Phoenix Extravagant is, well, it’s good.
Actually, strike that. It’s great. It’s a story which wants to get you thinking
about big questions - about colonialism, about identity, about family, about
the nature of choice. But it’s not a weighty treatise. The story artfully
weaves all of these big questions into more personal narratives, into the lives
and loves and struggles of the characters, creating something which sparkles on
the page, which compels you to turn just one more page, and, above all, is a delight
to read.
As you can tell from the above, I rather
enjoyed this one. One of the core reasons for that is the protagonist, Jyen
Gebi. Jyen Gebi isn’t a Chosen One, or a general, or a powerful politician.
Jyen Gebi is an artist. Jyen Gebi is just getting by, as much as they can, as
well as they can, under difficult circumstances. They’re easy to sympathise
with, just wanting to get on, do their job, do it well, and pay the rent.
There’s a vulnerability and an honesty there, a sense of an everyday person
just trying to get by. Jyen Gebi is thoughtful, introspective, someone trying
to break free of the socio-economic constraints fitted around them; or at
least, wanting to make those constraints chafe a little less. And they’re
genuine - warm, and funny, and friendly. Not romantic per se, but willing to
build relationships, to put the work in. Someone who knows what the right thing
is, and will at least try to see it through.
It helps (perhaps) that we can contrast Jyen
Gebi with their older sister: fierce, driven, uncompromising, she is. A
wonderful contrast to Jyen’s capacity for accommodation of circumstance.
Because that passion is dangerous, It can lead you into all sorts of trouble,
especially in the world these two inhabit.
They’re not alone in that world, of course,
being surrounded by a supporting cast that includes ominous government
ministers, well-connected art dealers, elegant duelists and, well, a dragon.
The latter I don’t want to discuss in too much detail, for fear of spoilers,
but watching them adjust to the world, experience it fresh, deciding who and
what they are and will be, is wonderful and each turn of the page is downright
refreshing.
All of these folks are living in a world whose
story seeps out of the page over time. It begins in a city under occupation,
where cultural heritage and memory are being appropriated or expunged. Where
the people - not the aristocracy, but the regular run of people - are adjusting
to their new state of being, to their new leadership, and where the new leadership
are trying to shape the people in line with their own cultural mores, their own
truths. And that city, with its undercurrents of racial and cultural tension,
its overt military control, its revolutionaries and collaborators...that city
is simmering and may yet boil over. I must admit, walking the neighbourhoods
with Jyen Gebi is a joy, seeing them thrive and live and absorb their new
cultural overlords, or rage at their arrival. At the blockhouse of the ministry
of armour, or the lavish rooms of a dealer in fine art. This is a pcle which
you can see in your minds eye, feel, smell even. The words that draw this into
being construct a work of art that you build out yourself, and have a sense of
place, a sense of reality to them as a result. The city lives.
The plot. Look, I won’t spoil it for you, but
it’s intriguing, it’s thoughtful, it will make you think, and it’s fun. There’s romance, charmingly structured and
passionately compelling. There’s swordfights. There’s highwire tension,
friendship, betrayal, joy and terror in equal measure. This is a story which
made me gasp, which made me laugh, which wrung out my heart and, above all, a
story which made me feel. It’s a
fantastic story, one I deeply enjoyed, and one which you’ll enjoy as well.
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