life.
* Maybe only a couple, and this lack is what makes him a weak leader

So, last week I went on a twitter rant about how if your book has more than 500 pages, you really need to be justifying this with half-a-dozen viewpoints or a sweeping generational story?

Be careful what you wish for. By my rough count, this book had 8-10 viewpoint characters. Some of them die relatively quickly, but it's a LOT to keep track of. I thought maybe some of them could have been cut without affecting the entirety of the story.

One thing that is really going to help you if you read this book is understanding right up front it's about parallel worlds. I think Hurley wants you to pick that up as you go, but it makes the first quarter of the book massively confusing because sometimes you switch worlds and think you are just switching viewpoint characters, and BONUS POINTS for the characters in all the worlds all have the same name, but different circumstances. So, um, sorry if that's a spoiler, but I don't think it's a super major one.

Read if You like books that acknowledge and depict the hell of war. You also liked the God's War books by Hurley. You are interested in how patterns of oppression mark patterns of dehumanization.

Skip if You do not want to read a book with a cast of thousands of dead people. You like your palace politics small-scale. You are annoyed by stupidly stubborn characters driving the plot.

Read also Glen Cook's Black Company books.
So I finally got to Kameron Hurley’s The Mirror Empire, which has been hanging out on my for some time now. But with the sequel, Emperor Ascendant, due out in a few weeks, I figured it was time to pull it up. And I’m glad I did, since even if I had some issues, The Mirror Empire turned out to be a (mostly) engaging story set in a fascinating world filled with an intriguing crew of characters and cultures, most of which play with “traditional” gender roles.

The setting premise is a universe of parallel (or “mirror”) worlds that over time move closer and farther to one another, that distance affecting the ease of travel between worlds. The astronomical geography (akin to astrology, really) is also the basis of the novel’s magic system, as certain people known as “jistas” can use the satellites that orbit their planet to perform magic, their power waxing and waning with the satellites’ appearance in the sky. Now in ascendance is Oma, the dark star not seen for several millennia. Its prior arrival brought chaos and violence and this time appears to be no different, as one race invades their counterparts in another world in an attempt to flee their own dying one.

The Mirror Empire is set in that invaded world, home to three (that we see) lands. Siduan, ruled by the Patron, is facing the brunt of the invasion and losing pretty badly, while it is unclear at the start just what, if anything, the other two lands even know about the otherworldly attack. Those two lands are Dhai, a small country settled by former slaves (also called Dhai) and ruled by the Kai; and Dorinah, the brutal empire that still runs on Dhai slaves, ruled by an Empress.

The world as presented is richly complex. People ride large bears and dogs, herds of dangerous walking trees roam the countryside while other plants are just as mobile and deadly, blades sprout from forearms, fortresses/holds are living organisms. Meanwhile, gender is fluid in some cultures, with one culture having three and another five (female passive, female assertive, male passive, male assertive, ungendered). And Taigan is someone even a bit more different, in that he/she changes gender in cycles. Adding to the complexity are the family/kin relationships. For example, in Dhai one can have multiple spouses, each of whom brings his/her own kin connection.

In terms of characters, the main POVs include
• Lilia a young girl who is an omajista (unknown to her early on) who seeks to come into her own power and avoid becoming a pawn in larger events

• Ahkio the new Kai of the Dhai people, who must also find his way into power, though in his case political not magical, as he tries to deal with threats both internal and external

• Rohinmey (Rho) a young Dhai novice who dreams of a life of glory and adventure

• Taigan a Saiduan assassin/magic-user

• Zezili a Dorninthian general (though of mixed-race) tasked by her Empress to exterminate all the Dhai in the slave camps

This is not an exclusive list, and Hurley does a nice job offering a wide spectrum of views in terms of sides, personalities, genders, and ages. Each has a singular voice, Rho’s youthfulness for instance distinguishable from Lillia’s, even if both fall into the somewhat familiar coming-of-age character type. My two favorites are Taigan and Zezili. The former for the sense of “apartness” the character feels and the latter because she I’d say grows the most, or at least must rethink her place and prior beliefs the most. I also like that Hurley doesn’t feel the need to make her characters “likable.” When ordered to basically exterminate the Dhai, for example, Zezili has no real moral qualms; her concern is about the impact the genocide will have on her people’s economy and lifestyle. The cultures are just as rich as the individual characters, with a sense of both breadth and depth in their traditions, their mores, their familial, racial and political structures.

Interestingly, the strengths of The Mirror Empire are sometimes also its weaknesses. The world is richly complex, but at times that enjoyably challenging complexity edges over into a lack of clarity. This is less of an issue with the just-as-complicated plotting, as the characters themselves are often at sea in terms of what is happening and why, so in this case any confusion felt by the reader simply, um, “mirrors” the same feelings by the characters. That said, readers can expect to be challenged by the shifting settings, the number of characters, the similarity of names, the intricacy of the whose on whose side questions and the like. I don’t mind a challenge, but I do think the novel bogs down thanks to the intricate plotting and the number of POVs. Though the characters feel individual, we shift amongst them so much that I can’t say I truly felt much for any of them. Their plots might have engaged me, but the characters themselves less so. Some streamlining would have gone a long way toward a clearer, tighter, sharper, and more consistently compelling story. And, as has been my usual complaint lately, I’m pretty sure the book didn’t fully deserve its length.

The gender fluidity is a welcome bit of originality and outside-the-box thinking (something one expects to see more of in a genre such as fantasy/sci-fi), but sometimes seems a little too easily glossed over. The gender inversion is equally welcome, with gender roles often flipped, women being more powerful than the men. But I felt Hurley was hitting this point too hard in spots, waving the flag of “See?! See?!” rather than letting the inversion play through naturally. Zezili’s husband, for instance, is a painted doll left to molder at home (where he cutes himself) while his wife goes out a-soldiering. But he really pushes the edge of absurd caricature, and a near-rape scene feels wholly gratuitous. Now, I’m the first to agree that female characters are also presented as caricatures, and there’ s no need to convince me that rape is far too often gratuitous, but I like those characters/scenes about as much as I liked these — that’s to say not at all — and if this was merely to make the point more clear, I’d say Hurley should have trusted her audience more. We didn’t need the hammer.

The Mirror Empire has more than its share of flaws, and I do wish it had pulled me in more than it did, and sooner (the last quarter really had me pretty fully). But I’ll take a flawed work of intelligent ambition, one with layers of complexity and depth, filled with images and concepts, over a too-safe, easy-to-swallow, same-old same-old fantasy. I look forward to the sequel and just hope the execution matches the ambition a bit more closely.

(originally appeared at fantasyliterature.com)