[bala · home]
[okadenamatī · reviews]
[mesaramatiziye · other writings]
[tedbezī · languages]
language: English
country: USA
year: 2024
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
series: Between Earth and Sky, #3
dates read: 21.6.24-30.6.24
here is the thing about Rebecca Roanhorse’s Mirrored Heavens, the final book of her Between Earth and Sky trilogy, which this is, by extension, also a review of. I think it is solid epic fantasy. the writing isn’t amazing, with some typical Tor copyediting errors (mainly malapropisms; the punctuation is mostly fine), but it’s not bad either — solid and engaging, just a bit plain. the plotting is, for the most part, good (though I have some criticisms there, as well).
I do not, however, think it particularly succeeds in being Indigenous epic fantasy. obviously its setting is heavily aesthetically inspired by various Indigenous cultures — Mississippian Hokaia, Nahua-Maya Cuecola, vaguely Southwestern Tova, perhaps-Taíno/Carib/Arawak Teek, a very vaguely Inuit north — but in basically every other respect it’s just…normal epic fantasy. the main characters are typical epic fantasy aristocrats (or aristocrats in denial, or fallen aristocrats), except for Naranpa (who the book leaves in an indefinite magical coma) and Zataya (more on this later). the political drama is pretty much par for the course — jockeying for alliances, scheming, assassinations, and so on.
most dramatically, it rests on the idea, first, that there are a relatively defined and universal set of gods, such that working-class city girl Naranpa will immediately recognize a carving of the wind god made in the far north. this is, of course, entirely within the bounds of mainstream epic fantasy, and it is simultaneously entirely at odds with the wide diversity of Indigenous cultures Roanhorse is drawing on, not all of whom necessarily even have “gods” as such in the first place, and certainly not all of whom have the same gods. I think if you enjoy epic fantasy it is worth giving the series a try, but frankly I think the reaction to the trilogy as if it were this incredible, groundbreaking, New thing that no-one has ever seen before when it’s really just something pretty conventional that’s been reskinned attests more to a profoundly narrow imagination on the part of fantasy readers and reviewers than it does to the novelty of anything in what Roanhorse has actually written.
however, this is perhaps primarily a critique of audience conversations around the book — and of course of Tor’s marketing strategy — rather than of the book itself. so let’s talk about the book itself! spoilers follow.
in terms of its narrative, I want, first, to complain pettily that the blurb promised me the Jaguar God would be there. the Jaguar God is not there at all. that’s not Roanhorse’s fault, but it does relate to a more general thematic complaint about the series: for a series that is ostensibly about the abrupt return of gods to a region that claimed to have abandoned them (indeed, that claimed the gods were mostly dead), there sure are kind of not any gods in the book. this is something that has bugged me since the first book: we are told that Serapio often does not feel human, but we are basically never shown his god-interiority. as the series has gone on, there have been more divine avatars: Naranpa, especially, and in this book Xiala. but again, minimal actual engagement with their gods. when the sun god shows up near the end of Mirrored Heavens it’s in a very weird way where it’s not entirely clear whether the god is really there or if Naranpa is dreaming again.
this is kind of an issue in a book which from its title on suggests that we are meant to see the conflict between humans as a mirror of the conflict between gods! it’s also accentuated by the absence of other gods: the Coyote God sends Zataya a prophecy, and for a moment I was hopeful we might have another avatar, but after that opening chapter we never get her perspective again until the very end, when she appears as the “perspective” for a summary chapter covering some of the many political changes between the end of the main plot and the final two epilogue-like chapters. this felt like a major gap, especially since Fevered Star spent a great deal of time on class divisions internal to Tova and the marginalization of the Coyote Clan and the people of the Maw! by the same token, it seemed for a while like the book was setting up Balam’s ascension — down to the fact that his name means “jaguar” in Classic Maya — as avatar of the jaguar god. instead he’s killed off in two paragraphs, still human. where is the divine conflict I was led to expect? the end of the book / series just kind of…fizzles out.
I also must say that I feel…hm…a way about Roanhorse saying she wanted to “celebrate[] the unique beauty of these cultures and decolonized gender and love” in a series where
more generally, I was dissatisfied with the handling of the bayeki characters, first because we get no information about what it actually means to be bayeki (are they trans / nonbinary? are they intersex? is there fully a third sex in this setting? what does any of that mean?) and second because the only bayeki characters we meet are both (ex-)priests. does that mean only Knives are bayeki? what is happening here?
finally, and this is such a small, petty thing but I simply cannot get over it: why on earth, in a book drawing heavily on the aesthetic of Mesoamerican cultures and languages, where <x> is typically /∫/, would you use “xe/xir” — where “xe” would be pronounced…“she” — as the pronoun for the bayeki characters? hello???? I’ve been losing my mind over this since 2021.
all of this said: I would still read another book in this setting. probably not another book about these specific characters, but if she were to revisit the Meridian with new characters or especially in a different time period I would most likely read that. so, like, the takeaway should be that this series isn’t bad, by any means — it just frustratingly fails to live up to what I wanted it to be.
moods: adventurous, dark,