This week's novel is Shadowshaper, urban fantasy by
Daniel José Older.
Sierra discovers that she comes from a family of shadowshapers, people who can imbue their artistic endeavors (usually murals and street art) with the spirits of the dead. But the murals are fading and someone is killing off the shadowshapers. Since everyone refuses to talk about it, it's up to Sierra to put things right.
The plot of this one follows the same narrative of most urban fantasies, and it's full of convenient happenings to keep the plot zipping along. But here the predictability is a kind of scaffold from which Older can drape this book's differences. The familiarity of the set up throws the unique elements into sharper contrast.
The real showpiece here is the diversity, and I find it remarkably sad that diversity in fantasy is so rare that this is the big topic for discussion in this book. But more than its existence in this book, what I found most interesting was the way it was presented. So many of the non-white, non-straight characters I see either feel like the character got race-bent in the last edit so the main character could have a black friend, or their minority status is the point of the story. But here, it was part of their characterization. Their race and sexual orientation felt as though it was with them from the ground up, from their conception. Their race affected their lives, their back stories, and their values, and this added to the dimensionality of their characters without their race being their character. It felt organic. The effects of oppression came up, of course, but they were acknowledged like it was commonplace.
(That's part of why it's so sad that this is the thing that stood out.)
A more direct example of this is how the book handles the gentrification happening in the background. The girls talk about how they like that they can go get expensive coffees and how the expensive coffees are really good, but they acknowledge that they feel unwelcome. And that's about it. It doesn't turn into an after school special. It's enough to feel real to someone who's experienced gentrification and enough to make someone who hasn't experienced think.
My favorite thing about this book was that it's the anti white-guy-goes-native-and-becomes-the-best-native narrative. In the book, there's an anthropologist named Wick, who studies the shadowshapers, gets initiated into their society, and then wants to fill the vacancy of their missing leader. Everyone else in the story (instead of being in awe of his skills or what-have-you) roll their eyes at him and tell him no. When he presses the issue, Sierra tells him "hell no" and leaves him a broken shell of a man.
***
Next week: more magical realism with The River King by Alice Hoffman
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