The House of Binding Thorns is the sequel to Aliette De
Bodard’s extremely well regarded debut, The House of Shattered Wings. The
central conceit is that angels have fallen from heaven – short on memories, but
filled with supernatural power.
Like its predecessor, the book is set in a Paris of the last
century, of top hats, tailcoats, salons and oppression. But here, if there is a
ruling class, it is those surviving fallen angels. They’re radiant, often
charming creatures. Most seem to have a streak of cruelty running through them –
and where that isn’t immediately the case, their power comes at a price. This
is a broken world, as well. Factions of the Fallen waged war on each other for
years before the current situation. As a result, Paris is devastated, broken
into enclaves, islands of stability protected by Fallen magic. Between these
Houses are magical landmines, absolute poverty, a poisoned river and other,
darker threats. If the Fallen have blown apart the city, they are now the only
safety from the results. That safety is, though, rather tenuous. There’s
enclaves of another culture entirely lurking beneath the waters of the Seine.
We had a brief glimpse of their environment in the previous book, but are
immersed in it more fully here. It’s clearly a distinct culture, with a ritual
and cadence unfamiliar to those above; it’s a vivid and thoughtfully crafted society,
with its own customs and mores – but it has the same creeping corruption and
decay as is occurring in the enclaves of the Fallen. The interaction between
these two societies is fraught with opportunities for betrayal and misunderstanding,
at least as much as for mutual benefit; watching characters from both societies
try and cross the liminal barrier, the gaps in understanding, is intriguing.
The focus though, is on the House of Hawthorne, run by the
razor edged, charming and utterly ruthless Asmodeus. I’ve got a lot of time for
Asmodeus. He oozes a sort of chilly charisma, mixed with a willingness to
embrace calculated brutality. There’s something about him that speaks of
razorblades and blood spatter on dark nights. At the same time, he’s a ruler, with
a laser-fine intelligence, and an eye for loyalty. All of these facets bob near
the surface, and there’s a feeling that something far darker lurks
beneath. Asmodeus is a captivating
character, effortlessly seizing control of any scene he’s in, and trying to
work out what he was up to, why he was doing it, and what on earth he was going
to do next was a great reason to keep turning pages.
Madeleine is a returning character from the previous story.
She’s fragile, struggling to shake a dependence on a drug which (briefly)
provides the user with the powers of the Fallen – and slowly rots out their
lungs. She’s self-aware enough to understand her position, and there’s a patina
of low-grade fear that pervades her interactions. She’s tied to Hawthorne and
Asmodeus, a House filld with horrible memories, and a Head who may not despise
her, but of whom she has a well deserved terror. Still, Madeleine is also
smart, resourceful, and prone to doing the right thing – in contrast to
Asmodeus and his realpolitik, she struggles to do what she things of as both
ethical and best. That she may fail is due to the hard edges of the world the
author has brought us – the despair of the character seamlessly blending into
the society around her. Still, Madeleine shows that if the world is in a state
of slow decline, there are still those willing to stand up and be counted, when
they feel that they must.
They’re not the only cast of course, and I’m doing the rest
of the characters a disservice by not approaching them in detail. But if the
faces are different, the depth is the same. There’s one of the people of the
Seine, slowly infiltrating and acclimatising to House life, and the housebound
Fallen who has created a fortress from a cheap apartment, and wants to live to
see her wife give birth to their child. There’s vicious killers, and
supernatural monstrosities. This is humanity at its worst and best, and it’s
mirrored back to the reader in the faces of the supernatural creatures striding
the broken streets of Paris. These aren’t saints or monsters, but complicated
people, making decisions for their own reasons, worming their terrible way off
the page and into your heart.
The plot spins itself out gradually, luring the reader into
the world with old feuds and magical mysteries. There’s a tension wrapped
through the pages, as investigation gradually opens up possibilities – usually unpleasant
ones. Quite what’s being done, and by whom, and indeed why – all begins
extremely unclear. As investigators pick up leads, clash with each other, and
follow their own agenda, the story clarifies – or would, but there’s red
herrings and quirky actions aplenty. There’s shades here of Chandler and
Hammett, as the protagonists dig into the dirty laundry of the past, with guile
and magic masking their humanity (or otherwise) and their frailty. It’s a story
which rewards close reading, and one which compelled me to keep turning pages;
the climax was rewarding and impressive – and left me breathlessly hoping for
more.
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