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The Warrior Who Carried Life

3.46 of 5 stars 3.46 · rating details · 56 ratings · 3 reviews

The story of a quest for revenge which becomes a quest for the infinite. Cara was five years old when her mother was killed. She was killed for going down into the wells of vision, where only men were allowed. Cara in turn seeks justice by transforming herself into a male warrior.

Mass Market Paperback, 198 pages

Published December 1st 1986 by Spectra (first published March 21st 1985)

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

Highbrow Fantasy Books

159th out of 284 books — 349 voters

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

The Warrior Who Carried Life by Geoff Ryman

Best Canadian Speculative Fiction

5th out of 80 books — 13 voters

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Jun 30, 2008 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

In his “History of Science Fiction”, Adam Roberts came up with a nifty way of dividing hard science fiction (SF) from soft SF or fantasy, saying that fantasy and soft SF followed in the footsteps of Dante and others who've a more catholic, a more religious or spiritual bent to their writing. Think of Tolkien, of Lewis. Or in the world of SF, the messianic stories of Dune. Roberts places the rise of SF in the 1600s and onwards as part of the conflict between Protestantism and Catholocism and well...more In his “History of Science Fiction”, Adam Roberts came up with a nifty way of dividing hard science fiction (SF) from soft SF or fantasy, saying that fantasy and soft SF followed in the footsteps of Dante and others who've a more catholic, a more religious or spiritual bent to their writing. Think of Tolkien, of Lewis. Or in the world of SF, the messianic stories of Dune. Roberts places the rise of SF in the 1600s and onwards as part of the conflict between Protestantism and Catholocism and well, science, of course. Cyrano de Bergerac’s “Voyage to the Moon” (ca. 1650) for example, has lots of science in it (talk of germs and flying machines), but it also posits the moon as the Garden of Eden from which God expelled us curious humans to Earth. Such heresy would not have been tolerated a hundred years or so earlier, but by Bergerac’s time, such merging of religious and scientific speculation didn’t quite set the stakes a-burning.

Wait isn't this review about Geoff Ryman and “The Warrior Who Carried Life”? And isn’t it a fantasy book and not science fiction? Yes and yes. Trust me, though. The thing about “The Warrior Who Carried Life” is that it's very much in the spiritual/theological part of the speculative spectrum (ooh, alliteration). Ryman's story follows in the footsteps of those SF and fantasy tales like Dante’s “Divine Comedy” or Bergerac’s “Voyage to the Moon”, in which the stories of Christianity are reinterpreted or reinvented through some novel POV. In Ryman’s case, that POV is the sword and sorcery sort of fantasy that became dominant after Tolkien resurrected the genre in the 50s.

And yet, the book’s not quite like anything I’ve ever read before. You’ve got your mystical bad guys who can’t be killed and your suspiciously secretive sect of magical women, sure, and you’ve got your young village girl Cal Cara Kerig who witnesses her mother’s death and the ruination of her family before setting out on a revenge fueled journey that will introduce her to the wider world (it’s a good thing we don’t all require the maiming/death of our parents or aunts and uncles to get us out of the house). Heck, you’ve even got the kind of lazy city naming that marks so many fable-tastic fantasies (the Village by Long Water, the City of Better Times). But the brutality and beauty of Ryman’s writing (torture, deformity, everlasting gobstopper mystical flowers…what have you), along with the narrative twists he squeezes Cal into (which I won’t ruin by revealing here), peels away the stereotypical surface of the story and gets at something new, even as it reaches those timeless truths that are older than the oldest stories.

“This is a universe that has been ruined by it’s maker,” one of the undying bad guys says at one point. And I supposed you could make the argument that Ryman’s attempt to mix the archetypes of fantasy with the lore of Christianity, might ruin both universes—the fantastic infested with the religion of our reality, and the religion of Christianity reduced to “mere” myth. But even the bad guy rethinks his original thought, saying, “Still, anything that was perfect would not change. It would not be alive.”

Christianity, like all religions, is at heart, just a set of stories, a collection of “mere” myths. Why should it or Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism ever be considered perfect? As soon as we imagine we’ve got it all figured out, we stop changing and we die a little bit inside. It’s only in tinkering and experimenting and reinventing the old myths that we can keep them and ourselves really and truly alive.
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Dec 15, 2011 Jenne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

I was really loving the first third, and then it kind of got into this Capitalized Mythology mode, with the Flower and the Tree and the Apple and so on...apparently it's a retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh, so I get what he was doing, but it was kinda boring. I liked the part with actual people before they became gods.

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Jan 02, 2012 Elliott Bäck rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: dystopia, fantasy

Quirky gender-bending short novel.

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May 16, 2013 Vinca Russell is currently reading it · review of another edition

May 13, 2013 Stephanie marked it as to-read · review of another edition

May 10, 2013 Legato Darksummers added it

Shelves: daddy-dark-s-baby-warrior-list

May 07, 2013 Jason Lundberg marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: to-acquire

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May 05, 2013 Patti marked it as wishlist · review of another edition

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Apr 30, 2013 Kerry Evans rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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Apr 27, 2013 Adrian Belcher added it · review of another edition

Apr 27, 2013 Tim marked it as to-read

Shelves: 100-must-read-fantasy

May 08, 2013 Nayla rated it 3 of 5 stars

Apr 22, 2013 Dawn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, all-books

Apr 17, 2013 Victoria marked it as to-read

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Apr 08, 2013 Kelly marked it as to-read

Apr 07, 2013 Justin is currently reading it

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Mar 24, 2013 Katy marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Recommended to Katy by: ChiZine Publications

Shelves: aa-read-review, ebook, upcoming-pub

Mar 24, 2013 Eija marked it as lukematta-english

Mar 14, 2013 Kim DeCina marked it as to-read

Mar 11, 2013 Ihab Mattar rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Mar 04, 2013 Igraine marked it as auf-gar-keinen-fall

Mar 04, 2013 Robert marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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About Geoff Ryman

Geoffrey Charles Ryman (born 1951) is a writer of science fiction, fantasy and slipstream fiction. He was born in Canada, and has lived most of his life in England.

His science fiction and fantasy works include The Warrior Who Carried Life (1985), the novella The Unconquered Country (1986) (winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the World Fantasy Award), and The Child Garden (1989) (winner...more

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