Dec 6

Dec 6 A City In The North by Marta Randall

I realized something the day I left for a weekend backpacking trip through the beautiful Laurel Highlands: I needed a book. My current book, A Door Into Ocean, was delightful and would feel right at home among nature, but at 400+ pages, I wasn't thrilled at piling it atop my other 20lbs of gear. On the trail, every gram counts.

I was also (socially distance-ly) backpacking with my dear sister-in-law, who I knew goes to bed much earlier than I do. I needed a book good enough to keep me busy for hours; randomly grabbing a small-ish book from the shelf was a gamble. What to do?

Marta Randall to the rescue. I adored Islands despite the weird metaphysical hocus-pocus-y ending and had been meaning to come back to her. Enter: A City In The North. At 222 pages, it's half the length—and half the weight—of A Door Into Ocean. Literally. I weighed them.

Based on Marta Randall's incredible skill, I knew A City In The North was going to be infinitely less hokey than the cover implied*, but damn. Novels from the 1970s knew how to get it done. At only 222 pages, with a font bigger than average, there is so much covered in this sweet little book.

The premise is simple: Toyon Sutak is low-key obsessed with a ruin he saw in primary school that filled his imagination and spurred him from his family's simple farming life to owning a shipping conglomerate.

Named Hoep Tashik, the ruin exists on a planet where the locals—called Hannin—are described as "ape-like" and "un-expressive." They're peaceful, but there's a problem: they've successfully petitioned the galactic government to make most of their world—including Hoep Tashik—restricted to outsiders. Toyon, however, isn't concerned. Along with his wife, Alin Kennerin, he arrives on Hoep-Hanninah, convinced he can persuade the Hannin to make an exception for him.

This is the premise, not the plot. The plot is rooted in Toyon's desire but is not as simple as "man overcomes obstacles to explore ruin." I'm reticent to tell you much more, though, as I adored not knowing which way things were shifting or what to expect. I felt a bit like Toyon myself, watching bewildered as unfamiliar people and aliens behave in ways I didn't understand, but wanted to, all while wondering how ... everything affected the plot.

In many ways, A City In The North reminds me of Nancy Kress's *amazing* In An Alien Light. The obvious comparison is the notion of a "premise" story. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, I explain it in detail in the In An Alien Light review.

It's more than that, however. The interaction of Toyon, Alin, and other humans with the dramatically alien Hannin evokes a similar mesmerizing otherness to Kress's human-alien dynamics. Again I read, hungrily, to see if these strange creatures would live up to my hopes for them, and puzzled when the boundary between human and alien blurred.

It was also interesting to read A City In The North during/directly after A Door Into Ocean. Both stories display a previously independent world reacting to the presence of corporations/traders interested exclusively in the planet's resources. Both stories feature non-violent native populations displeased with the change but struggling with how to handle it.

What makes this comparison fascinating, however, is the differences. There's the topical: in 222 pages, I don't feel like I get to know the characters as intimately, despite them feeling like fully-fledged people. There's also less world-building; almost every world ties directly into the plot. The biggest and most thought-provoking difference, however, is between the Sharers and the Hannin. Despite all their purple skin, webbed digits, and the ability to procreate without men, the Sharers are human. The Hannin are not. And this anthropological—even ethnological—puzzle is what drives the novel. Perhaps there are some questions left unanswered throughout the story, some ideas are explained in a rush, and the ending is a little more open-ended than I prefer (what can I say, I'm a sucker for a denouement), but I found A City In The North to be a fascinating, thought-provoking read with plenty of substance and even beauty despite its short length.

TW, there is a short depiction of an obviously sexually abusive relationship between an adult (male) villain and a boy. Nothing explicit happens, the depiction is very short, and it only comes up once to really demonize the villain, but it’s there. It’s, imo, the weakest part of the novel and entirely unnecessary, but it’s there. Fair warning.

*The cover is that sort of so-dreadful-it's-amazing. Apologies to Vincent DiFate, but it's true. He can be an incredible artist, mind you. Just not ... here.