The Sunforge

I’ve been looking forward to this book for some time. It was clear from the first book in the series, The Dawnhounds, that there was a lot to be learned about the world in which the book is set. In particular, while some of the characters are able to do magic, and attribute this to the favour of gods, it is obvious that the gods are actually people (and therefore not actually gods, if you were at the “Gods in Fantasy” panel at Worldcon).

The middle book of a trilogy is a challenge for authors in many ways. Sascha Stronach has chosen to use hers to reveal the true nature of her world. There is not a lot I can say about this without excessive spoilers, save to say that it is clear why Tamsyn Muir loves these books (other than Kiwi solidarity).

So what can I say? Well, Yat and Sen, from the previous book, are now crew on board the Kopek, which is anchored just off the old imperial capital of Radovan. The ship has just come under serious magical attack. It has barely survived, and Captain Sibbi is missing. Much of the first half of the book is then told in backstory. We get to meet the various characters in Radovan with whom the Kopek crew had been working, and we are given a view of what is happening in the city.

Stronach has perhaps been watching UK politics. Failed empires have a habit of falling into Fascism because Fascist leaders love to talk about how they will restore former glories. In Radovan this means an organization called the Vuruhi who recruit amongst disaffected and violent young men. Naturally they prey on foreigners and queers. It is all very familiar. Thankfully Reform doesn’t have actual paramilitary thugs on the streets yet, but they came close to it over the summer.

This being a fantasy novel, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes, and the Vuruhi are merely pawns in a much bigger game. I suspect that Stronach enjoyed having them come to a nasty end. I would have done.

Some readers will find the book difficult to follow. As in the work of Gene Wolfe and Tamsyn Muir, characters are not always who them seem, because they may be possessed by other characters, or be cloned versions of the people you think they are. Sometimes they swap identities from one paragraph to another. I love this sort of thing, but your mileage may vary.

I should also note that that Stronach uses a number of terms from Pacific cultures with which she is familiar. Not all of them are Māori. And, this being Stronach, there is some excellent trans rep in the book. (And no, it does not center on the possession thing. That’s what a cis writer would have done.)

Book three seems to have been fairly well set up by the end of The Sunforge. I wouldn’t put it past Stronach to pull some major surprises. There is, after all, a story that is much bigger than the one most of the characters know about to be resolved. I’ll be pre-ordering book three as soon as it is announced.

Title: The Sunforge
By: Sascha Stronach
Publisher: Saga Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
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