The Bone Palace – The Necromancer Chronicles by Amanda Downum

Bone Palace opens in Isyllt-the-protagonist’s home city of Erisín, child of the archetype of Ancient, Elaborate, Secret-Filled City along with Tai-tastigon, Mélusine, London, and New York City. This is possibly my favourite fantasy setting ever, and also affords Downum an emotional advantage. In Drowning City, Isyllt enters as a stranger with 2 bodyguards, entering a new place, whereas Bone Palace opens with emotion-filled operatic drama, as Isyllt’s home ground affords her tons of messy, decades-long emotional involvements to fascinate and draw the reader in. Isyllt is a necromancer, the protegé and former lover of the king’s spymaster Kiril, a civil servant who investigates murders and has souls trapped or at home in her dark diamond ring. When an anonymous prostitute is murdered, Isyllt investigates, and continues investigating after others are satisfied, not out of a sense of honour – as she says later in the book, honour is often directly opposed to expediency – but out of a need for self-respect, a probable mix of curiosity and conspiracy instinct, and I think a submerged wish for justice for young, indigent, immigrant women such as she once was.

Besides its rich setting and vivid, complex relationships, the novel is an example of what progressive writers are trying to do that works. There are characters of many races (the most common being brown-skinned, although Isyllt is a white northerner), hetero, bi, and homosexual characters, trans characters, intersexual characters, and all of it is absorbed into the complex setting and none of it seems out of place. There are also many, many women characters, which at one point looked odd to me for a moment (as 4 female characters physically adventured their way to a female sorcerer’s lair) but then I thought, how many fantasy novels have exactly the same gender ratio, only with males being more common? If you count the king as a significant presence, Bone Palace has 5 major male characters (Mathiros, Kiril, Varis, Nikos, Spider) and 2 prominent male minor characters (Ciaran and Mekaran). If there are also 5 major female characters (Isyllt, Savedra, Ashlin, Phaedra, Khelséa) and 6 prominent female minor characters (Captain Denaris, Azarné, Forsythia, Tenebris, Nadesda, Ginevra) – why not? It’s a question not enough authors successfully ask.

One possible flaw I did find in the book is I’m not sure it has enough tragedy… I was expecting more characters to die/stop existing in the living world, leaving desolated characters, whereas Isyllt and others end up desolated mainly by tragedic relationships. I haven’t decided whether this works or not yet.

The Bone Palace; Downum, Amanda; Orbit Books; Hachette Book Group; $7.99

Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

I could not put down “Half the Sky” despite being both uplifted by some of the stories and horrified by others. I think we all are vaguely aware of what women in other countries or cultures are subjected to via the media (such as the Iranian woman who recently was sentenced to be stoned to death) but this book really hammers home the fact that it’s actually happening, very prevalent and REAL. What these women go through on a daily basis is unimaginable to most of us but the stories portrayed hit you directly in the gut. I had no idea what a fistula was until I read this, and once I learned I was appalled at how common they are in other countries and how the girls who suffer from them are treated.

Women in much of the world are made to suffer through honor killings or rapes, maternal mortality or morbidity, run of the mill beatings by husbands, fathers, brothers (and mothers and mothers-in-law), sex trafficking, genital mutilation and the chronic, every day problem of having more responsibilities than most can manage with the bare resources they have. That is, if they aren’t aborted, murdered shortly after birth or allowed to die of something before the age of five that their brothers would get immediate treatment for. The most shocking statistic in the entire book is that there are between 60 and 100 millions girls missing. China, India and Pakistan are big offenders, although they are not the only ones. The joke is on them, as the boys they valued above girls are now going to find it increasingly difficult to find a wife. (No one is laughing.)

It’s a grim, bleak picture for many of these women, but despite the odds, not only do many survive, some also thrive, lifting not only themselves up but also their families and their communities. There are several mechanisms that can accelerate their rise, but education, healthcare (most especially family planning and reproductive services) and access to financial tools (including savings and loans, frequently provided by micro financing organizations) are the ones that made the biggest impacts in the stories here.

There is discussion interspersed about how much better the finances of the communities and countries become when women are treated with more respect, but the authors stress that this both shouldn’t be overstated and shouldn’t be the only reason women are treated with respect. They make a convincing argument that women’s rights is to the 21st century what abolitionism was to the 18th and 19th centuries. (And, surely, when you read about the horrific treatment sex slaves and “disobedient” daughters and wives are made to endure, it’s hard to disagree.) A young social entrepreneur activist put it best: “Girls’ rights are human rights.”

Despite the despair that permeates so many of the stories of the book, the tone of the narrative is also hopeful. In each case, the authors try to transform the victim through tales of personal valour and sacrifice. The book also ends on a note of advocacy, exhorting readers to get engaged in a global movement to end the abuse of women just as the world united to end slavery at all levels across all societies. The authors also provide a list of four steps which we can take to get involved with various NGOs that are working towards the goal of equal rights for women worldwide.

The tone of the book is realistic but hopeful, and the authors provide three or four pages of links that readers can log onto to help in their own way. This is not dispassionate journalism- there are about three instances where the authors admit to intervening in their subjects’ stories- but that doesn’t diminish the work. I applaud the authors for shining a light on these issues, and I hope they can keep that spotlight on.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide; Virago; Hachette Group; Rs. 595