Foz Meadows's Reviews > Shadow Bound

Here is what's awesome about this series: the strings are invisible, because there are none.

To clarify: most authors create characters with the intention of telling them what to do. No matter how many novels or stories we write, the false optimism of this belief never quite diminishes. Much in the manner of real human beings refusing to acquiesce to the demands of God or fate, good characters shake their fists at the minds which gave them birth and say, 'Screw you, buddy. See that horse over there, the one you expressly forbid me to steal on the grounds of it totally wrecking your plot? YOINK!'

Authors feel entitled to omnipotence in the worlds we create. We say, Let There Be Light, and there is light. We say, Let There Be A Garden, And A Serpent, And Some Strategically Placed Fig-Leaves, and our wish is the keyboard's command. But when we say, Leave That Apple Alone Guys, Seriously, I'm Not Even Kidding, do our characters listen? Do they hell. But it's a Good Thing, for all their antics make us want to tear out our hair, because even in imagined worlds, believeable human beings are neither predictable nor biddable. They goeth where they will. Sometimes, by its very nature, this wanton goething interferes with the plot. When that happens, either we follow and see where it leads, or we forcibly try to bridle our protagonists - but either way, it leaves a mark on the narrative. If our leading lady wrecks the path we lay down for her and instead goes striding off into the shrubbery, broken branches and telltale footprints point at her disobedience. And if we silence her, then those slender puppet-strings connecting her actions to our thoughts and fingertips become evident, glinting in the story-light and signalling an inability to govern what we have made.

Given the inevitability of such disobedience, a good story is one in which the author reacts by reshaping their expectations. Thus does the scenery remain unbattered, the strings concealed.

But in Shadow Queen and Shadow Bound, not only are the strings completely invisible, one doubts they were ever there to begin with. Kalin has not created Matte, Dieter, Sidonius, Roshi, Sepp, Gerlach and Amalia; rather, she has opened a window to their world, and set about describing what she sees. These characters are utterly real, so completely possessed of their own destinies, foibles, beliefs and motives that the idea of an author sitting down and planning their story feels almost...wrong. And yet, one has, and the longer I think about that fact, the more it becomes miraculous. The Binding is an incredible, beautifully written duoloy, and Deborah Kalin is a writer to watch.