The Engine’s Child by Holly Phillips

Gaslamp, Reviews, Steampunk Comments (0)

The rain beyond the porch roof sang and pattered and sighed. Electric lamps on the dam blazed all night, every night, but here, with the temple and half the scholarium buildings between, the rain stole all the light. Passageways and cloistered yards were filled with falling sparks, while the buildings were only an absence, a darkness where nothing fell. — p. 3

Magic, philosophy, and technology mingle in Holly Phillips’ imaginative novel The Engine’s Child (2008). Neither steampunk nor gaslamp, though likely to be of interest to readers of both, this lushly written, slender volume depicts a humanity gripped by hubris as it stands before the shores of the great unknown, seeking to penetrate a darkness that neither candles nor electric lights can dismiss.

The world of The Engine’s Child is one small island encompassed by an endless, unexplored ocean; an island that is being flooded by nonstop rains and overcrowded by humans at risk of running out of food and space to live. Only the towers along the bay have electrical power; the religiously conservative shaudah who rules the island’s demesnes has forbidden the technologically adept Vashmarna demesne to run electricity out into the countryside or into the slums located in the tidal flats across the bay from the towers. But Lady Vashmarna believes the shaudah is being short-sighted and is pursuing her own complex plots within the poverty-stricken, superstitious warrens of the tidal, where the young dedicate Moth is using her unique power to touch the unknown — the mundab — to fashion a great arcane engine. What neither of them realizes is that they are not the only ones seeking to pierce the veil of the unknown. When politics, religion, and magic clash, they threaten to tear the island apart.

The characters of The Engine’s Child are complex and multifaceted, interesting to read about but difficult to love. Both Vashmarna and Moth are essentially flawed, weakened by their overconfidence and reliance on secrecy and lies as they seek to free their people — as each individually defines the term — from oppression. Achieving neither heroic nor antiheroic stature, their motives and purposes run from the admirable to the disagreeable. This same fallibility runs through the less central characters, as well: the demesne lord Divaram Ghar and his priestly son Baradam; Moth’s obsessed tutor Istvan Soos; the shadow-cult assassin Hamana; the unreadably distant and disinterested shaudah; the jealous but loyal tidal girl Silk; and the conflicted engineer Aramis Tapurnashen, who is the only character who seems to be trying to reconcile love and duty in some honorable fashion.

Although the characters in The Engine’s Child may be difficult to admire, the world is not. Phillips does a phenomenal job of describing her exotic, monsoon-sodden setting, which vividly juxtaposes leaking temples with an electrically lit dam; mud-covered slum streets with soaring, glass-walled towers; and one small, overcrowded sliver of land against a vast, featureless, unknowable expanse of ocean. The small island world teems with life — biting flies, jewel-colored lizards, blue-eyed temple cats, roof gardens, strangling vines — and the ever-present contrast between technology, nature, and the mysterious mundab is evocatively drawn out throughout the book.

Also present throughout the book are three thematic threads. The first, the familiar vs. the unknown, encompasses the other two: the loving mother vs. the absent mother and humility vs. hubris.

The first thread, the familiar vs. the unknown, is the most central. On an interpersonal level, the poor denizens of the tidal slums and the privileged denizens of the bayside towers both look upon each other as alien and untrustworthy. Similarly, the village-dwelling denizens of the hadaras, or countryside, look with suspicion on the demesne-dwelling denizens of the shadras, or densely populated area. Even within the shadras, the divisions exist: Vashmarna demesne versus Ghar demesne; engineer versus priest; religion versus cult; shadow cult versus Society of Doors.

All of these interpersonal divisions reflect the larger philosophical framework that defines and confounds humanity: that of the rasnan — the known world — versus the mundab — or the great unknown. Originally applied to the island versus the ocean, the terms have taken on a mythological status for a people whose legends tell that they arrived on the rasnan from another world, the ramhadras, a world that might have been a heaven from which they were exiled or a hell from which they escaped. Either way, the loss of that ancient birthplace is reflected in a religion that worships distant gods while rejecting the land in which it’s now based.

The second theme, loving mother versus absent mother, can of course be linked to the first, in the sense that the world is the mother of life. In this sense, the rasnan, the small island upon which humanity lives, might be characterized as the loving mother — albeit a mother rejected — and the ramhadras, or world left behind, might be the absent mother. Two of the deities worshiped by the populace reflect this binarism, the first holding the second’s face like a mask: Kistnu, absent mother, stretch out your hand. Kistnaran, mother of absence, turn your terrible face aside. Motherhood is also significant in the relationships, literal and symbolic, between the various characters, as well as in their relationship to the objects — whether technological or magical or some combination of the two — that they create in their attempts to release humanity from its exile.

This attempt leads to the third of the novel’s themes, humility vs. hubris.  The characters each believe they alone possess the power to save humanity and conquer the mundab, but such hubris inevitably leads the island to the brink of destruction. Only their acceptance of and reconciliation with the unknown can offer beleagued humanity any hope of saving itself.

So, is it gaslamp or steampunk?  Neither, inasmuch as both gaslamp and steampunk present a Victorianesque view of the world; The Engine’s Child has a far more fantastic cultural setting, with echoes of Asia in its descriptions of monsoon-like weather, bamboo chimes, and cone-shaped straw hats. Nor would I classify the novel as “smoke & sorcery,” as its use of hydroelectric power puts the technological level in the late 19th to early 20th century. Science fantasy? Technological fantasy? Neither of those terms captures quite the right nuance, since the presence of magic is at least as important  as that of technology in this novel. The cover blurb compares The Engine’s Child, with some justice, to the work of Jeff Vandermeer and China Miéville, so perhaps we’ll just have to assign it to the New Weird and be content. Regardless, The Engine’s Child is a complex and enterprising novel offering a thought-provoking plot within a memorable setting.

If you enjoy your fantasy with richly unusual settings, powerful female characters, and/or the hybridization of magic and technology, The Engine’s Child definitely deserves your attention.

Other reviews of steampunk-friendly works:

The Grand Ellipse by Paula Volsky
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist
The Dark Volume by Gordon Dahlquist

drupagliassotti @ March 16, 2009