Sunday Soupçons #42
soupçon/ˈsuːpsɒn,ˈsuːpsɒ̃/ noun
1. a very small quantity of something; a slight trace, as of a particular taste or flavor
Sunday Soupçons is where I scribble mini-reviews for books I don’t have the brainspace/eloquence/smarts to write about in depth – or if I just don’t have anything interesting to say beyond I LIKED IT AND YOU SHOULD READ IT TOO!
Both these books deserve MUCH better reviews than I can write them at the moment – so just take it as read that I love them both extremely!
Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens by Lynn Hutchinson Lee Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Horror
Representation: Romany MC, secondary Native American character
PoV: First-person, present-tense
ISBN: 1738316521
Goodreads
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Orchid Lovell is a young Romany woman haunted by a fear of being found out. Her family has been chased out of town before. After settling in a seemingly idyllic northern mining town that she soon understands as rife with unseen cruelty, Orchid finds solace in a lush orchid fen where she doesn’t fear the town’s judgement. Amid the green beauty of the fen, Orchid meets her beloved Jack, and marries him in a secret blackfly-infested ceremony.
But the town’s waters don’t only harbor life. In the nearby creek, dead girls take revenge on the men who murdered them, luring them into murky waters. Despite the unyielding nature of the water spirits, one man evades their violence. After a devastating attack linked to the expansion of the mine, Orchid’s fate is entwined with the panni raklies’ ruthless justice.
Written in over 100 dreamy mini-chapters, this novella explores the tenuous reality of the Romany diaspora living in troubled times on troubled lands.
Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens is one of those thrillingly odd treasures that couldn’t care less about being easily categoriseable. Call me whatever genre you like, it says, but I will only be myself. It’s a little bit magical realism, a little bit horror, a dash of eco-fiction, almost poetry. The prose is lush even while what’s being written about is so perfectly mundane, and the contrast of that is head-spinning in a most wonderful way. And it’s not just prose; Lee weaves together text-message chains, excerpts from non-fiction, even shopping lists to tell this story, to ground it in the real world and the travails of ‘normal’ daily life, which makes it all feel so much more real and vivid than if all the focus had been on the magic.
The plot wanders, neither perfectly linear nor entirely straightforward. On the one hand, Orchid is building a small but heart-felt life with her husband Jack, and reconnecting with her ill mother; on the other, the local fen that is Orchid’s sanctuary is under threat from the proposed expansion of the local mine, being pushed by the town’s richest family. Within the fen are panni raklies, water spirits who started out as human women before they were murdered by men; Orchid is fascinated by them, knew some of them while they were human. The existence of the panni raklies is an open secret among the women of the town, but is kept hidden from the men
The role of men is to know nothing.
and somehow this is all of a piece with the antiziganism, external and internalised, that Orchid deals with – because while she passes as Caucasian, she’s still surrounded by her mother’s (justified!) fears and the casual micro-aggressions of fans of the ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ tv show. (Sidenote: ew, why is this is a thing, I was so disappointed in humanity when I realised this was a real thing not something Lee made up for her book.)
It’s a weird treasure of a book, full of powerful relationships (Orchid and Jack, Orchid and her mother, Orchid and Rose, her Native American best friend who understands what it’s like to be a minority surrounded by clueless-at-best white people) and dark, twisted themes. Violence against women, especially domestic partner violence and the disappearances of Native American women, are quiet but ever-present threads; then there’s the kind of violence done for money, houses burned down and cars driven off the road to silence protests against the mine’s expansion. It should be ugly, but it isn’t, in large part thanks to Lee’s absolutely stunning prose, which I would lick off a knife if I could.
Most of us come from away. Coming with hope across an ocean or from other towns, seeking a new life in this new place with its buried gold, too many of us believing nobody had ever lived here before we came. We invent or erase histories, tell the old fairy tales and myths and come up with new ones. We repurpose lives, gossip, tell stories, but never the truth. Never the darkness. The dark of the mine with its claws in the earth, in the people. The mine batters the men, the men batter the women and children, and the dead take their revenge.
Especially when it comes to writing about nature, all the flora and fauna of the fen. I am NOT a wilderness person, I don’t do well with mud and bugs, but Lee – I don’t know if it’s truer to say that her writing transformed these things for me, or if she removed some scales from my eyes to show me how beautiful these things are, that I was missing. Regardless, it’s very nearly a spiritual experience.
I’d rather be at the fen, that place where the laws are true, real, embedded in the underground networks humming from root to root.
The ending was a little random, a little maddeningly inexplicable, but I’m so glad I read this, and I hope it gets to more readers.
You can find a MUCH better review of this book over here!
Two Dark Moons (Sãoni Cycle, #1) by Avi Silver Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Aromantic pansexual MC, nonbinary love interest, F/NB
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
ISBN: 1775242730
Goodreads
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Sohmeng Par is sick of being treated like a child. Ever since a tragic accident brought her mountain community’s coming-of-age ritual to a halt, she’s caused nothing but trouble in her impatience to become an adult. But when she finally has the chance to prove herself, she’s thrown from her life in the mountains and into the terror of the jungle below.
Cornered by a colony of reptilian predators known as the sãoni, Sohmeng is rescued by Hei, an eccentric exile with no shortage of secrets. As likely to bite Sohmeng as they are to cook her breakfast, this stranger and their family of lizards are like nothing she’s ever seen before. If she wants to survive, she must find a way to adapt to the vibrant, deadly world of the rainforest and the creatures that inhabit it—including Hei themself. But Sohmeng has secrets of her own, and sharing them could mean losing everything a second time.
Gender weirdness wrapped up in a giant-lizard adventure! This is another quick read, but otherwise couldn’t be more different from Origins of Desire. It’s outright fantasy, for one thing, in a secondary-world setting with multiple moons, set in a culture where your gender (and thus role in the community) is determined by your birth month. I LOVE unusual gender systems, and this one delighted me in many ways (not least because ‘feminine’ in this culture means something like aggressive, dominant, problem-solver – so even without the moon phases/birth months, gender here looks very different from the Global North take in our world!)
Sohmeng is an IMMENSELY sympathetic character, a teenager who wants to be allowed to be a teenager instead of being kept to the role of a child – and who is being kept in that role for utterly ridiculous reasons. (Sorry, but it’s true. When cultural traditions stop being helpful and just cause harm, as this one is doing, you’re supposed to get rid of them! Not cling to them even more tightly!) Of course, the moment she convinces her community to give her an inch, she…falls off the mountain they live in.
It’s very difficult not to read this as divine punishment. Probably it was just bad luck! But. Eep.
At the mountain’s base, the jungle that makes up most of the region is full of dangerous beasties, not least the sãoni, six-legged giant lizards fully capable of eating humans. But instead of being eaten, Sohmeng gets adopted. Cue my original review of this book: Sometimes a family is you, the kid that screech-danced and bit you, and a pack of (not!-)murderous lizards. And that’s okay.
It is, in fact, more than okay: it’s almost idyllic. The relationship that develops between Sohmeng and Hei – the first human to be adopted by this sãoni pack – is really sweet, and a refreshing change from your typical romance because Sohmeng is aromantic (but not asexual). And that is completely fine. It doesn’t bother Hei in the slightest, and, just – it brought tears to my eyes, okay, how much of a non-issue it was! It made me SO HAPPY!
Sohmeng and Hei together start to unravel the mysteries behind the changes in the region – changes that led to the loss of Sohmeng’s parents and Sohmeng being unable to undergo her adulthood rites. There are some tough-to-swallow reveals, but the story ends – a little abruptly, it must be said – before anything can really be done. Though the ending does hint strongly at what direction Sohmeng and Hei will be going in next – if, that is, Sohmeng can convince the prickly Hei that her idea is a good one.
On to book two!
What have you been reading this week?
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