Book Review | An Autumn War (Daniel Abraham)

The Galts have a poet of their own and a plan to break the Khaiem and ensure that no one will ever bind an andat again. Welcome back to The Long Price Quartet.

Grabbed from Amazon, again. But only because I don't have my own copy.
Warning: this review contains spoilers.
Pretty dramatic tag, eh? I'm trying to get better, so I can get more people to read this stuff. Anyway. The tag is correct.

Once again, we return to the world of the Khaiem and the Galts and to our familiar characters Otah and Maati. Alongside them, though, we once again have a number of other viewpoints. Sinja, the mercenary we were introduced to at the tail end of A Betrayal in Winter, becomes much more prominent.

Returning as a viewpoint character we have Liat, who has grown and aged and become wiser and more mature - where before she measured her worth against what men thought of her, the thirty-odd years that have passed since the last time we saw her - as a teenager in A Shadow in Summer - have made her into someone far more self-reliant, with far greater respect for herself. Through her we are able to see what came of the enterprise Amat Kyaan started at the end of Shadow.

Finally, as a viewpoint character we get the Galtic General Balasar Gice. He grew up hearing tales of the andat, of the power of the Khaiem. That, if they so willed it, they could level Galt, leave the entire country dead. Now, though, he - and Galt - have a poet, one who was thrown out of the Village of the Dai-kvo.

The implications of the andat are once again brought to fore. Gice's plan is a clever one: have his poet bind Freedom-from-Bondage. It is possible to bind it, but not to hold it: the very nature of the concept makes holding it impossible. But a binding is possible. And with the right grammar and nuance, binding Freedom-from-Bondage will free every other andat.

You can, of course, make your own guesses from there: the Khaiem is swept through by the Galtic armies, the Village of the Dai-kvo and its library burned, every poet killed.

Only Machi, the northernmost city, has a chance of surviving, and Maati and Cehmai work desperately on a plan to bind a new andat, one that will work as a weapon against the Galts.

An Autumn War is perhaps the most propulsive book of the series: there is war here, and Otah takes up the mantle of leader. A more traditional fantasy plot emerges here, that of the "destined King:" Otah was the only one to see that the Khaiem might one day not have the andat, and so - when the andat are all gone - suddenly he goes from the reviled Khai who broke from all tradition to a hero, a savior, even a future Emperor, if you can believe it...

But even here Abraham subverts: Otah may've been the only one to see it but there is still little he can do. The Khaiem has no military tradition. Of his army, of the one battle they fight, it goes so poorly that the Galts do not even bother coming back after they retreat to finish them off.

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Maati's binding fails. He cleverly manages to avoid the consequences, but in doing so, the andat chooses the consequences. If the histories of the Khaiem and Galt are to be written, going forward, they will be written by the children of both. Maati attempted to bind Corruption-of-the-Generative: aka Sterile.

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Balasar Gice himself isn't a bad person. All that he says about the andat makes sense. His choices, to get rid of them, make sense. As I read, I found myself rooting just as much for Balasar as for Otah and Maati.

Otah and Gice, the Khaiem and the Galts in conflict, aren't the only stories here. Liat aids Kiyan and the women of the Khaiem in keeping Machi in order and preparing for winter while the autumn war goes on. With the men away, it is the women who must take up the slack, as it were.

Maati bonds with Liat's son, Nayiit. In truth, Nayiit is the son of Liat and Otah, but it is certainly Maati who is Nayiit's father. Nayiit's story is not the prettiest one, but it is one understandable to a degree. By no means is he a bad person, but he has aspects of both Otah and Maati in him, and not always their best or brightest aspects. Everyone is painted with nuance. Abraham's prose is as lyrical as ever, his characters as rich as ever.

For all that this is the most propulsive book, with the long-awaited war between the Khaiem and Galt at last, it is always told at a human scale. It remains character-driven. True "action" scenes remain sparse. The price of war is shown quite articulately: the stakes are enormous, the scale is epic, the people are just as human as you or I, doing what they can. People still struggle with who they love, and their inability to control the world around them, and to do what is right, or even know what is right.

Once again Abraham manages to write a beautiful, nuanced, subtle and complex tale of all-too-real people in a brilliantly original setting. The scale is greater than ever but the moments that truly shake the reader's emotions and thoughts, the largest moments, remain the smallest in scale.

Even though I typed quite a bit, there's still stuff I didn't cover: the frailty of Otah's own young son, the upbringing of his daughter, the role of Cehmai in all this. I don't want to cover it all. I don't want to spoil or lead the reader into everything. This is a book well worth its own reading. By no means should these reviews replace the books.

If you like epic fantasy, if you are getting tired of the typical tropes and cliches of the genre, if you want something truly original, then you should check out The Long Price Quartet, because it is masterfully crafted, beautifully rendered, and wholly unique and original.

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Next up: Asimov's, eventually, and a review of The Price of Spring.

The comments section, as always, is open, and you will be welcome with a smile and proffered cup of tea.