And now, a new novel, A Sword of Bronze and Ashes. Something different, a folk horror fairytale. Still with the same poetry, the same multi-layered prose coursing the wine-dark sea of liquid prose. Still with the same sense of humanity, both at our best and, oh my, at our worst. But also with a focus somewhere different. This is a book about family, about one woman and her journey into the future to deal with the consequences of the past, and her daughters, and how they have to grapple with a legacy which could define them if they let it. And it's wrapped up in a story, a journey that reads like a dream spiked with flashes of nightmare, our cast moving between spaces, between the grounded world around them, the soaring towers of years past, and the bare copper knives of the not-quite yet, all at once. The prose is liquid, tumbling rocky thoughts over in your mind, the story prying them loose, to see what lies beneath. And that's without getting into what it does to the cast.
Kanda is, for want of a better word, our protagonist. A woman who, three children later, quietly whiles away her time on a farm, looking after animals, baling hay, and generally living a quiet life. What Kanda did before she looked after animals and children is another matter. Unfortunately for her, or at least for her quiet life, her past is about to catch up to her in a big way. Because the world Kanda inhabits is as much myth and story as it is known to us. While she pulls in corn and feeds livestock, she speaks with the dead who line the doorways of buildings, keeping them safe from harm. And wards against things roaming in the night, skipping between realities like we would use a revolving door.
Because the darkest dreams of humanity are out here, and very real, in this world where myth and story are another context entwined within reality. Kanda's world is a saga, a song, because it can't be anything else. Kanda is brutally prosaic, a woman who is sometimes drunk, also sometimes hungover, often tired, with an intimate understanding of violence. But in the past, she has been a dream of something more, something which soared, even while the dream in which it lived began to collapse under its own weight. As to what and who else Kanda is, that you'll have to see for yourself. But she is solid in her roles, all of them. A fierce and weighty presence whose sheer determination makes the page and the story and the words wrap around her. The dream she was and the person she is may not be the same, but Kanda is utterly real, to us, as well as to everyone on the page. It's fantastic incidentally, to see her portrayal in the now of the book, a tired woman with three children and a husband, forced back into metaphorical harness by her desire to protect them and keep them safe; and they're there with her and she with them, and the family dynamic has all the bickering and affection and poison and joy of, well, a family. It's something we often sacrifice for tales of battle-maidens in shiny armour, and seeing this, a family story, makes my heart sing a little.
Because this is a family story. Kanda's daughters are varying degrees of young; and it's wonderful that they're all so different. In the way they talk, in the way they react, in what they believe. But in their strengths, in the mistakes they make and the ways they try to fix them, in the passions they feel and the responsibilities they feel they can bear, they're able to find a way to bind themselves together.
And the story. Well, you know I don't spoil those. But it's a very concrete as well as a metaphorical journey. Diving into the past to see how Kanda got where she is now, to build a context for why things are happening. And walking with her through the now, inch by inch as she pulls her family toward, if not safety, a conclusion, a sense of catharsis. It's a story that comes with tension so thick you can less cut it with a knife than actively chew on it - as well as your nails - waiting ot see how thing splay out. And it has the sumptuous, glittering romance of a chivalric folktale, and the mud and blood and disaster of one too. This is a story that pulls no punches, and in fact probably has a stiletto secreted in one hand and a broadsword nonchalantly twirling from the other. It's a story you'll be up at 4AM trying to finish.
So is it good? Hell yes. Should you read it? Hell yes. This is another winner for Anna Smith Spark, and a story you owe it to yourself to read as soon as possible.
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