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A review by ccallan
The Bloodprint: Book One of the Khorasan Archives by Ausma Zehanat Khan
4.0
I heard Ms. Khan speak on a Jaipur Literature Festival event last year (one benefit of the otherwise awful pandemic is that we can get access to people across the planet if we pay a bit of attention), and was inspired by her vision of what fantasy literature can be. So I put this book on my list, where then it sank in among the many other books there, waiting for the day when I could get to it. (So many books, so little time....)
Well after a string of Boys SFF books where the women served as arm candy or foils for our intrepid heroes, I picked this book out to see if it could restore my faith in the possibilities of the genre for showing us other values, other ways of being. And it delivered. But the women are more complex, and while most of them still fall into the usual tropes of beautiful and alluring, they are also heroes, trying to do their best with limited information and resources. They make mistakes, they are unsure of the next step, they are conflicted over following their own desires or serving greater purposes. And there are men in this book too, but they are the foils this time. They tend to be either dashing, loyal, and talented, or nasty, duplicitous, and evil. Not much in between.
So Jane Austen it's not, but it's nonetheless refreshing to have women drive the plot and be the agents of action and change.
But what really drew me in was the inspiration that the book draws from the long, exotic history of Central Asia and the surrounding area. The main plot of the book draws on the history of Taliban in Afghanistan, Tamerlane and Samarkand, and scripture and institutions of the region's Islamic practices. I had to read this book with my phone at hand to look up the historical references and understand the inspirations she was building on, which were fascinating. Even the map at the beginning of the book was clearly an echo of the actual map of the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, with imagined territories redrawn over it. (And I must say I'm usually skeptical of books that start with maps -- can we get past Tolkien already?)
"There is no one but the One. And so the One commands." For me it echoed the Shahada, one of the five pillars of Islam, "There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God."
One theme that develops later in the book is how religious inspiration can be a force for good or evil, often in ways that individuals don't understand fully as they act. And it brings characters to do their best even when they don't know the way forward. And to constantly search and struggle to figure out how to act, treat people, strive. There's a fascinating subtheme of "struggle or peace" vs. "struggle and peace," which comes up over and over, often tempting people to take the easy way out.
Well after a string of Boys SFF books where the women served as arm candy or foils for our intrepid heroes, I picked this book out to see if it could restore my faith in the possibilities of the genre for showing us other values, other ways of being. And it delivered. But the women are more complex, and while most of them still fall into the usual tropes of beautiful and alluring, they are also heroes, trying to do their best with limited information and resources. They make mistakes, they are unsure of the next step, they are conflicted over following their own desires or serving greater purposes. And there are men in this book too, but they are the foils this time. They tend to be either dashing, loyal, and talented, or nasty, duplicitous, and evil. Not much in between.
So Jane Austen it's not, but it's nonetheless refreshing to have women drive the plot and be the agents of action and change.
But what really drew me in was the inspiration that the book draws from the long, exotic history of Central Asia and the surrounding area. The main plot of the book draws on the history of Taliban in Afghanistan, Tamerlane and Samarkand, and scripture and institutions of the region's Islamic practices. I had to read this book with my phone at hand to look up the historical references and understand the inspirations she was building on, which were fascinating. Even the map at the beginning of the book was clearly an echo of the actual map of the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, with imagined territories redrawn over it. (And I must say I'm usually skeptical of books that start with maps -- can we get past Tolkien already?)
"There is no one but the One. And so the One commands." For me it echoed the Shahada, one of the five pillars of Islam, "There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God."
One theme that develops later in the book is how religious inspiration can be a force for good or evil, often in ways that individuals don't understand fully as they act. And it brings characters to do their best even when they don't know the way forward. And to constantly search and struggle to figure out how to act, treat people, strive. There's a fascinating subtheme of "struggle or peace" vs. "struggle and peace," which comes up over and over, often tempting people to take the easy way out.