A review by megapolisomancy
The Etched City by K.J. Bishop
5.0
You know, I just read another story of Bishop's in THE WEIRD and it struck me that I am dying for her to release another book and I'm not sure why I gave this one four stars instead of five so I am retroactively bumping it up.
------
It took M. John Harrison years and a good number of novels and stories to create a secondary fantasy world and then get disgusted with the idea of a secondary fantasy world and subvert and deconstruct the whole thing by reducing the characters to ghosts and surreal phantoms, but K. J. Bishop manages the same thing in the course of a single book. She also manages to attain his level of utterly opaque meaning, at times ("The Lamia and Lord Cromus" retains a special place in my memory for its sheer cursed inaccessibility, and actually now that I think of it the sphinx-Beth character in The Etched City bears some resemblance to the mythical lamia also. Do you see what this book has done to my brain?).
Ok anyway this book is about two comrades from a failed revolution journeying together across a desert to escape the triumphant general's troops.
No it isn't.
It's about the female wanderer, Raule, a doctor, who tries to save what's left of her conscience by taking a post as the lone capable doctor to the denizens of the poorest quarter of Ashamoil. Ashamoil being, of course, a city the two adventurers suddenly find themselves occupying, the characters seeming almost as disconnected as the readers, who have been given no transition from the above chase to these newly sedentary lives.
No it isn't.
It's about the male wanderer, Gwynn, a sharpshooter, who has become a hired goon for one of Ashamoil's crime lords, and his brutal descent into the underbelly of the city.
No it isn't.
It's about Gwynn's affair with the aforementioned Beth, who is human or isn't human or is perhaps both, simultaneously, and is an artist (and is perhaps, in some way, the author? and is also the only character in the novel with a typical real-world name, I believe) and who spends much of her scenes deconstructing Gwynn's thought regarding their place in the world, and then perhaps deconstructing his world entirely? Again, it's all very Harrisonesque. When you get down to it, this book is about stories, and it keeps switching up stories on you. In the end, it is Beth, who seems to create a different story altogether from the one Bishop is telling here, is wracked by thoughts that she doesn't belong in this world, having been brought here against her will as a child, and who then basically removes herself from the book, leaving Gwynn mystified and unsure of what his own story is or what is real or possible anymore. This is the constant slipping throughout the book: it's a desert escape story, then the chapter ends, and then the characters are already at their destination, and have been for some time. This narrative slipperiness/metatextuality/commentary on the role of stories (in both creation and telling) calls to mind Borges, and Bishop seems to acknowledge this by having one character (a crazy old man, no less) tell Gwynn what appears to be a reworked version of Borges' "The House of Asterion."
Aside from these conversations he has with Beth, Gwynn spends a good deal of time debating theology with The Rev (this title always just making me think of Monty Python for some reason). Within the context, though, this becomes a discursion about Bishop as much as it is about any other God. The Rev, we learn, was once a messiah figure able to perform miracles reminiscent of those attributed to Jesus, but he lost this ability years before. His loss of faith in the narrative mirrors that experienced by Beth and Gwynn, but where the Rev aims for redemption, Beth settles on escapism (quite literally) and Gwynn on nihilism.
I am, honestly, a bit mystified by the number of people on goodreads who seem to treat this book as just another New Weird excursion and complain about the lack of a plot, because if you don't read this as a kind of surrealist meditation on art and creation, then there... isn't much to it. Ha. I also didn't think there was much to Ashamoil or the larger world, but then again, by this reading, I don't think there was supposed to be-the whole thing was rather hazy and dreamlike. It seems that Bishop took notice of Harrison's rantings about world-building and escapism and the "clomping foot of nerdism," but she flips his oneiric approach to fantastical writing on its head.
I think, anyway.
Like I said... they are masters of obscurantism.
------
It took M. John Harrison years and a good number of novels and stories to create a secondary fantasy world and then get disgusted with the idea of a secondary fantasy world and subvert and deconstruct the whole thing by reducing the characters to ghosts and surreal phantoms, but K. J. Bishop manages the same thing in the course of a single book. She also manages to attain his level of utterly opaque meaning, at times ("The Lamia and Lord Cromus" retains a special place in my memory for its sheer cursed inaccessibility, and actually now that I think of it the sphinx-Beth character in The Etched City bears some resemblance to the mythical lamia also. Do you see what this book has done to my brain?).
Ok anyway this book is about two comrades from a failed revolution journeying together across a desert to escape the triumphant general's troops.
No it isn't.
It's about the female wanderer, Raule, a doctor, who tries to save what's left of her conscience by taking a post as the lone capable doctor to the denizens of the poorest quarter of Ashamoil. Ashamoil being, of course, a city the two adventurers suddenly find themselves occupying, the characters seeming almost as disconnected as the readers, who have been given no transition from the above chase to these newly sedentary lives.
No it isn't.
It's about the male wanderer, Gwynn, a sharpshooter, who has become a hired goon for one of Ashamoil's crime lords, and his brutal descent into the underbelly of the city.
No it isn't.
It's about Gwynn's affair with the aforementioned Beth, who is human or isn't human or is perhaps both, simultaneously, and is an artist (and is perhaps, in some way, the author? and is also the only character in the novel with a typical real-world name, I believe) and who spends much of her scenes deconstructing Gwynn's thought regarding their place in the world, and then perhaps deconstructing his world entirely? Again, it's all very Harrisonesque. When you get down to it, this book is about stories, and it keeps switching up stories on you. In the end, it is Beth, who seems to create a different story altogether from the one Bishop is telling here, is wracked by thoughts that she doesn't belong in this world, having been brought here against her will as a child, and who then basically removes herself from the book, leaving Gwynn mystified and unsure of what his own story is or what is real or possible anymore. This is the constant slipping throughout the book: it's a desert escape story, then the chapter ends, and then the characters are already at their destination, and have been for some time. This narrative slipperiness/metatextuality/commentary on the role of stories (in both creation and telling) calls to mind Borges, and Bishop seems to acknowledge this by having one character (a crazy old man, no less) tell Gwynn what appears to be a reworked version of Borges' "The House of Asterion."
Aside from these conversations he has with Beth, Gwynn spends a good deal of time debating theology with The Rev (this title always just making me think of Monty Python for some reason). Within the context, though, this becomes a discursion about Bishop as much as it is about any other God. The Rev, we learn, was once a messiah figure able to perform miracles reminiscent of those attributed to Jesus, but he lost this ability years before. His loss of faith in the narrative mirrors that experienced by Beth and Gwynn, but where the Rev aims for redemption, Beth settles on escapism (quite literally) and Gwynn on nihilism.
I am, honestly, a bit mystified by the number of people on goodreads who seem to treat this book as just another New Weird excursion and complain about the lack of a plot, because if you don't read this as a kind of surrealist meditation on art and creation, then there... isn't much to it. Ha. I also didn't think there was much to Ashamoil or the larger world, but then again, by this reading, I don't think there was supposed to be-the whole thing was rather hazy and dreamlike. It seems that Bishop took notice of Harrison's rantings about world-building and escapism and the "clomping foot of nerdism," but she flips his oneiric approach to fantastical writing on its head.
I think, anyway.
Like I said... they are masters of obscurantism.