Author Phil Emery reviews Grave's Daughters
This is breathtaking stuff.
I remember that I first came cross ‘Raising Daughters’ in Whetstone magazine some time ago and was immediately taken with its physicality and imagistic vigour. I’ve never come across such a rich evocation of the chthonic: verbal Doré on steroids! And with uncompromising pace! Lindberg proves here that a well-chosen evocative name can replace description, might even be said to be description. Also he combines (particularly) biological and other scientific terminology with subtle fantasy diction and syntax – and makes it work! I’m happy to say that the other stories in the book threw more of the same at me.‘Run, Fry, or Die!’ also added more technical goodies. The girls’ modern dialogue threw diglossia registers into the mix and upped the ‘macabre’ ante. I should say that word (which is actually used it in this story) has a particular sense for me that you won’t find exactly in any dictionary definition: for me the macabre tone is a particular combination of horror and irony. It’s humorous if darkly humorous. A distanced though not emotionless humour. A literary danse macabre. The girls’ dialogue juxtaposed with Grave’s more formal idiolect is one way the writer pulls this off. A macabre tone can absorb the differences. This is one of the ways the reader’s experience of the stories varies. (More of this below.) Those with more plot and character involvement have less of a macabre feel to me.
But I have to say that lines like “with good posture they sat in attendance” in ‘Embracing Ember’ the subtle underlying irony is never entirely absent, at least for me.
With a cycle of standalone stories, whether read singly or all at once, repetition of information needs to be subtle, and reading the Graves sequence together as I’ve just done shows how to do this. There are any number of ways a good writer can avoid that potential pitfall through sly variations of tone and viewpoint.
And speaking of variation, ‘Breaching Earth’s Womb’ continues to offer a different register of distance, a different viewpoint. Less ironic, more plot-driven than earlier pieces in this collection. It seems to me that plot gains in prominence as the stories advance until...
‘Two Queens, One Hive’ – This is the dramatic and stylistic high point of the book for me! A perfect example of blend of sfnal and fantasy diction. (Thanks to the author’s science background?) The ironic element falls away as plot and milieu merge just about seamlessly. I get the impression Lindberg really let himself go on this one. As a collection the intensity culminates here – and how! Though emotionally it progresses... And for me this points up a friction between a novel-length story and a set of individual stand-alone fictions. ‘Forging Independence’ worried and still worries me. The change of gear is mechanically unavoidable, but it suffered for me after ‘Two Queens’: it almost seemed slight, a kind of afterword under the shadow of the previous section. This is where the reader, this reader at least, is at a disadvantage experiencing to stories book-style in quick succession. What worries me is that I can’t see any way around this. I’ll have to go back after some time has elapsed and reread it as a standalone piece, which is how it appeared in the first place.
But if the physical drama peaked with ‘Two Queens’, the emotional progression continued with ‘Immolating Ember’. Switching to Ember’s viewpoint certainly developed her.
And finally, the novelette-length of the ninth section ties everything together fittingly. I see this is almost the only part not previously published, so I’m guessing that this section was written solely with the collection in mind. I’m also guessing that if it had been intended as a stand-alone piece it would’ve been structured a little differently? Perhaps giving more or less focus to the characters Ignarion and Echo and Helen? But it certainly capitalizes on the emotional momentum built through the previous sections.
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