*This post assumes that you have read the novel and may contain
spoilers.*
I was off to a rough start when I began reading Kai Ashante Wilson’s The
Sorcerer of the Wildeeps. My wife and
I have been reading novels before bed, or more specifically, I’ve been reading
aloud to her at bedtime, 10-30 pages or so.
For the last year and a half, we have only been reading women authors
and focusing on science fiction works.
We branched into fantasy with Ann Leckie’s Raven Tower, and then
we decided to take a chance with Wilson’s novel because I had heard excellent
reviews of it, and neither the author nor his main characters were white.
That there are no female characters in the story was a deal breaker for
my wife. We got through the first
chapter, which makes it clear no only that there are no female characters of
note but that the society that is the focus of the book is a patriarchal
testosterone-filled one in which women are valued primarily as providers of sex
and children. She was out, and I was
going to bow out as well.
But I kept thinking about the novel and the language of it, and after a
few days, I decided to pick it back up and continue reading it on my own.
Sorcerer is about language in a lot of ways. While many fantasy novels are set in world’s
different from our own, they tend to have a common use of the English language,
relying on formal British English from the 17th-19th
century. You don’t realize how much this
has become standardized (or at least I didn’t appreciate it) until you are
faced with Wilson’s characters, who speak general American slang and a variant
of AAVE, including words like “brothers,” “thanky,” “y’all, “teef” (for teeth),
“look-see,” “hot ass motherfucken heat,” “dudes,” “wilding,” “homeboy,” “Fo-so”
as slang for “foot soldiers,” and “chuckleheads.”
When I began the novel, I didn’t know what to make of language, because
it felt so specifically modern American in this fantasy desert setting. The words had historical significance that I
thought seemed out of place for this alternative world. One character spoke French, and the character
who had a most Christian-like religious position used “Amen,” which is of
course from Greek. Other characters and
places had distinctly Roman names. It
was a mish-mash that felt completely inconsistent.
But of course, that inconsistency is part of the point. Each chapter is headed by a letter or tale
from other people within the universe, and the language of those passages more
often mirror traditional fantasy language, using “husband” as a verb and “an”
for “if,” as in this sentence: “And where is there a creature to take such a
battering an he need not?” (99). To add
to this collection of voices, even the narrator is made a character who reveals
themself only through their footnotes that seek to clarify or wonder over
Demane’s language. Maybe it’s more
accurate to say that the editor is a character, since the editor comments on
the narrator’s language, so that we have a narrator telling the story of Demane
in the third person and an editor who is presenting that narration to us—in short,
we have layers upon layers of voices and languages, just as history itself
comes to us in layers and layers of intermediaries.
In the context of all these voices and layering, Wilson’s portrayal of
the caravan members offers to lay bare the illusion that is the agreed-upon
fantasy voice, which is rooted in white European and British cultures and
should not be seen as anything natural for our fantasy characters and tales. It’s a powerful and compelling way to make the
point, and it is all excellently done.
On top of that, all that argument and suggestion happens in the background
of an enjoyable adventure love story, so that you can greatly enjoy the telling
even if you don’t give a fig about the language used. Wilson has a wonderful talent and building and
revealing the history and context of the world so that the exchanges between
and thoughts of various characters are rich with meaning and suggestion. Additionally, I’m a big fan of the scope of
the novel. Given the possibilities that
the Wildeeps present, the final conflict could have been as grand and epic as Wilson
wanted. Making the conflict with the
Jukiere personal was in perfect keeping with the rest of the book. At the same time, the story is epic in reach,
in that this is the personal story of Demane and how he became the one to watch
over and time the Wildeeps when no one else would.
It’s a great story and a solid book.
It is a shame that there is no room made for women in the story. Having his Aunty be important and a guide
doesn’t make her much of a character, and there is nothing in the story that
required a patriarchal background. You can
have a fair culture in terms of gender and still have it be homophobic, if
having Demane and Isa’s relationship problematic is important. Having half the caravaneers be women would
not impact the story in any way, let alone negatively. Wilson is obviously free (and encouraged) to
tell whatever story he wants to tell, but I know Ann is not the only person who
will not make it past the first chapter of this book because of these
choices. And that’s a shame, because
this book has a lot to offer a thoughtful reader.
