The Galaxy Game - Karen Lord

I read Karen Lord's novel The Best of All Possible Worlds about a year and a half ago and was very impressed by it. The Galaxy Game is a sequel of sorts. We get to see some familiar characters again but she shifts to a new main character, who played only a minor role in the first novel. It could probably be read independently, although the rich cultural background might be lost on some readers without having read the first book. The Galaxy Game has not been quite as well received as Lord's previous novel and I can see why. It is a decent  read but nowhere does it come close to achieving the level of The Best of All Possible Worlds.

Rafi's father had a psychic talent that he used to abuse his family for many years. When he was found out the authorities imprisoned him. Rafi has inherited his father's talent and to prevent him from ending up like his father, he is sent to Lyceum, a place where is supposed to learn to control his powers. His education is not going well though. Rafi has friends at the Lyceum but he is miserable there anyway. His mental abilities frighten him and progress in learning to deal with them is minimal. If he is to learn to accept and control his gift, he will have to go elsewhere. It is the start of a journey that will take him to several planets, but the real destination is adulthood.

Rafi, as you might have guessed is the nephew of Grace Delurua, the main character of The Best of All Possible Worlds. She plays a minor role in this novel. Grace is mostly busy with the Sadiri and their precarious position on the planet Cyngus to pay much attention to Rafi though. After leaving the Lyceum, a move that could turn him into a renegade, he leaves for a place where his abilities are more common and more widely accepted. It is a place that also embraces the one release he has from the nightmares and the stress of leaving home. The game is called Wallrunning and is of great cultural importance. It is played on a wall where gravity varies and tests the agility and three dimensional orientation of its players to the maximum. The rules of the game never become clear entirely though. Later on in the story, a link between interplanetary travel and the game pops up. The mechanics of this way of traveling are never explained but apparently the spacial orientation skills of the players has something to do with it. For the fan of hard science fiction this is a somewhat frustrating novel.

Hard science fiction is not what Lord is aiming for though. Her story is much more interested in cultural diversity. Rafi is exposed to a number of cultures during his travels and he doesn't understand most of them. I can't say I blame him. The variety is bewildering and the main reason why I think you should read The Best of All Possible Worlds first. Although on the level of the character, the story revolves around Rafi, another layer concerns itself with interplanetary politics which are almost impossible to understand without a bit of background information. The various races of humanity are in a major political and military struggle, the outcome of which will shape the universe for centuries to come. Rafi is caught right in the middle of it and, on top of his personal problems, has to find a place in the power structure of am alien culture he hardly understands. His choice in this regard is crucial to his personal safety and happiness.

Something that contributes to the bewildering tangle of cultures, faction, and races is the fact that while Rafi is the focal point of the novel, the point of view frequently shifts to other characters. They are mostly from different cultural backgrounds and face their own challenges. For one of the characters, she switches to a first person narrative, which makes the transitions between characters a bit bumpy sometimes. The plot itself is not all that complicated, it is after all a fairly straightforward Bildungsroman, but along the way Lord does her best to distract us with all sorts of other attractions. She does so to the point where I wondered once of twice why all this was relevant to the story.

Where in some areas, information seems hardly relevant, in other areas explanations are completely lacking. Some of the characters rely on modes of communication that do not rely on words and can be very difficult to follow. Rafi is supported and taking in by characters whose motivations remain largely unclear. For Rafi, who would most likely not have understood any explanation until much later anyway, this is more easy to accept than for the reader.

There is a great deal of background to this galaxy. A history that, despite all the things Lord has put into these two novels, is not yet fully revealed. There are a few hints in the novel that the situation on Earth might be explored further for instance. Given what we've learned of it so far that would certainly be interesting but it is but one of many possibilities. Lord has created a universe that allows many more directions for good stories. In this novel, she doesn't quite manage to find a story that allows her to show us her all of her creation though. Too often the reader comes across beautifully phrased but confusion bits of future history or interesting but only marginally relevant cultural observations. The Galaxy Game is not a big book but I think that in the hands of another author, it might have been a novella. I enjoyed at some level but compared to The Best of All Possible Worlds it was a mild disappointment.

Book Details

Title: The Galaxy Game
Author: Karen Lord
Publisher: Del Rey
Pages: 320
Year: 2015
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-345-53407-1
First published: 2015

Redemption in Indigo - Karen Lord

I picked up Karen Lord' second novel The Best of All Possible Worlds (2013)  last year as part of a reading challenge. It was one of the more interesting books I've read for the challenged so Lord ended up on the list of authors I want to read more of. Earlier this year I decided to get a copy of her debut novel Redemption in Indigo. It's one of those books that have gotten quite a bit of attention recently but I hadn't gotten around to reading. Redemption in Indigo was first published in 2010 by Small Beer Press. I have a newer UK edition however, published by Jo Fletcher Books in 2012. Redemption in Indigo won a number of awards, including the Mythopoeic award in 2011. It's quite different from The Best of All Possible Worlds, these two novels show a versatility that that many writers would be jealous of.

The novel tells the story of Paama, a woman who, fed up with her husband's gluttony, has fled back to her family and refuses to return to him. Her husband is not about to let that happen however. He sets out after her and succeeds in making a complete fool of himself. Paama is obviously not going to change her mind but then something happens that will make her see the world in a different light. The undying  ones, or djombi, present her with a gift. A dangerous gift as Paama soon finds out.

I understand that Redemption in Indigo is partly based on a folk tale from Senegal known as Ansige Karamba the Glutton. I had of course never heard of it so I did a few searches to see if there happened to be an English version online. Such stories tend to exist in many variations but it would have been interesting to find one. I came up with nothing however. Maybe I would have had better luck finding a French. Unfortunately I can only count to ten and order coffee in French so it would have been as useless to me as one in say Wolof or Pular. It's quite possibly that there simply is no version out there. It sounds like the kind of story that needs to be listened to rather than read. If anybody does knows where I could find a version please let me know.

Like Asingne's story, Redemption in Indigo is presented as a tale that needs to be listened to. The reader gets told the story by a skilled storyteller, one is not afraid to move back and forth on the time line and cast doubt on the truthfulness of what he is telling the audience. In fact, he struck me as being quite opinionated. He means to entertain. There are all sorts of hints of other tales in the story that he then abandons in favour of Paama's tale. They serve to raise curiosity in his audience. It must have been pretty hard to keep this style going for the entire novel but in some chapters you really feel as if you're around some fire with a group of people completely immersed in the storyteller's tale. The narrator's voice is not that strongly present in the entire novel, some sections read more like a regular third person perspective.

In the early stages of the novel, it is something of a comedy. Asingne's antics are hilarious at times and even the trouble he puts Paama in, is not enough to make me stop grinning. Despite leaving him, she does try to protect him from too much embarrassment. There's more than a bit of tragedy here as well. Her husband seems to think he is entitled to the attention Paama pays to him and the lengths she goes to to provide him with the comforts he desires. His ways will eventually get him what he deserves in a way but Paama's attention is also more than he deserves.

Later on in the novel the tone gets much more serious. Paama is drawn into a conflict between djombi and their power is such, that their games are very dangerous to mere mortals. One of the djombi wants Paama to hand over her gift to him, a gift he feels was his power to begin with. In his attempt to get Paama to hand it over he shows her things about the world that change her outlook on life. But she is not without her influence either. His view of humanity is, which he held in very low regard until meeting Paama, changes profoundly. As Asingne should already have figured out, she is quite a special woman.

Redemption in Indigo is an unusual book in many respects. There is the way the story is told, with a very present narrator and a myriad of side plots that seem to go nowhere but are somehow essential to the novel. There is the elusive strong female main character that the fantasy genre is trying so hard to find. There is African inspired setting and mythological influences that you only rarely find in English language literature. All of this and more Lord manages to put into a relatively short novel. The book is so many things that don't usually come up when people think fantasy that is should really open the reader's eyes about what is possible in fantastical literature. It is quite simply a great read. For anybody who wants more out of the genre than your typical Tolkienesque epic fantasy, this novel is a must read.

Book Details
Title: Redemption in Indigo
Author: Karen Lord
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
Pages: 280
Year: 2012
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-78087-308-4
First published: 2010

The Best of All Possible Worlds - Karen Lord

Karen Lord's debut novel Redemption in Indigo was one of the books that received a lot of attention in 2011 and 2012. It's one of those books I mean to pick up but so far I haven't read it yet. From what I understand of the reviews, it's a book well worth reading. While looking for suitable books for the Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge I came across Lord's second novel, The Best of All Possible Worlds, in a bookstore in Amsterdam. If her first novel is anywhere near as good as the second, I can see what the fuss was about. The Best of All Possible Worlds is a very good science fiction novel. Comparisons with the work of Ursula K. Le Guin are made on the inside flap of the cover. For once, I don't disagree with what it says there. Something the flap text doesn't mention is that there clearly is a bit of Bradbury in the novel too.

What do you do when your planet and the center of your culture has been wiped out in a single strike? That is the question facing the Sadiri who had the good fortune to be away from home at the time of the strike must answer. Besides drastically reduced numbers, they also face a severe gender imbalance. The question of whether the Sadiri have a future as a separate people or should blend in with the other peoples of the galaxy is very much on their mind. Scientist Grace Delurua is assigned to a project to see if salvaging Sadiri culture by introducing new blood from the planet Cygnus Beta is feasible. It will be a life changing experience of Delurua and the Sadiri.

The Best of All Possible Worlds is not a novel that easily fits into one of science fiction's many subgenres. It is a very character driven novel. Don't expect a lot of scientific speculation or detailed future histories. Lord inserts what the reader needs to know when the characters run into it, so it takes quite a while for the basic outlines of this universe to become clear. Even with what the characters add to the reader's knowledge, quite a few questions about how this universe works, and especially Earth's position in it, remains a bit underexposed. The novel is carried by the dynamic between the two main characters Delurua and the Sadiri councilor Dllenahkh.

Lord does describe a number of cultures on the Cygnus Beta that vary from a Faerie court to a feudal society, although on most of the planet, there seems to be a bit of a frontier mentality. As a striking contrast, the few cities the planet possesses are very liberal. According to the acknowledgments Lord, who is from Barbados herself, has made the planet into a mix of cultures and societies to mirror the situation in the Caribbean. This mix also contains people of Sadiri ancestry, which is why the Saridi are so interested in the planet.

The Sadiri are one four strains of humanity in the galaxy. Their culture has developed to potential of the human mind in ways that others cannot achieve. They are a long lived and telepathic people, who value mental discipline and self-control. Their actions are guided by logic and reasoning rather than my emotion and impuls. I'm probably not the first to note that there is more than a bit of Vulcan in these people, although it must be said, they have a much better sense of humour. Their self control is stretched to the max by the prospect of not being able to find a suitable bride however. When Sadiri snap the results can be quite dramatic, even violent.

The novel is mostly written as a travelogue, with Delurua doing the narrating. It covers the entire year the project she is assigned to is running. Delarua's chapters are written in the first person. Between chapters there are short sections seen from Dllenahkh's point of view. The create a sense of distance and mute the emotion in these sections Lord opts for a third person point of view here. This division works very well. The mind of a Sadiri is obviously alien to the reader, where Delurua's way of thinking is much more recognizable. When the novel opens, she feels she already knows a thing or two about the Sadiri but her understanding deepens immensely throughout the novel.

In essence, and this is another element that will not be to the liking of some science fiction fans, The Best of All Possible Worlds is a romance. Throughout the novel the feelings Delurua and Dllenahkh have for each other grow until the outcome is inevitable. I guess you could say it is a case of opposites attract. Delurua is a very intelligent woman but lacks the Sadiri mental discipline. She often displays much more emotion than the Sadiri and over the course of the novel learns how to reconcile her emotions and intuition with the Saridi way of thinking. Dllenahkh has some adapting to do as well. On more than one occasion he takes a leap of faith and accepts Delurua's conclusions, reached by intuitive leaps rather than measured reasoning. The relationship, both on a personal and professional level develops in a very natural way. It is the key element in this novel and one that is very successfully executed.

My experience with books I've read for the Women of Genre Ficiton reading challenge has been mixed. I've found some very enjoyable reads, some excellent novels and a few that didn't appeal to me at all. The Best of All Possible Worlds is without a doubt one of the excellent ones. With only one book left to read, it is probably my favorite so far. The strong character development, the subtle romance and the sense of humour worked into the novel are a combination that you find very rarely in science fiction. I would not be surprised if it was nominated for an award or two next year. As far as I'm concerned this book is a must read.

Book Details
Title: The Best of All Possible Worlds
Author: Karen Lord
Publisher: Del Rey
Pages: 307
Year: 2013
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-345-53405-7
First published: 2013