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The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter

by Brent Hayward (Goodreads Author)

3.45 of 5 stars 3.45 · rating details · 31 ratings · 5 reviews

The city is crumbling... Clouds over Nowy Solum have not parted in a hundred years. Gods have deserted their temples. In the last days of a dying city, the decadent chatelaine chooses a forbidden lover, separating twin outcasts and setting them on independent trajectories that might finally bring down the palace. Then, screaming from the skies, a lone god reappears, briefl...more

Paperback, 244 pages

Published May 31st 2011 by Chizine Publications (first published May 15th 2011)

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Jul 24, 2012 Kat K. rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel was an interesting read. The way the "chapters" bounce back and forth without introduction makes it a bit difficult to keep up with the changes, but somehow it held my interest. The world that Hayward creates is also a bit removed from anything I can really relate to, which I believe is the point, but it also makes it difficult to latch onto the story line until I was able to kind of pick up a knowledge base within the world. I didn't necessarily find this read compelling, but it was...more

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Jun 23, 2011 TheBookSmugglers rated it 3 of 5 stars

Originally reviewed on The Book Smugglers: http://thebooksmugglers.com/2011/06/b...

The clouds over (the once great) city of Nowy Solum have not parted in a hundred years, ever since the Gods have left or died. Within its great castle, the chatelaine spends her days in drunken orgies; her father, the castellan, retired from the decision-making process, indulges in disturbing biological research. On the streets outside, social divide slowly corrupts and destroys its citizens while on the undergrou...more Originally reviewed on The Book Smugglers: http://thebooksmugglers.com/2011/06/b...

The clouds over (the once great) city of Nowy Solum have not parted in a hundred years, ever since the Gods have left or died. Within its great castle, the chatelaine spends her days in drunken orgies; her father, the castellan, retired from the decision-making process, indulges in disturbing biological research. On the streets outside, social divide slowly corrupts and destroys its citizens while on the underground, the imprisoned Fecund gives birth to horrors dreamed by her captors.

Above the clouds, three female astronauts come across a Mother and one of the Gods briefly reappears in the skies; across the desert, a limbless, hitherto witless child awakens to prophesize the return of an ancient creature, just as the chatelaine picks a forbidden lover with melancholy running in her veins, inadvertently setting in motion the beginning of the end.

Ah. New Weird. We have such a troubled relationship. The idea of blending Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror with weird components is really interesting and attractive in theory but many times I have found the execution of those stories to be disappointing. And in the majority of these cases, the disappointment comes from noticing that many times the “weird” in the equation is there just because – random objects throw in, without any relevancy to the story.

I am pleased to say that this is not the case with The Fecund’s Melancholy Daughter: the weird aspects of the story are definitely present but they never feel like they are artificial, isolated objects within the story. Quite the contrary, they are an intrinsic part of a surreal, puzzling world. For example: the chatelaine collects pets, all of them birthed by the Fecund based on the chatelaine’s dreams. Amongst them a cherub, a baby with wings whose eventual kidnapping is central to the main storyline. The collection itself has a reason (as disturbing as it sounds) and so does the very existence of the Fecund – a grotesque monster, who has been imprisoned for centuries.

Another instance of the weird is how the people in Nowy Solum are either “hemo” or “kholic”. The first have regular, red blood running through their veins. The latter bleed black fluid, or melancholy, both a physiological condition and a psychological state. The implication of how melancholy affects people by making them less human in their presumed lack of emotion is partly the reason behind the social divide and their outcast status. The “kholics” do all the menial work and are terribly ostracized. Here the “weird” is basis from which to explore racism, artificial social stratification and what happens to a society in which the majority of its people live in terrible conditions. One of the best sequences in the book is this very short yet moving portrayal of a young desperate mother whose son is about to undergo the ceremony that establishes what kind of fluid he has in his veins. The fact that she is an impoverished “hemo” with a hard life only serves to reveal how this world is coming apart at its seams.

One could even possibly describe the storytelling as weird itself: reading the novel feels like putting together the scattered pieces of a puzzle without having any idea of what the main picture looks like. From its opening sequence, the story progresses by alternating between several characters’ points of view with a little bit of an intruding omniscient narrator added to the proceedings. It is a multi-tiered world (below clouds, above clouds, beyond clouds) and it is also a multi-tiered narrative. Sometimes this proves to be a bit confusing because of how fragmentary the narrative is.

But in the end, when it becomes clear how well constructed the story truly is, when all different threads converge into a whole, it is easy to see the brilliance behind the plotting and how well developed it truly is. However, I have to say that I appreciate this brilliance in a distant, detached, purely intellectual way. Although I think the storytelling is successful, even though I appreciate the themes that are explored here, I found myself not really invested or engaged with the people, or the city, or the setting. Perhaps, the very nature of the book, the way that the story and characters are scattered around are responsible for that. I felt that the characterisation suffered because of it and was only skin-deep. Not to mention that I had problems with the portrayal of a couple of characters.

The chatelaine for example: the woman in charge of running the city and who spends her nights in drunken orgies. Those “drunken orgies” are not presented in a neutral way at all and are loaded with negative connotations. It is generally accepted by everybody (including herself) that she is a bad chatelaine and it is heavily implied (by the text, and other characters) that the main the reason why she is a bad chatelaine is because she is “decadent” as she indulges in orgies with a S&M bent. I am uncomfortable with this depiction as it reeks of slut shaming. Yes, the character does indulge in drunken orgies, yes the character does use “devices” when having sex, but she does so with willing and consenting partners and as far as I am aware it is no one’s business what she does inside her own rooms. This, to me, cannot be a measure of her qualification as a chatelaine. She is a bad chatelaine because she is an incompetent, absent chatelaine. Period.

Another thing that gave me pause when reading the novel was how, after the chatelaine and her new female lover had sex, the chatelaine walked around for hours with – and this was repeated a few times – “juices” trickling down their thighs. First of all: Ew. TMI that was not really necessary to the execution of the plot. Second: and please forgive me the crassness of my ensuing statement but even though some women can ejaculate when orgasming, we lack the instrument to ejaculate inside another women’s body to the point where this other woman will be walking around with juices trickling down her thighs!! Seriously, this is Biology 101.

That both aspects that made me most uncomfortable about the novel involved the depiction of female characters is quite troubling and somewhat diminished the positive impact that other aspects of the novel had. (less)

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Apr 13, 2011 Dreadlocksmile rated it 4 of 5 stars

First published in June of 2011, Canadian author Brent Hayward’s second novel entitled ‘The Fecund’s Melancholy Daughter’ found itself within ideal company with ChiZine Publications.

DLS Synopsis:
The once great city of Nowy Solum is slowly decaying from the inside out. After the Gods deserted the city, the citizens of Nowy Solum took to a new, more bitter and self-involved way of life. Within the confines of her great castle, the city’s chatelaine spends her days and nights partaking in drunken o...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Marsha rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Hayward's turn of phrase is very unique and very descriptive, and this is probably why I hung in and finished this book, even though it is really very confusing. Most of the book I felt kind of baffled, thinking that I might have missed something that made it clearer, and at the end, I felt like I must have many incomplete threads. It's refreshing, however, to read something really rather unique in the science fiction realm.

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Apr 07, 2013 Zachary Jernigan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'll be honest out front: this one's a tough nut to describe. It's dark fantasy melded so strangely and fluidly with science fiction that finding a familiar comparison is nearly impossible.

Therein lies the appeal, I think. Like Hayward's debut, Filaria, this is ground-breakingly odd fiction that challenges the intellect and distills images in the mind's eye so indelibly that it's nearly a shock to enter the waking world again.

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May 09, 2013 Natalie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

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Mar 24, 2013 Heidi Gerloff rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

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Shelves: prospecting

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Shelves: deities, fantasy

Nov 29, 2012 Purblind rated it 4 of 5 stars

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About Brent Hayward

Author of Filaria ('08) & The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter ('11), & several short stories in various publications. Head Full of Mountains forthcoming ('14).

UK born, raised in Montreal, lived for a spell as an expat in Poland & now resides in Toronto. Married with two kids.

Check out the CZP site for info about the novels, downloads, and reviews.

http://chizine.com/chizinepub/books/f...

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“These mod cons, despite the brief excitement they generated, were basically chutes leading down to clay pipes, which in turn acted as simple conduits to the river, depositing the waste of the rich next to the waste of the poor, where the distinction was lost on the kholics, who attempted, each day, to clean it up.” — 1 person liked it

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