The Warrior Who Carried Life

by Geoff Ryman

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.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Mythology, Queer, Canada

178 pages, Hardcover

First published March 21, 1985

About the author

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 of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Campbell Award). Subsequent fiction works include Was (1992), Lust (2001), and Air (2005) (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the British Science Fiction Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and on the short list for the Nebula Award).

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Sarah B · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be very bleak and gloomy..yes, it actually made me feel gloomy because of so many dark awful things happening in the plot. There are some truly atrocious things in here! So with good conscience I cannot recommend this book unless you know you are ok with reading a very dark story. And it stayed dark throughout the entire thing. At one point I had hope that it was improving a bit but then that hope was dashed by more horrible events!

And I'm used to reading horror mind you...

A lot of this story is about inequality, about the rich and strong preying on the weak. Then add in some magic and a long journey. Starving slaves. There are some creatures in here too, the Galu and the Wensenara. Plus a big flying beast.. the plot is a mixture of different old fairy tales and other well known stories. If you read it, I'm sure you can see where the ideas came from..I certainly did.

I found the end to be very surreal and confusing. In fact I'm not even sure what actually happened! And at this point I don't really care. The entire thing was too dark for my tastes, especially since it just continues throughout the entire tale. There didn't seem to be any point to it or any brightness at the edge of the grey cloud. No one enjoys reading a book that stays that way throughout the entire thing.

I had originally picked this book up because of the horse on the cover. It's a nice looking horse but the horse actually has a very small role, so don't expect equines in here.

[David B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mutilated and brutalized by a bizarre warrior sect with a dark secret, a young woman transforms herself into a man and seeks revenge. She travels to the Land of the Dead in search of the only weapon that will defeat them, only to learn that she is destined to play a pivotal role in the relationship between God, evil, and man.

This extraordinary novel deserves to be reprinted. Geoff Ryman creates an extraordinary world that exists in a kind of proto-Christian alternate universe where an evil snake tries to seduce mankind with the Tree of Life. Ryman is a wonderful stylist and his novel includes passages of thrilling action as well as touching sentiment and chilling horror. Many years ago, I bought a bag of Fantasy & SF back issues at a thrift store. One of them contained Harlan Ellison's favorable review of this novel. Several years after that, I spotted it in a used book store and purchased it. Now, I've finally read it. I came to the book through a long and tortuous path, but it was certainly worth the wait. Thanks, Harlan!

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curious, sad retelling of the Adam and Eve story, from a very feminist point of view. I think. The story moves so fast, through so many different terrains and myth structures and beats that at times it felt more like Gilgamesh, at times Beowulf, and at times Biblical. The Gula are (is?) a truly gruesome creation, the stuff of nightmares, and their end is apposite. Which is a way of saying that this book is not for the faint of heart. Compelling, but not a simple or easy ride. Definitely adult SF. Read it if a) you're bored with the creation myths in the Bible; b) you wonder what a feminist re-telling of a variety of origin stories might look like; or c) you want eco-revenge on anyone who tries to sully a planet with pollution.

[Craig Laurance · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Cara’s mother had always said something very strange about dust: that it was the remains of the dead, and should be respected. “The air is full of other people,” she had told Cara. The dust in the sunlight looked like stars.”

The Warrior Who Carried Life is Geoff Ryman’s first novel, which has been reprinted by the Canadian Press Chizine. It’s a darkly mythic novel that combines the Epic of Gilgamesh with dashes of Celtic and Indian mythology.

A young woman whose family has been dishonored by invaders under takes a vengeance-based quest to oust the evil from her land. To do so, she magically transforms herself into a male warrior who is nearly invincible. Along the way, she discovers the true nature of the invaders and her quest eventually leads her to the land of death. The novel is drenched in magic, not unlike Tanith Lee’s Tales From the Flat Earth series—there are fabulous beasts, wise women, immortality, and miracles. TWWCL engages and subverts mythic tropes left and right, recalling Delany’s classic novel The Einstein Intersection. Despite the magical overlay, this is a brutal story, full of shocking violence.

Many of the tropes and themes that ballast Ryman’s oeuvre are here. The violence and war of the imaginary land shares a tenuous connection with other Ryman works that chronicle and examine the horrors faced by Kampuchea (Cambodia)—e.g., The Unconquered Country & The King’s Last Song. It is also a deeply feminist and genderqueer novel, with a transcendent lesbian love story at its spiritual center.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Info: Genre: Fantasy (Epic/Mythological)
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: fans of mythology, epic fantasy
Trigger Warnings: torture, mutilation, killing, mass murder, slavery, murder of children, cannibalism
Animal Abuse: Several dogs are killed

My Thoughts: This book was originally released in 1986, and was re-released earlier this year by ChiZine. This is a very strange story, designed in homage to both the creation mythology of the Bible and of the epic of Gilgamesh, among other things. It's long-term, sweeping nature is sometimes a bit hard to follow, but in the end, it is very much worth it. I do recommend that if you read this book, you take the time to focus and concentrate on the story. I read most of it in short bits and pieces and that made it a bit hard to follow.

While there wasn't a lot of it, I really liked the part of the book written from Galo's point of view. Everything to him is strange, including pain and water and cold and light. It was fascinating, and I can guess that the section was short due to the very strangeness that the author had to inhabit to write it.

There is plenty of bitter with a bit of sweet. The Wordy Beast (which I think was a griffin) was really neat. There is a great deal of metaphor is vagueness in this, which leaves the reader to interpret things as she likes. I think a lot of people will enjoy this, especially if they like mythology and epic fantasy.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from ChiZine in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis: To defeat her enemies . . . she must make them immortal.

Only men are allowed into the wells of vision. Cara’s mother defies this edict and is killed, but not before returning with a vision of terrible and wonderful things that are to come . . . and all because of five-year-old Cara.

Years later, evil destroys the rest of Cara’s family. In a rage, Cara uses magic to transform herself into a male warrior. But she finds that to defeat her enemies, she must break the cycle of violence, not continue it.

As Cara’s mother’s vision of destiny is fulfilled, the wonderful follows the terrible, and a quest for revenge becomes a quest for eternal life.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this was fascinating. Ryman jams into a dense 173 pages what almost any other fantasy writer would spread across at least a trilogy. Pretty much everything you'd expect of epic fantasy is here, albeit consistently rendered strange. Even the eponymous warrior challenges assumptions, being a woman transformed externally (but still referred to as "she" throughout) onto a man, so she can set off on a quest for revenge. The book comments thereby (and in other ways) about gender norms and assumptions, both in fiction and in reality. But this is only only one way the book is at least ahead of its time. It anticipates George R. R. Martin's revisionist approach to heroic fantasy by amping up the violence, brutality, and sex to 11, but it does so, frankly, with a far more nuanced and sophisticated taste than Martin shows. This is a grim, tough book, that refuses to provide an unambiguous victory of "good" over "evil." Given its revisiting of the Adam and Eve myth (with another gender switch), and its answering of eating from the Tree of Knowledge with eating from the Flower of Life, it very much foregrounds its rejection of such binarism--not the first fantasy book to do so, but a good one. Like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (a book it does not really resemble, otherwise), it has a long (well-proportionally--over 20 of 173 pages) coda that adds a movingly tragic resolution (if you can call it that) to the protagonists's lives. There were weaknesses, to my mind, though the fact that I read this book in bits and pieces might be the real culprit. I'm really not quite sure what we are to make of some bits. What happened to the Galu (the bad guys) is not entirely clear to me, for instance, and the final chapter confused me more than once. I don't think I grasped the book's symbolic and or/allegorical resonances--or else Ryman, in his first novel, did not communicate them clearly enough. Nevertheless, very much the read for anyone interested in fantasy that pushes against the genre, that takes risks, and that won't give you what you expect (and perhaps want). Also, there is some gorgeous prose (and a few clunkers, to be fair).

[Lorina Stephens · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit being disappointed in Geoff Ryman's The Warrior Who Carried Life. Unlike much of his later work, especially The King's Last Song, I very much felt The Warrior Who Carried Life demonstrated a writer finding their way in their art. There were long passages which were clumsy in execution, too much exposition, in my opinion, and a lack of deep character development. Dialogue often had speech qualifiers which were indicative of a novice, which for me, as an editor as well as a writer, was a bit cringe-worthy.

The elements of the fantastic were almost too fantastic, in that Ryman failed to work a deft trail from the known to the unknown for the reader, or put another way failed to fully realize the complex and eldtritch world of the alien creatures known as the Galu, and the magic-steeped humans who are subjugated by them. Even the element which sets the world aright, the Flower, wasn't fully realized, a nebulous concept both to the characters and the reader. The same could be said of the Galu themselves. One comes away with an impression of black worms inhabiting humans, but in other passages that concept is contradicted. Or perhaps this reader was too obtuse. There is always that possibility.

Along with the overall narrative of good versus evil, he obliquely explores the concepts of transgender identity, albeit with a not-so-deft hand.

Environmental detail is sparse, which further alienated this reader, because it created a feeling of disconnect, of watching a film on green screen which as yet hadn't had background filled in with CGI.

The Warrior Who Carried Life isn't a bad novel. But neither is it a great one. Read as you wish. Your mileage may vary. And that is the beauty of art.

[David Grierson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes I think you can have too much magic and too little plot.
This was a first book and hats off to Geoff Ryman for this effort. There is some excellent prose in this book and he moves it along with lots of action. For me though a bit too much angst happens in conjunction with our 'hero' on a regular basis. That and the purpose of some section had me scartching my head.
There were some themes I wanted to take a look at including a character changing sex. Another was the trope of a warrior seeking revenge for misery visited on a group of people by the powerful but evil. An oldie but a goodie trope and in this case a warrior that had been a woman. I thought I understood where Ryman was coming from with this good vs evil book but the magic swamped me at times.
I think it is a two and a half stars and I was not convinced by some reviewers that this book was four or five star material. I wish you well in reading it.

[Ezra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess it was alright. It's supposed to be a retelling of the Gilgamesh epic but since I only have a vague notion of that story I couldn't get any pleasure recognizing the references.

I imagine this story would go over pretty well for anyone interested in reading about transgender characters as the lead is a young girl who uses magic to turn herself into a male warrior (so she can get revenge).

[Aspen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short review since it's been a few months since I read it, but The Warrior Who Carried Life is a fantastically unique book that reads like a cross between a myth and a story in the Bible. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

[Linda Heggs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t enjoy it.

[David Bonesteel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mutilated and brutalized by a bizarre warrior sect with a dark secret, a young woman transforms herself into a man and seeks revenge. She travels to the Land of the Dead in search of the only weapon that will defeat them, only to learn that she is destined to play a pivotal role in the relationship between God, evil, and man.

This extraordinary novel deserves to be reprinted. Geoff Ryman creates an extraordinary world that exists in a kind of proto-Christian alternate universe where an evil snake tries to seduce mankind with the Tree of Life. Ryman is a wonderful stylist and his novel includes passages of thrilling action as well as touching sentiment and chilling horror. Many years ago, I bought a bag of Fantasy & SF back issues at a thrift store. One of them contained Harlan Ellison's favorable review of this novel. Several years after that, I spotted it in a used book store and purchased it. Now, I've finally read it. I came to the book through a long and tortuous path, but it was certainly worth the wait. Thanks, Harlan!

[James Lackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I just read this book for the first time and I really liked it. It reminded me, in a lot of ways, of C.S. Lewis' in the Christian themes and imagery, but I was happy to see that Ryman created a world that was much darker.
I enjoyed the interplay between action and intention, and I found the characters to be identifiable and interesting.
Overall, I would absolutely recommend this book to any fantasy fiction fan.

[Jenne · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Tyrannosaurus regina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was both beautiful and brutal at the same time, tackling the hero's journey and an exploration of the Eden mythos with a genderqueer slant. At its heart it's a straightforward story but there is so much going on that I'm sure there are details and themes and layers that I'll only catch on a second reading.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good mythic fantasy in which a woman survives a tragedy, then uses magic to become a male warrior and set out for revenge. This proves much more complicated than expected and culminates in a trip into the afterlife. Some effective twists, and nicely executed overall

[Elliott Bäck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky gender-bending short novel.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A special and important book, but not terribly enjoyable to read.

[Wealhtheow]

Recently reprinted and reviewed here.

[Eilonwy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this years ago and thought it was absolutely brilliant ... and I'm afraid to reread it in case I don't love it so much the second time.

[Denni]

Never disappointed by Geoff Ryman novels, though this is an early one and perhaps not quite as polished as some of his later work. Using the Gilgamesh story as a bit of a basis, but with a female warrior who becomes male and eventually returns to being female, and with the full range of implications this causes in her/his consciousness as well as a real sense of the shifting of sexuality/gender (which is often a significant feature in Rymnan's fiction) which must--I hope--make readers think while they are enjoying the whole story.