Book Review – A Telling of Stars
Author: Caitlin Sweet
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: August 2005
Caitlin Sweet’s debut novel – A Telling of Stars- was nominated for the Locus Best First Novel of 2003 and the Crawford Award for the Best First Novel 2003, given a special mention by the Sunburst judges in 2004 and was heavily praised by certain friends and authors whose opinions I trust. So, as soon as a copy came my way, through the mysterious channels and numerous hands that constitute overseas shipping (the book has only been published in Canada thus far, making it slightly more difficult to obtain in other parts of the world), it leapt to the top of my reading pile. And it didn’t take long to devour. Partly because it is that most rare of things: a short(ish) stand-alone fantasy novel, weighing in at a svelte 373 pages and partly because it is written in a lyrical, sensual prose that delivered me quickly from chapter to chapter.
Like many first novels A Telling of Stars is a coming-of-age story, told from only one point of view and with a focus on character and interior emotions. Eighteen year old Jaele lives an idyllic life with her family by the sea, playing games of queens and warriors with her younger brother Elic and re-enacting old battles against the sea-raiders, amphibious humans from a dry, barren land across the ocean. Her innocence, and her family’s stability, is shattered however when a small group of these sea-raiders sack her home and murder her family, leaving her utterly alone, bereft and filled with a raw desire for revenge. Haunted by memory and running just ahead of despair, she chases a single sea-raider (abandoned by his comrades after infighting) across country for hundreds of miles, determined to kill him. Along that way she encounters a vastness of landscape and numerous exotic races, gains companions and looses them and undergoes sexual and spiritual awakenings. Nevertheless, her determination remains the same: capture the sea-raider and kill him.
A Telling of Stars is not an action fantasy, and aside from one dramatic tribal battle scene, consists largely of introspective journeying. Nor is it political fantasy; while we’re introduced to the myths and legends of Jaele’s world, we’re not made aware of its wider current affairs or its leading protagonists. It is very much an insulated, personal and, ultimately, humane, tale of grief and discovery. And yet it proves itself to be extremely lively and engrossing; Sweet’s prose is rich and bright, painting a vivid picture of Jaele’s environment and of the many different cultures she encounters. If there is such a thing as “anthropological fantasy” then this is it. A whole world of races, peoples and tribes are laid before us, from the Gypsy-like horse-folk, the Alilan to the Shonyn, a settled people with no words for past, present and future, to the ethereal, prophetic Iben-seers. Weird and dreamlike places are absorbed and realised and I was especially enchanted by the desert palace of Yagol, a haunted ruin watched over by the Rabelaisian “Keeper” and filled with living memories. Further, the book is constantly lit up by imaginative sketches from jellyfish that juggle shells to orchards of fruit trees that grow underground. So, although I’ve heard the book called “quiet” and “slow”, I’d disagree. While the prose may be mellifluous and full of careful detail, with many ripples of repetition, it is also filled with excitement and experience.
Caitlin’s writing style is worth further mention. It reminded me most of Guy Gavriel Kay, but was even more poetically pared down with short stream-of-consciousness sentences and an oceanic quality (which fitted well with Jaele’s family heritage).
Throughout there were long gatherings of the wave and then short crashes of sensation. Jaele’s most painful and insistent memories were like breakers constantly beating on rock: short, sharp and sensory. This led me to read the novel in a very different way and mostly aloud. I found almost from the very beginning that silent reading wasn’t tangible enough and that the prose (and the story) demanded that I speak (which resonates nicely with the title of the novel). I had to literally Tell myself this story, which is deeply dynamic with forms of oral storytelling, myth-passage and history-building.
My only real reservation was that Jaele’s interactions with the people she meets, several of whom become physical and emotional partners to her, are so single-faceted and self-absorbed. Because of the particularity of the novel’s point of view apparently interesting characters often seem short-changed and easily discarded. But having thought more on this, I began to see how it was really an index of Jaele’s character – that her limited, and thus limiting, view of her environment was an essential part of her journey and the changes she experiences by the end of the story.
Finally, I have to mention that this end to the novel left me pretty breathless (is there higher praise?), filled with all kinds of emotions from helplessness and compassion to anger; I was surprised to find how much I had internalised Jaele’s emotional processes and conflicts.
If you enjoy unusual fantasy storytelling and poetic prose, then I highly recommend Caitlin Sweet’s debut; personally, I look forward to reading the newly released prequel The Silences of Home and to her new project-in-progress, an alternate history fantasy based on Greece in 1500BC. She shows every sign of becoming an invigorating, and alternative, new genre talent.
About 
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.