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A review by kell_xavi
Crier's War by Nina Varela
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
3.0
Crier’s War introduces a winning concept: a land in which a queen unable to birth a child commissions a girl to be made (the first automa), and soon the upper classes all desire automai, and soon the growing numbers of automai revolt their threatened position as subpar and dangerous to humans, and so there is a war. Years later, in a kingdom run by an automa who has appropriated human customs even as he takes joy in their fearful servitude to him, a teenage girl works toward revenge for her family’s senseless death in the war, and the sovereign’s daughter comes into an understanding that her father’s and her fiancé’s hatred of humans and conspiracies among their own kind are dangerous and worth standing against.
I must admit, none of immersive fantasy, revenge stories, or romance are a draw for me, so I can’t say these elements we’re successful. I do look for unique narratives and ideas though, and Varela has certainly created something I haven’t come across before. I was curious about the automai as a computer/robot analogue or as a live automaton, a doll come to life. They seem, more than anything, given the natural elements they need to live, to be sentient creatures created by magic. Their pillars, though, are created more like AI might be coded. They’re Pinocchio x an algorithm, I guess, meant to be perfect according to some (European Enlightenment) version of the strong, symmetrically beautiful, reasoned man. This idea, taken further with a power dynamic of servitude and control, mastery through abjection and cultural genocide, is a story told many times in history, in many voices and truths. It is also a twist on the clever machine, a story of humans playing god and being killed by their creation. It is a story of the Enlightenment, Modernism, and the Computer Age, distant from any mention of divinity, a battle of gilded things, intellects, and emotions.
It is here that the print gets smudged a bit. Why is this a love story, why does the relationship become what Varela wants to say? The descriptions of Crier and Ayla listening to each other breathing, feeling each other’s warmth, being stung and angry and worried and desperate and hateful of each other, thinking of each other and holding the other’s belongings… were not new. They were sluggish in the story, overwrought and tropish, slowing down the court intrigue, the uncovers of secrets, allies and enemies. The winding and conflicting passions bring the story back to Earth (or wherever they are), away from the brilliance spinning out from all directions. Crier’s jealousy and Ayla’s sense of betrayal, unrelated to their feeling for each other, are similarly sticky, repetitive, sentences to skip past until the plot comes back in.
The events of the plot are great! The threads pull apart and stitch together and fray so many times, and I loved the weaving. There’s folktale in the lines, there’s music and dancing, murder and memory, feathers and stones, apples and ocean, a compass and black dust. The symbolism is wonderful, spinning up a creeping Victorian dread, a liveliness, a rich and storied history to the world we enter. I wanted more. I wanted Ayla and Crier to sink in, rather than floating out into each other and away from each other, as though the setting were not a magnificent tale to be told.
I must admit, none of immersive fantasy, revenge stories, or romance are a draw for me, so I can’t say these elements we’re successful. I do look for unique narratives and ideas though, and Varela has certainly created something I haven’t come across before. I was curious about the automai as a computer/robot analogue or as a live automaton, a doll come to life. They seem, more than anything, given the natural elements they need to live, to be sentient creatures created by magic. Their pillars, though, are created more like AI might be coded. They’re Pinocchio x an algorithm, I guess, meant to be perfect according to some (European Enlightenment) version of the strong, symmetrically beautiful, reasoned man. This idea, taken further with a power dynamic of servitude and control, mastery through abjection and cultural genocide, is a story told many times in history, in many voices and truths. It is also a twist on the clever machine, a story of humans playing god and being killed by their creation. It is a story of the Enlightenment, Modernism, and the Computer Age, distant from any mention of divinity, a battle of gilded things, intellects, and emotions.
It is here that the print gets smudged a bit. Why is this a love story, why does the relationship become what Varela wants to say? The descriptions of Crier and Ayla listening to each other breathing, feeling each other’s warmth, being stung and angry and worried and desperate and hateful of each other, thinking of each other and holding the other’s belongings… were not new. They were sluggish in the story, overwrought and tropish, slowing down the court intrigue, the uncovers of secrets, allies and enemies. The winding and conflicting passions bring the story back to Earth (or wherever they are), away from the brilliance spinning out from all directions. Crier’s jealousy and Ayla’s sense of betrayal, unrelated to their feeling for each other, are similarly sticky, repetitive, sentences to skip past until the plot comes back in.
The events of the plot are great! The threads pull apart and stitch together and fray so many times, and I loved the weaving. There’s folktale in the lines, there’s music and dancing, murder and memory, feathers and stones, apples and ocean, a compass and black dust. The symbolism is wonderful, spinning up a creeping Victorian dread, a liveliness, a rich and storied history to the world we enter. I wanted more. I wanted Ayla and Crier to sink in, rather than floating out into each other and away from each other, as though the setting were not a magnificent tale to be told.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Xenophobia, Murder, and War
Minor: Infertility and Sexual content