Review: Starless by Jacqueline Carey

Confession: I never cared for Kushiel. So when the last of my World Fantasy books turned out to be a 580 page tome by Jacqueline Carey, I was a little wary.

Actual result? The worst problem with Starless is that it needed to be another couple of hundred pages. There's a pacing issue that's often symptomatic of one's editor saying "Enough already, you need to finish this book."

Really, Starless needed to be two four hundred page books to fully cover its epic story. The world building is interesting. The world appears to be flat (although this is never stated) and there are no stars...because they pissed off the sun and were exiled to Earth.

So, this is a world where the gods walk...but the gods are geographically limited. They can't leave their lands. So, fixing the entire mess? That requires mortals.

Enter Khai and Zariya. Zariya is a princess of the royal house of the desert kingdom of Zarkhoum (based off of various desert cultures). Khai is her chosen shadow, born in the same moment and bound to her by Zarkhoum's twin deities. IOW, soulmate.

It's a great concept and it's executed deftly, with the caveat of the pacing issues already mentioned.

I did have one small issue with Khai's characterization and background. As Zariya's chosen shadow, he is raised at a desert monastery/school of martial arts, because his primary role is seen as being her bodyguard.

Khai is phenotypically female, but is raised as an "honorary boy." The idea no doubt comes from the Afghan practice of "bacha posh," where families without a son will treat one of their daughters as an honorary boy, able to lead a male life. (And yes, Zarkhoum women go veiled and lead the same kind of life as women in Arabic and central Asian Muslim countries).

Except they don't tell him.

And somehow he gets to 11 without realizing he doesn't have... Carey tries to explain this by saying that the monks are big on privacy, but it's also stated that he's seen the "block and tackle" on male animals.

This is a bright, curious kid - he'd have noticed. I can't buy that he didn't realize. Khai spends the rest of the book varying degrees of genderfluid, which I can sort of buy as a way of resolving gender confusion.

But "why don't I have a block and tackle" would have come up long before puberty. Sorry, Carey, I just can't buy that a character so smart and observant...

Issues of Khai's gender aside, this is definitely an interesting book, and in my opinion, is better than Kushiel. It's shamelessly a fantasy - don't expect the laws of physics to apply. There's only divine magic in the world, often seemingly gifted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by gods who are honestly more Olympian than not.

And it is always nice to see a secondary world fantasy that leans on sources other than Medieval Europe.

Oh, and the sea wyrms are cute.

Mostly recommended.