The Conductors is the debut fantasy novel from Nicole Glover. In a world one step away from ours, magic is real. But the atrocities of humanity are still just as real. The American civil war still happened, and so did the emancipation of the slaves. But some of those slaves were wielders of a celestial magic, a scattered remnant of their own truths; and some of their owners were sorcerors, driving direct and brutal change through sheer focused power. Escapees made their way to freedom on the underground railroad, shepherded from safehouse to safehouse in slave-owner territory by Conductors, who took their lives into their hands on every journey. But now, the war is over, and the slaves are free. At least nominally; as a people and a collective, they still carry the scars of their experience, in a nation which still isn’t sure it wants anything to do with them. And in one small corner of that already fraught world, someone is murdering those who escaped from slavery - and horrors carved on their flesh.
Hetty is our window on this world, this delicately blended melange of the strange and the familiar. Hetty was a Conductor, someone who dove into and out of slave owning territory to rescue people from bondage. And she was rather good at it. Pragmatic, occasionally ruthless, with a good heart and willingness to do what she had to in order to save lives, Hetty stands as someone with a strong moral core, and the skills to do something about injustice. Part of that core may be driven by her own escape from slavery, fleeing with her sister into the wilderness; the cost of that freedom was losing track of her sibling. Hetty now is washed up on the shores of a world with less use for the Conductors, a world where liberty has given way to civic responsibility, and heroics to the day-to-day grind of paying the rent. But Hetty is a woman with purpose, investigating things which don’t make sense - finding the lost, and tracking down murderers for a community which the larger establishment has, at best, no interest in.
I’ve got a lot of time for Hetty. We talk about strong female leads a lot, and she is that, but she’s also a fully realised individual, fighting for agency, with her own wants and needs, her own fears and dislikes, her own relationships - with her landlord, with those she helped to freedom all those years ago, with preachers and weavers and doctors and, well, her husband. I have to shout out ot that relationship, incidentally, because it’s a joy to read - a pair who worked together for years, living together because they don’t have another way to be, comfortable around each other, and stepping lightly around the idea of eros. Adults in the prime of life, deciding what their relationship is, as comfortable with each other as a pair of well-worn shoes. It’s refreshing!
Anyway, Hetty investigates a series of gruesome murders, partly because nobody else will. Nobody else, in fact, seems to care. The world that we have here carries the authentic stain of discrinmination throughout, seeping into every interaction like a bloody ink. You can hear the crack of war-torn gunfire in the recent, unforgotten past. And the silent, sideways glances that keep “certain people” in certain areas of the city speak volumes. This is a story of oppression and power, and the consequences when one has been led by the other. But it’s also a story about community, the strength of friendship and the way those let us be more than we are; as Hetty dives into death, she finds assistance from old friends, and the warmth and energy and love that comes from those connections gives the hear tot this story, make sit something real and vital. In a civic society that wants nothing to do with ex-slaves and other people of colour, these families built of experience and connection give some truth and weight and joy.
In the end, this is one part mystery story, one part period drama, one part explosive magic adventure, and all of those are great fun. Hetty is a fantastic, no-nonsense protagonist, and I really would like to see more of her adventures.
This one’s worth a look!
No comments:
Post a Comment