What I’m reading: A BETRAYAL IN WINTER by Daniel Abraham
I confess a bias on this one. Daniel is a friend, a former WFC roommate, and one of authors I admire most. That said, I have no doubt that anyone serious about fantasy will adore his work.
If you you’ve read A Shadow in Summer, Daniel’s first novel, you’ll know his style is poetic without pretension. You’ll know he coveys sensory detail with such economy and abundance it makes for an immersive reading experience. You’ll know his characters are vivid and his plot moves with an artful complexity. You can expect all of this with a dash more sophistication in his second book, A Betrayal in Winter.
In fantasy today, there are few worlds and magic systems that strike me as truly fresh. Daniel’s series provides both. The world of the Khaiem shares a bit in common with an imaginary South Asia on the verge of a renaissance-like expansion of culture, science, and violence. In this world, special practitioners of language called poets are able to describe certain ideas to such precise detail that the ideas become human-like beings called andats. So, for example, the first book focuses on an andat named “removing-the-part-that-continues” or, more simply, “Seedless”. This spirit can magically remove the seeds from cotton or a child from the womb. Daniel shows admirable restraint when lacing his world with magic. There are few andats and creating and controlling them is perilous and difficult. More importantly the magic they weld is interwoven into the world’s economy, morality, and social structure.
Daniel resorts to none of the usual earmarks of fantasy such as elves, talking swords, etc. His storytelling is subtle and free of the usual “pyrotechnics” (epic battles, huge monsters, etc) on which so many fantasists rely. I might compare more traditional fantasy–my own work included–to bright oil painting, and Daniel’s work to a masterwork of pencil or watercolor. For that reason, anyone with even a passing interest in what can be done with fantasy simply has to pick up Daniel’s work!
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