Silk Roads and Shadows

by Susan Shwartz

The Emperor of Byzantium is dying, and the silkworms cannot spin. Alexandra, beloved sister of the Emperor, must undertake an incredible journey to the Mysterious Empire of Chi'in to smuggle live silkworms into Byzantium--or die trying.

Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Fiction, China

337 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Writes with Shariann Lewitt as Gordon Kendall.

She received her B.A. in English from Mount Holyoke College in 1972 and a PhD in English from Harvard University.

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stuff I Read - Silk Roads and Shadows by Susan Shwartz Review

I picked this up at a used book store mainly because I like historical fantasies. And this book, probably more than any other that I've read in the sub-genre, fits that description. Because unlike many historical fantasies that involve fantasy allegories for real historic places (think Guy Gavriel Kay), this book actually takes place on Earth in the past in actual historical settings. Okay, maybe not actual ones, because some details are altered and there are still very strong fantasy sensibilities at work, but still, it's Byzantium and the Middle East and China. The fun and the joy comes from watching Alexandra work her way through this historic setting, take charge of her destiny, and come out stronger and more kick-ass than ever.

Part of what I liked about the book, after all, is that it is told with a female (the sister of the Byzantine Emperor) main character who is smart and in command, who moves through this male-dominated world with such authority that basically everyone she meets is forced to acknowledge her power and skill. Not to say that she's this ass-kicking machine that just beats people up, or that she doesn't suffer from moments of doubt, from danger, from having to depend on others. But through everything she retains her agency, her will, her force. She is powerful, much more so than any of the men she travels with, including her giant Norse bodyguard and more standard fantasy-fare cousin.

Also at play is that the entire book is something of a condemnation of orthodoxy. Alexandra starts the book against her aunt, who has twisted her religion to something dark and evil, who practices dark magic and who wants the throne. Angry at her treatment, and her lack of power, her aunt lashes out at the world, something that makes a certain sense when you examine her options. But as Alexandra saves her brother and then embarks on a mission to retrieve silk worms from China, again and again she comes up against different religions and cultures. And she moves from her own cloistered, Christian past to embrace a more varied view of the world religions, basically that they're all similar, that they aren't that different, that they bind us more than they separate us. It's a nice message when contrasted to some of the religion purges going on in China at the time.

The book also moves. I mean, really, this book gets around, first in Byzantium then through the Middle East, from mountain sanctuary to dessert city, finally to China, then abroad further into mythology itself. And there are constantly threats from magic and human elements. Alexandra finds herself as a sort of Chosen One, but one that makes her own choices. It is great fun to watch it play out, to watch her maturation as she struggles with the ideas and cultures around her. There are just a lot of really great moments in the book, to the point that by the end I was thrilled when she was taking full control of her life. The supporting characters are also very good, and complex, and I just liked them.

I don't think I really have anything else to say. This was a great book. I loved the ending and everything that came before it. It was well crafted and the language and writing were solid and moving. It was a good read, worthy of a great deal of thought, so the best kind of book for me. All that said, I'm giving it a 9.25/10.

[Jean Triceratops · Rating 1 out of 5]

Alas, another book I’m shelving without finishing.

I was excited about Silk Roads and Shadows, too. I have a particular soft-spot in my heart for quest / travel novels of the fantastical persuasion, and the low-key premise of Silk Roads and Shadows leaves so much room for characterization and world exploration: Alexandra, princess of the Byzantine Empire, opts to take the long, dangerous hike to China to try to steal some silkworms to replenish Byzantine’s dying stock rather than be married off to some random royal.

I knew I was in trouble almost immediately. The prologue starts off in a close third-person POV, where a royal cousin is trying to talk to the king but rebuffed by an upstart underling. Then the story races forward in what almost feels like a montage. He helps the princess Alexandra escape from a royal convent turned to black magic. More surprisingly, she has reason to suspect this black magic has been to the detriment of the king and his son. They rush back and uncover that indeed the head of the convent was trying to usurp power via witchcraft, and break the spell. The prologue ends with the royal cousin and Alexandra standing with the emperor after the traitors are publicly executed, and they talk about the future.

That 13-page prologue could have been a novel on its own.

Knowing that prologues are often the weakest part of a book, I pushed on ahead—into more of the same.

Everything moves quicker than is reasonable. Danger appears out of nowhere, mounts, collapses, and is dealt with before you have much of a chance to fear for a character’s safety. Characters die before you have an opportunity to get to know them. A character’s long-held beliefs are put on display the exact moment they’re discarded, meaning that you feel none of the agony of questioning long-held convictions.

This is compounded by the way time and movement is handled. You know how in a dream, often-times one second you’re someplace common and banal like a grocery store and the next you’re someplace like a tree-house? The transition somehow exists in the dream, but it’s not really clear how you got there or how long it took? Well, that’s how Silk Roads and Shadows rolls. I made it 50 pages in and I’m not sure if a few days or a few months have passed. At one point a character is having an out-of-body experience and I thought she was literally floating around looking at shit until the writing explicitly stated it was a dream.

Unfortunately, those aren’t the only problems I struggled with. Silk Roads and Shadows takes place in a heavily fictionalized historical setting and we’re watching through Alexandra’s point of view. The problem here is that Alexandra knows a lot more about geography, religion, geopolitical posturing, and social expectations than we do. Most books would get around this by having someone on hand for Alexandra to talk to who is closer to our understanding of this world so there’s a logical reason for these gaps to be filled in. Alexandra even has an outsider she could talk to—but she doesn’t. I’m not sure if the author thinks we all learned more in our collective history classes than we did or if the author doesn’t realize that there are important pieces of information seemingly completely absent. It doesn’t really matter either way. All of the places where Alexandra jumps to a conclusion that I didn’t understand put a little more distance between me and the story.

So, I’ve bagged on plotting, pacing, and relaying information to the reader. I have another complaint: just plain bad writing.

Take, for example, a character swept off a mountain pass by an avalanche. He somehow survives and hikes into a valley to seek help. An unknown amount of time later (so frustrating) he stumbles across a horn on the ground and bends over to pick it up. When he puts it to his mouth to blow on it, though, his chest twinges with pain and he realizes that he broke some ribs in the avalanche.

I’ll give him the first few minutes of clawing out of the snow—adrenaline and endorphins and whatnot would dull the senses—but he hikes for a good (if unknown) amount of time then bends over to pick something up. If his ribs were broken he should have noticed before he blew on a trumpet.

Another example is strictly technical:

“My horses!” Alexandra cried, and ran forward to take the bridle of the first one. Not all of them. That would have been too much to expect.

It helps to know that she lost her horses an unknown amount of time ago. Even with that in mind, though, I read this and for a second thought “she grabbed the bridle of one of the horses but not the others. Is that important?” before the next sentence made me realize that “Not all of them” was meant to apply to “My horses!” not her grabbing of bridles.

Am I picky? Undeniably so. I don’t think I’m unfair, though. Take, for example, The Wizard’s Shadow . It was a book with plenty of flaws, including poor technical writing (on occasion) and un-ideal plotting. The difference is that The Wizard’s Shadow worked hard to make me give a shit about the characters and the world. Silk Roads and Shadows didn’t.

[I read old fantasy and sci-fi novels written by women authors in search of forgotten gems. See more at forfemfan.com]

[Brian Paterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow and episodic- I made it to p79 and dropped it. Didn't finish. There are better books in my bucket to read. This was a re-read only because it was cheap from a used bookstore and because I recall that there were enchanted terracotta warriors toward the end. However, the style of omniscient POV is turn off for me today. It bounces from one character to the next. Please get the narrator down out of orbit. Is Alexandra alive? Is she dead? You do know that we can find out, don’t you? Jig your wobbling satellite to focus only on the lady, even better, give her a wire and ask her how she feels, down there taking all the risks, while care-free omniscient narrators infest the sky beyond the clouds like space junk. Give me a silkworm heist. Before this heist even begins, apparently, we must cross half the globe and encounter the most damaged and damaging of our benighted World’s Faiths? All that terrible stuff is still playing out on our news right now. It hasn’t changed. I read books to get away from the news.

[Riq Hoelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Given the title, the natural question for fans of Silk Road history and geography will be whether the book has anything to offer for their tastes. Regrettably the answer must be mostly in the negative. Although the author seems to have made some attempts at research, the results seem rather cursory as there is relative little historical and geographical information and some of it incorrect, even beyond the errors admitted in the introductory note. No year or name of the the Chinese emperor is ever given, but it is probably intended to be set in the reign of Tang emperor Wuzong (ruled 840-6), one of the late rulers of the dynasty. But as by this time silk had long since left China for places like Khotan and points east, the premise of traveling all the way to Chang An to acquire silkworks makes little sense, as does the idea that the worms were kept only in the palace. It is doubtful that worms could be transported as described either -- eggs would be a much more likely proposition. But these are minor matters for the historical reader when constantly the caravan party is being attacked by magical, fantastical beings with no basis in reality. It could have been quite interesting if the tale was a mostly historical one with occasional magic to move the plot along, but here clearly the author's interest is almost totally on monsters and magic. At least there is a mostly correct map of the region from Constantinople to Chang An and some of the sites visited along the way are described with a bit of detail.

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an expansion into new genres for me. It was well written, had good concepts, and gave me a greater appreciation of fiction beyond SciFi. I was fortunate to have studied the history of China and India shortly before reading this so, even though it wasn't in depth study, I understood what was happening in the story.

[Kittybellj · Rating 3 out of 5]

For 2/17/09 book group.