Human v Inhuman II

Review: Pahwakhe by Gord Sellar

Online at fantasy magazine 21st january, 2008

Spoiler Warning: Maybe this is more of a critique than a review. I don't like spoilers, but found it hard to write about this story without giving (what some readers may think) too much away. I don't think I have, but I thought I'd warn you just in case.

A tale of paternal love that is undermined by selfishness and greed. A man forces his daughter, Pahwakhe, to marry a ghostly visitor: a musician who takes her away to a place beyond the limits of the living. A year later a child is born – part-human/part-ghost – but it does not fit into its ghostly father’s world, so Pahwakhe returns to her parents, hoping her child can fit in here. Human love, it turns out, has the potential to either save this child or destroy it.

Pahwakhe is told mostly in the form of flashback and from first person point of view. This works really well here because, by choosing to leave certain emotions unsaid, the narrator (Pahwakhe’s father) exposes his flaws. His tragic moments are often understated yet at the same time illuminated.

The story feels very much like a tale told by a fireside. It is framed by two scenes set in the present which serve firstly to foreshadow the conflict and lastly, to reinforce the magnitude of that conflict. The prose is sometimes stark, sometimes lyrical and filled with images of startling clarity:

The singing voices out on the water are moving, sad fiddles calling out like broken birds. They’re coming here. I never imagined them returning.

The setting has an unearthly feel to it, possibly because there is little in the way of description of the normal world. The reader senses that the village is somewhere in North America from keywords such as ‘longhouse’ and ‘chiefs’ and ‘pemmican’, however the lack of reference to any distinctive feature does not rule out that this story could also be set in Polynesia, perhaps on a volcanic stony beach. But this does not matter. What’s important is the overlap between the worlds of the living and the dead: the fog through which the visitors arrive, the unsettling music, the ghostly faces.

On my first reading, I wasn’t sure if the narrator’s claim that the visitors were ghosts was meant to be taken literally or not. It rings true with indigenous people’s first encounters with Europeans, where they believed that pale skinned people were returned spirits, where poor farming practices damaged the land. I like this ambiguity. It grounds the story in both the real and the fantastic. Not knowing what is really happening until later is more unsettling than being told outright.

Although the narrator often understates his emotions, he is clearly miserable. This misery can be felt through his observations, eg, the strangers’ words were “heavy like stones” followed up later with “I cannot find the words. They’re heavy on my tongue, too, now.” His strongest emotion however – the one he dwells on the most – is his yearning to possess first his daughter and then later, his grandchild. Disturbingly, it is not love or sadness or remorse that he articulates most clearly, but his need to possess. For me, this is yet another of the story’s strengths.

Interesting to note is that where the previous story I reviewed (How To Hide Your Heart by Deborah Coates) focuses on acknowledging one’s humanity as a means to survive, this story does the opposite by showing humanity in a far from ideal form. Rather than bring people together, it drives them apart.

If I say any more, I’ll give away the ending. Instead, go read it yourself. It’s a neat little story with a lot to say.

On Reviewing

This reviewing thing is a new experience for me. I’m new to the genre of fantasy, new to being a full-time writer/student. In the meantime, I’m just finding my feet – figuring out what’s new in fantasy literature, what’s old, what’s over-used, what’s different., what can and can’t be done. At this stage in my studies, I’m not sure. So most of my early reviews will not be taking historical aspects into consideration. I’ve yet to learn which themes have been done to death and how, what’s cliché and what’s not. I have a fair idea, but that’s all. I’ll need to read some more to make sure. Hopefully I’ll learn how to make old themes look original (if such a thing is possible). So right now I’m reading and reviewing purely for the pleasure of it. Purely for the story.

I’ve started by looking up Duotrope’s Digest (A Resource for Fiction Writers and Poets). This generated a long list of online fantasy magazines to sort through. Thus begins this current leg of my journey…

Human v Inhuman

Review: How To Hide Your Heart
by Deborah Coates

Online at Strange Horizons
21st January, 2008


Max is a hunter of ‘Things’: inhuman creatures (or maybe demons) that take the form of ‘not-zombies’, ‘not-vampires’, ‘not-wendigoes’. When not hunting, Max attempts to deny his own humanity by remaining homeless, indulging himself in brief liaisons with “girls whose hearts won't break.” When hunting, he is helped by people who do not understand what they are helping with.

Then he meets Beth. Plain, sloppily dressed, Beth’s only promising feature appears to be her prowess at driving cars. But Beth, it turns out, knows more about ‘Things’ than Max realizes. Max wants to use her for her skill and then forget her; but Beth is much more world-wise than she looks. Her connection with Max has the potential to make or break him.

There’s a lot I liked about this piece of urban fantasy. I liked the way the inhuman creatures mean different things to different people. The reader doesn’t really get to ‘see’ what they look like – or even understand what they are – but mostly ‘feels’ their effects: the fear they provoke and the deadly chase where the stakes are not exactly spelled out but are implied as being more than just a loss of life. Even in the story’s two violent encounters we see only darkness, shadows and claws. The only thing we are really sure of is that there’s going to be a battle.

Without the added strength provided by the tentative relationship between Beth & Max, I think this story would have ended up as just another ‘let’s go kill monsters’ story'. On the other hand, without the monsters, Beth and Max would never have connected, let alone found common ground. As unlikely as it seems (in Max’s mind), the two spark from the beginning, albeit reluctantly. This compelled me to read on and although the ending is by no means a resolution, it is certainly a satisfying exploration of human need struggling in the shadow of inhuman aspiration.

Reviewing

I'm certainly not a practiced reviewer, but I thought I'd have a go at writing one a couple of times a week. I'm pretty sure there's a handful of friends who are interested in reading and writing as much as I am. Satima? Helen? Sonia? Jessica? Anudhara?

Okay, so I'm blogging my thoughts on people's stories. I'm only going to write about the ones I like at this stage. Plus I'm currently learning about reading fantasy (in the past I've read mostly science fiction), so hopefully this will give me a better understanding. Did I tell you my thesis is about fantasy?

Oh...and if I don't review your story, it doesn't mean I didn't like it. There's way to many stories for me to blog them all, let alone read them :)