Review:
The Wings Upon Her Back, by Samantha Mills
| Publisher: |
Tachyon |
| Copyright: |
2024 |
| ISBN: |
1-61696-415-4 |
| Format: |
Kindle |
| Pages: |
394 |
The Wings Upon Her Back is a political steampunk science fantasy
novel. If the author's name sounds familiar, it may be because Samantha
Mills's short story "Rabbit Test" won Nebula, Locus, Hugo, and Sturgeon
awards. This is her first novel.
Winged Zemolai is a soldier of the mecha god and the protege of Mecha
Vodaya, the Voice. She has served the city-state of Radezhda by defending
it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, for twenty-six years.
Despite that, it takes only a moment of errant mercy for her entire life
to come crashing down. On a whim, she spares a kitchen worker who was
concealing a statue of the scholar god, meaning that he was only
pretending to worship the worker god like all workers should. Vodaya is
unforgiving and uncompromising, as is the sleeping mecha god. Zemolai's
wings are ripped from her back and crushed in the hand of the god, and
she's left on the ground to die of mechalin withdrawal.
The Wings Upon Her Back is told in two alternating timelines. The
main one follows Zemolai after her exile as she is rescued by a young
group of revolutionaries who think she may be useful in their plans. The
other thread starts with Zemolai's childhood and shows the reader how she
became Winged Zemolai: her scholar family, her obsession with flying, her
true devotion to the mecha god, and the critical early years when she
became Vodaya's protege. Mills maintains the separate timelines through
the book and wraps them up in a rather neat piece of symbolic parallelism
in the epilogue.
I picked up this book on a recommendation from
C.L. Clark, and yes, indeed, I can see why she liked this book. It's a
story about a political awakening, in which Zemolai slowly realizes that
she has been manipulated and lied to and that she may, in fact, be one of
the baddies.
The Wings Upon Her Back is more personal than some
other books with that theme, since Zemolai was specifically (and
abusively) groomed for her role by Vodaya. Much of the book is Zemolai
trying to pull out the hooks that Vodaya put in her or, in the flashback
timeline, the reader watching Vodaya install those hooks.
The flashback timeline is difficult reading. I don't think Mills could
have left it out, but she says in the afterword that it was the hardest
part of the book to write and it was also the hardest part of the book to
read. It fills in some interesting bits of world-building and backstory,
and Mills does a great job pacing the story revelations so that both
threads contribute equally, but mostly it's a story of manipulative abuse.
We know from the main storyline that Vodaya's tactics work, which gives
those scenes the feel of a slow-motion train wreck. You know what's going
to happen, you know it will be bad, and yet you can't look away.
It occurred to me while reading this that Emily Tesh's
Some Desperate Glory told a similar type
of story without the flashback structure, which eliminates the stifling
feeling of inevitability. I don't think that would not have worked for
this story. If you simply rearranged the chapters of
The Wings Upon
Her Back into a linear narrative, I would have bailed on the book.
Watching Zemolai being manipulated would have been too depressing and
awful for me to make it to the payoff without the forward-looking hope of
the main timeline. It gave me new appreciation for the difficulty of what
Tesh pulled off.
Mills uses this interwoven structure well, though. At about 90% through
this book I had no idea how it could end in the space remaining, but it
reaches a surprising and satisfying conclusion. Mills uses a type of
ending that normally bothers me, but she does it by handling the
psychological impact so well that I couldn't help but admire it. I'm
avoiding specifics because I think it worked better when I wasn't
expecting it, but it ties beautifully into the thematic point of the book.
I do have one structural objection, though. It's one of those problems I
didn't notice while reading, but that started bothering me when I thought
back through the story from a political lens.
The Wings Upon Her
Back is Zemolai's story, her redemption arc, and that means she drives
the plot. The band of revolutionaries are great characters (particularly
Galiana), but they're supporting characters. Zemolai is older, more
experienced, and knows critical information they don't have, and she uses
it to effectively take over. As setup for her character arc, I see why
Mills did this. As political praxis, I have issues.
There is a tendency in politics to believe that political skill is
portable and repurposable. Converting opposing operatives to the cause is
welcomed not only because they indicate added support, but also because
they can use their political skill to help you win instead. To an extent
this is not wrong, and is probably the most true of combat skills (which
Zemolai has in abundance). But there's an underlying assumption that
politics is symmetric, and a critical reason why I hold many of the
political positions that I do hold is that I
don't think politics is
symmetric.
If someone has been successfully stoking resentment and xenophobia in
support of authoritarians, converts to an anti-authoritarian cause, and
then produces propaganda stoking resentment and xenophobia
against
authoritarians, this is in some sense an improvement. But if one believes
that resentment and xenophobia are inherently wrong, if one's politics are
aimed at reducing the resentment and xenophobia in the world, then in a
way this person has not truly converted. Worse, because this is an
effective manipulation tactic, there is a strong tendency to put this type
of political convert into a leadership position, where they will,
intentionally or not, start turning the anti-authoritarian movement into a
copy of the authoritarian movement they left. They haven't actually
changed their politics because they haven't understood (or simply don't
believe in) the fundamental asymmetry in the positions. It's the same
criticism that I have of realpolitik: the ends do not justify the
means because the means corrupt the ends.
Nothing that happens in this book is as egregious as my example, but the
more I thought about the plot structure, the more it bothered me that
Zemolai never listens to the revolutionaries she joins long enough to
wrestle with why she became an agent of an authoritarian state and they
didn't. They got something fundamentally right that she got wrong, and
perhaps that should have been reflected in who got to make future
decisions. Zemolai made very poor choices and yet continues to be the
sole main character of the story, the one whose decisions and actions
truly matter. Maybe being wrong about everything should be disqualifying
for being the main character, at least for a while, even if you think
you've understood why you were wrong.
That problem aside, I enjoyed this. Both timelines were compelling and
quite difficult to put down, even when they got rather dark. I could have
done with less body horror and a few fewer fight scenes, but I'm glad I
read it.
Science fiction readers should be warned that the world-building, despite
having an intricate and fascinating surface, is mostly vibes. I started
the book wondering how people with giant metal wings on their back can
literally fly, and thought the mentions of neural ports, high-tech
materials, and immune-suppressing drugs might mean that we'd get some sort
of explanation. We do not: heavier-than-air flight works because it looks
really cool and serves some thematic purposes. There are enough hints of
technology indistinguishable from magic that you could make up your own
explanations if you wanted to, but that's not something this book is
interested in. There's not a thing wrong with that, but don't get caught
by surprise if you were in the mood for a neat scientific explanation of
apparent magic.
Recommended if you like somewhat-harrowing character development with a
heavy political lens and steampunk vibes, although it's not the sort of
book that I'd press into the hands of everyone I know.
The Wings
Upon Her Back is a complete story in a single novel.
Content warning: the main character is a victim of physical and emotional
abuse, so some of that is a lot. Also surgical gore, some torture, and
genocide.
Rating: 7 out of 10
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