Lullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard
My rating: 3/5 cats
They bury you at the bottom of the gardens—what’s left of you, pathetic and small and twisted so out of shape it hardly seems human anymore. The river, dark and oily, licks at the ruin of your flesh—at your broken bones—and sings you to sleep in a soft, gentle language like a mother’s lullabies, whispering of rest and forgiveness, of a place where it is forever light, forever safe.
this is another one of those tor shorts that offers up some interesting imagery and the shape of a situation without actually bothering to tell a cohesive story, so at the end you’re left scratching your head over what you’ve just read and wondering what you’re supposed to do with it.
the premise is intriguing—it opens in second person, which is always a pleasantly jarring device, and a scenario unfolds where we understand that in this unspecified location, unhealthy girls are ceremonially sacrificed in order to gratify the needs of a sentient house, overseen by a mysterious “master,” in order to feed the magic that keeps the world at bay. the world outside the confines of the house is starving, war-torn, polluted, while the master enjoys fine wines and long life, hinting at sacrifices he has made which may or may not be greater than those of the girls feeding the house, the most recent of which, charlotte, is narrating this story, able to communicate and think in a limited fashion, and definitely still able to suffer.
but the specifics of the situation are left unwritten: what the arrangement between the master and the house is, whether it’s an unavoidable curse, who the people in the house—these “archivists” are, and what they’re archiving, who the master is, what’s the dealio, where this house came from, how much time is passing between sacrifices, etc etc etc. and without knowing the details or the context, we can’t assess the situation—we don’t know if these sacrifices are necessary or voluntary—whether it should be interpreted as morally wrong or whether not making these sacrifices would result in even worse consequences, which all means we have no sense of whether there is any heroism here, or any villainy. all we have are scattered images which don’t quite make up a story.
and that ending?? it’s bonkersville with how much is unexplained. i mean, points for View Spoiler »
and that’s pretty frustrating.
as far as i can tell, this isn’t a retelling of an already-known story, so it’s not entitled to those storytelling shortcuts it could otherwise get away with if it were counting on the reader to fill in the allusive gaps.
it gets many stars cats for atmosphere and imagery, but it’s the literary equivalent of cotton candy—a rush of flavor that vanishes without satisfying any of your hunger.
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2016/06/08/lullaby…
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