“I think it’s about convenience,” Thomil shot back, “like most mages’ endeavors. It’s much easier to tell yourself you’re a good person than it is to actually be one.”
Chapter 8: Rune Reader, Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang
Table of Contents
Preamble
It has been rough going this year for me as far as fantasy novels go. I started off the year with the horrid Heavenly Tyrant and the fantasies I read after that didn’t particularly work for me – Interview with the Vampire’s prose was overly descriptive, The Legend of Meneka’s characters weren’t that interesting to me, and The River Has Roots was way too short for me to really get invested in its world.
So when I heard about Blood Over Bright Haven from the booktuber Elliot Brooks’ review of the book, I immediately put it on my TBR and moved it up to my “Up Next” queue I could get to it as soon as possible. I put the book on my TBR on the third of May and I started and finished reading the book on the eleventh of May. Suffice to say I was thirsty for a good fantasy novel I could sink my teeth into.
What caught my eye from Elliot’s review – adult fantasy, themes of colonization and complicated characters. It sounded very similar to another book I really enjoyed – Babel by R.F Kuang which was one of my books of the year for 2024. That book is a high bar to be compared to so this book had quite the task ahead of it if it was going to live up to Babel’s standards.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
One of the aspects of this book that I noticed immediately after I started reading it is its lack of subtlety. This book wears its themes on its sleeve, you cannot miss it. Just like I said in Babel, this book takes the “subtlety is for cowards” angle and goes full throttle into it from the beginning and it doesn’t stop.
Themes
So what are the themes of this book? As I mentioned earlier colonization is one of the biggest themes, the book weaves in all kinds of aspects of colonization into its story – dehumanization, extractive economies, a oppressed underclass and in the case of this book it also brings in the use of religion in propping up the oppressive colonial structures of the world.
The other big theme in this book is misogyny & sexism. As mentioned in the book’s description, one of the main characters Sciona becomes the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry at the University of Magics and Industry. The world of this book is extremely sexist and misogynist and the book makes that very obvious in all kinds of ways. Elliot mentioned in their review that the misogyny is really out there and I can concur, if you are someone who’d rather not read about characters being misogynistic and sexist – this book isn’t for you. There’s a lot of that in here.
Characters
Blood Over Bright Haven revolves around two major characters and their interactions – Sciona and her lab assistant Thomil. There are some other characters involved but the vast majority of the character work on display here is in service to develop Sciona and Thomil as characters. I think this book works really well, both main characters here are quite emotionally complex and interesting.
Sciona is a unlikable character which is a aspect I enjoyed a lot. The aspect that makes this interesting is that Sciona is not outright a villain but someone who in ways small and big helps perpetuate the machine of oppression. How she is depicted once she discovers the conspiracy at the heart of the book and her interactions with Thomil is where this book shines. Interactions between Sciona and Thomil are essentially used to depict a microcosm of the oppression present in the wider world of this book. It works well.
Thomil is a member of the oppressed underclass in this book, the Kwen. Throughout the book, we get an idea of the wide variety of ways the Kwen population of Tiran, the city this book this takes place in, are oppressed. They are dehumanized, treated as disposable labour to be thrown into the magical oppression machine until every bit of labour is wrung out of them and then they are thrown away. Thomil is depicted as a man in conflict between preserving his own tribes culture and protecting his niece Carra, knowing that in a society where you are treated as subhuman, any bit of identity, any culture not in line with the oppressor’s ideals will get you punished.
Having the two main characters of your book be oppressor and oppressed is a difficult path to walk. It is very easy to fuck this kind of dynamic up by not depicting the nuance involved in such a relationship or not having the uncomfortable conversations that two characters like this are going to end up having. It would have been easy for this book to have Sciona depicted as the enlightened hero who throws away her oppressive ways and saves the oppressed underclass from their misery. The book does not do that, it opts to take the harder route and have a story with more nuance. I appreciate that.
World & Magic System
The world and magic system on display in this book are done just right. I mentioned at the top of this review about a fantasy I read earlier this year that reveled in its descriptive prose. This book has just the right amount of description of its environments, enough for you to get the vibe of the space the characters are in.
The magic system…in a way the magic system is a main character in this book. This book is about the magic system and the conspiracy at the heart of it. As such it could have been fairly complicated but it isn’t. This is because the book does a good job of explaining how its magic system works. There is a scene where Sciona explains the magic system to Thomil like a teacher would. It is a little heavy handed but it serves the plot and also gets the explanatory bits of the book out of the way.
Conclusions
I really enjoyed this book. You may have noticed earlier that I mentioned that I had finished the book the same day I started reading it. I started reading the book on Sunday morning and just wanted to keep reading it so I did and about six hours or so of reading later I had finished it. It is quite rare for me to finish a book of this length in one day and its the first time this year that has happened.
How does Blood Over Bright Haven match up to Babel? I think it does a fantastic job at that. It is somewhat different from Babel, it eschews a complex web of characters and opts to focus on its two main characters, their interactions with each other and the wider world. It feels smaller in scope than Babel and that’s not a bad thing, it distills a lot of what I enjoyed about Babel – the themes of colonization and anti-colonial violence – into a well written narrative while not giving up the nuance such topics require.
Thank you to Elliot Brooks for putting this book and this author on my radar. Finally some really good fucking food for the fantasy book enjoyer in me.
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