Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks

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language: English
country: USA
year: 2002
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
series: Elemental Logic, #1
dates read: 3.6.21-5.6.21, 7.7.22-11.7.22, 14.4.24-17.4.24

Laurie Marks’s Fire Logic is the first in her Elemental Logic series, which I read for the first time last year; I was absolutely blown away, and that impression has only strengthened on rereading. some of my thoughts about the series are comparable to what I’ve written about Patricia McKillip and Elizabeth Lynn (Marks is closer to Lynn, although her characters are also more central to the change that’s happening — that is, they are agents of change, not simply experiencers).

this series as a whole, but even already this incredible first book, I think really embodies my alternate reading of Tolkien’s escape/recovery/consolation triad as escape/critique/revolution. escape (from the constraints of past and present) and critique (made possible by the new, clear vision that escape creates) are the central themes of the novel, which is, every step of the way, about Mark Fisher’s “From a situation where nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again” conclusion to Capitalist Realism. the result of this is repeated moments, especially in the second half of the book, where I have to put the book down and scream a little because it’s so good.

the characterization throughout is incredible. even Norina manages to be almost lovable. even as (because) all of them have flaws and faults: they feel real, even when they’re caught up in the prescience and visions of fire logic or the implacable intuition of earth logic or air logic’s rigid and unyielding impulse towards truth (McKillip again: “I could not desire anything less for [Isig] than that it yields always, unsparingly, the truth of itself”). when Emil finally meets [REDACTED] I lose my mind.

Fire Logic is, first and foremost, a novel about navigating a brutal anticolonial guerrilla war: the experience of fighting, of course, but also the experience of living through it, and, concomitantly, the devastating impact that fifteen years of war have on land, on people, on societies. it’s about increasing tensions and contradictions that can only be resolved by radical — even revolutionary — change.

the use of Zanja — an outsider to Shaftal — as the main POV character means that we experience the secondary world through her double vision, seeing Shaftal both as distinct from our primary world and from Zanja’s points of reference among the Ashawala’i. while this aspect of the world-building is much less central to the novel (and series) than it is to Delany’s Stars in My Pocke Like Grains of Sand, I nonetheless think it compares favorably to Delany in its thoroughgoing attention to the implications of its world-building decisions about Shaftali, Sainnite, and Ashawala’i society.

I still wish we got more of an articulation of the logic of water logic, as opposed to just the magic of it. I was struck by Zanja’s passing comment about fire logic “encompassing a grand contradiction” because that was kind of how I’d thought about water logic, but I think it’s how this is accomplished that’s different: fire logic is about finding a synthesis that resolves or escapes a contradiction, opening new possibilities; water logic is about accepting the (apparent) contradiction and the possibility that both of its terms may be true simultaneously and exploring the implications of this.

anyway. unequivocally one of the greatest fantasy novels I’ve ever read and unequivocally one of the greatest series I’ve ever read.

(I should note, finally, that I mainly use the “inspiring” mood to mean “I want to write something like this”.)

moods: dark, emotional, hopeful, inspiring, reflective, tense


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