“Brimming with creativity, wisdom, and love.” thistlefoot
anti-malarial flowers. Other agents of change follow: There are the European agronomists who come in to demand that the villagers replace their formerly diverse crops with beans and coffee, then the priests who come in to demand that they give up their “pagan” religious practices in favor of “Yezu.” Drought ensues, and with it the people starve, and with that they recall the old ways, when their king would sacrifice himself or one of his family. Thus Kibogo, the legendary son of a king, offers himself up in one such sacrifice, volunteering in a long-ago time to climb a nearby mountain and call down the clouds in the face of sure death. That high country harbors others who are convinced of their magical powers. One is Akayezu, or “Little Jesus,” who enters a French seminary only to decide that he has divine powers of his own and, without waiting for ordination, preaches a gospel that “compared Kibogo rising to Heaven to Yezu’s ascension, Maria’s Assumption, and the abduction of the prophet Elijah on a pikipiki of thunder and flame.” Akayezu’s evangelization extends to a hermit who herself believes that she has a spirit within that “commands the rain.” When the rain does arrive, it comes in punishing torrents and violent thunderstorms that put terror in the hearts of the villagers: “Some jangled rosaries, others gourd rattles, or the bones of warthogs or of their ancestors.” It’s satisfying to see the colonial experts and intrusive priests get some measure of comeuppance while Kibogo makes his return to bring, finally, more sustaining rains, proving, as Mukasonga’s narrator has it, that “Kibogo too can shake the sky and set off the thunder: isn’t the tale of Kibogo equal to the tale of Yezu?” Pensive and lyrical; a closely observed story of cultures in collision.
THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA
Nayler, Ray MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (464 pp.) $28.00 | Oct. 4, 2022 978-0-374-60595-7
In the not-too-distant future, a marine biologist specializing in cephalopod intelligence discovers a species of octopus with astonishing language skills—research that a giant corporation
wants to monetize. Dr. Ha Nguyen is so amazed by her findings that she’s willing to submit herself to the odious tactics of the big tech company, which controls the Vietnamese island where the octopuses dwell. Having “resettled” the population of the Con Dao Archipelago, the company not only will kill any outsiders who attempt to set foot there, but also has ordered Ha’s death should she attempt to leave. Not that she has any inclination to do so. Once exposed to the octopuses, she is determined to uncover the great mysteries of extrahuman intelligence. In spite of their hostile reputation, these are creatures of transcendent beauty, communicating through glowing visual symbols that move on their skin in complex patterns and sequences. 32
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In a world of robot-operated slave ships, bee-size drones, and AI automonks with three-fingered hands and light receptors for pupils, her main ally is Evrim, the world’s first and possibly last true android, which not only thinks like a human being, but also believes it is conscious. Ha’s benefactor and adversary is Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, the Icelandic brains of the corporation, whose ultimate goal is to create a mind “wiped clean of its limitations.” A prolific writer of SF stories making his debut as a novelist, Nayler maintains a cool, cerebral tone that matches up with the story’s eerie underpinnings. Less an SF adventure than a meditation on consciousness and selfawareness, the limitations of human language, and the reasons for those limitations, the novel teaches as it engages. An intriguing unlocking of underwater secrets, with the occasional thrill.
THISTLEFOOT
Nethercott, GennaRose Anchor (448 pp.) $28.00 | Sept. 13, 2022 978-0-593-46883-8 Part ghost story, part font of wisdom, this gorgeously written novel takes a fantastical romp while cautioning readers to remember the violence and inequity of the past—even when forgetting seems preferable. As young American adults, Isaac Yaga, busker and pickpocket, and his sister, Bellatine, find themselves in possession of Thistlefoot, a magical house that moves on chicken legs. With their last name as a clue, the house opens a key to their past. They descend from Baba Yaga, the sinister witch of Russian folklore who inhabited such a house. The siblings’ quest will be to defeat the Longshadow Man, a murderous, shape-shifting supernatural enemy. In poetic language, the author leads readers to her definition of evil—the silencing of the brutality of the past. “The body remembers. The soured air remembers. We cannot forget.” Through both humorous and violent ups and downs, Isaac and Bellatine learn to deploy the contents of their strange, fantastical house in pursuit of justice. They bond with other bedeviled young people and revive ghosts through Bellatine’s power of Embering; heat emanates from her hands and wakes the dead. With echoes of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholem Aleichem, as well as Buddhist and Christian overtones, the Yagas unearth their past. They learn they come from people who dreamed and believed, who brought with them to America “languages, folded into the suitcases of their tongues.” They realize they must tell the story of Gedenkrovka, Russia, where a pogrom destroyed its Jewish inhabitants. Despite its serious subject matter, this novel contains delights on every page. The author displays a capacious imagination, providing an entertaining, colorful read while grappling with subjects of utmost importance to today’s turbulent world. This book blooms from a fairy tale to a panoptic story that defies space and time, brimming with creativity, wisdom, and love.
