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juushikaI stumbled into a Maledicte reread (I swear, I just wanted to check Mal's eye color—which is black, by the way), and had a moment, as one does, where I held the book to me and said, "This is my favorite book."
And upon consideration: it is.
I don't mean that it's the best book, insofar as there is such a thing (the head-hopping was particularly obvious in this reread); nor is it even the book I'd recommend to the most readers. But I’ve read it an easy seven times since it was published in 2007, at least enough for once yearly and maybe more than that. It’s one of the few books which makes me fannish, or introduced me to one of my favorite characters.
Subgenres are just about my favorite thing, precisely because I love tropes so much—and subgenres are genres turned specific, their tropes distinctive near to the point of exaggeration. Maledicte slides into the deepest niche of fantasy of manners—voiding the genre's tendency to limit fantasy to a fictional setting, its worldbuilding incorporates dark, chthonic magics; its intrigues aren't complex or delicate: they're heartless, bloody, unrelenting, and the complexity instead sits at the interpersonal level; the setting and style has a gleeful abandon, a near exaggeration, from the crumbling divine-smote Relicts to the insubstantial, bickering, reactionary veneer of courtly politics. Taking its cue from Swordspoint, it's queer as fuck: one of the most convincing and complex examinations of gender performance and identity I’ve seen. Think Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths gone slantwise, more compact, more willing in its cruelty, more idealized (when it wants to be) in its darkness, its beautiful and flawed violence. It has the sort of vivid strokes I expect from visual media, but the complexity and amorality I treasure and which text makes room for. And Maledicte, its heart, my heart, temperamental and seductive, frequently unforgivable but capable of such love.
I've loved this book since the first time I read it:
But I knew that; what amazes me is that I love it the most. I read a lot! I reread almost as often. I have a pile of favorites and a number of books slated for bi-yearly rereads. But this one is, likely, my favorite—favorite not because it meets some untenable standard of "best" or even because it speaks to some episode in my life or of my character, but simply because I love it, vivid dark violent, atmospheric to an extreme, rolling in its tropes and stylizations until it grows filthy with them, as decorative and sharp-edged as Mal with his sword.
That was neat to discover.
And upon consideration: it is.
I don't mean that it's the best book, insofar as there is such a thing (the head-hopping was particularly obvious in this reread); nor is it even the book I'd recommend to the most readers. But I’ve read it an easy seven times since it was published in 2007, at least enough for once yearly and maybe more than that. It’s one of the few books which makes me fannish, or introduced me to one of my favorite characters.
Subgenres are just about my favorite thing, precisely because I love tropes so much—and subgenres are genres turned specific, their tropes distinctive near to the point of exaggeration. Maledicte slides into the deepest niche of fantasy of manners—voiding the genre's tendency to limit fantasy to a fictional setting, its worldbuilding incorporates dark, chthonic magics; its intrigues aren't complex or delicate: they're heartless, bloody, unrelenting, and the complexity instead sits at the interpersonal level; the setting and style has a gleeful abandon, a near exaggeration, from the crumbling divine-smote Relicts to the insubstantial, bickering, reactionary veneer of courtly politics. Taking its cue from Swordspoint, it's queer as fuck: one of the most convincing and complex examinations of gender performance and identity I’ve seen. Think Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths gone slantwise, more compact, more willing in its cruelty, more idealized (when it wants to be) in its darkness, its beautiful and flawed violence. It has the sort of vivid strokes I expect from visual media, but the complexity and amorality I treasure and which text makes room for. And Maledicte, its heart, my heart, temperamental and seductive, frequently unforgivable but capable of such love.
I've loved this book since the first time I read it:
The opening of Maledicte is the only part of the novel which doesn't quite work for me, and there was no immediate click between me and the book. But as Maledicte stands in the study that first night, rude and beautiful and young, he burns like a light out of the shadows that swathe carpets and bookshelves and I said: Yes.
But I knew that; what amazes me is that I love it the most. I read a lot! I reread almost as often. I have a pile of favorites and a number of books slated for bi-yearly rereads. But this one is, likely, my favorite—favorite not because it meets some untenable standard of "best" or even because it speaks to some episode in my life or of my character, but simply because I love it, vivid dark violent, atmospheric to an extreme, rolling in its tropes and stylizations until it grows filthy with them, as decorative and sharp-edged as Mal with his sword.
That was neat to discover.
