The Big Idea: Elizabeth Bear
Posted on June 28, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 4 Comments
Few storytellers alive can spin a tale like Elizabeth Bear, and in this Big Idea for The Origin of Storms, the concluding novel of a trilogy, Bear digs just a little into the elements that make this particular story the one to tell right now.
ELIZABETH BEAR:
What if you inherited a broken world from your ancestors and had to try to fix it?
Okay, it’s 2022, and maybe that doesn’t sound very much like fiction. But it is the premise of The Origin Of Storms, my new book out this week.
The Origin of Storms is the final volume in the Lotus Kingdoms trilogy and the culmination of the series begun with the Eternal Sky trilogy. It’s about a diverse group of people with an existential crisis on their hands and only one thing in common: They didn’t ask for this, Mom and Dad.
Well, life isn’t fair. And neither are apocalypses.
In the land of the Eternal Sky, the very earth and heavens were shattered and re-knit strangely by ancient cataclysms. As you move from nation to nation, the skies change depending on what rulers and gods hold sway. The Lotus Kingdoms are a microcosm of that broken land—bound together by an Alchemical Emperor, torn apart by his death, and in competition for scarce resources and the “rightful crown.”
But this world is marked by deep history and deeper trauma, by the ruthless choices of prior generations, by intentional obfuscations of past events and terrible crimes. So what I found myself asking, processing, working through as I wrote this book is: How do we stop compounding our own generational trauma, and the evils perpetuated by the people who came before us?
Where do we eke out the space to heal and make room for others to heal, to interrupt cycles of exploitation and abuse?
How do we find for ourselves and provide for others that tiny bit of grace? What do we have to sacrifice in order to free ourselves from the ruins of a world we didn’t make or ask for? How much courage is required to walk away from a broken system and find a better one?
It’s not by blaming individuals for the ongoing evils of systems. It has to be by reforming the systems themselves, or if we don’t have that power, working to subvert them.
I don’t mean to make this sound like a philosophical treatise. It’s an adventure novel! But the title of this feature is THE BIG IDEA, which sort of invites the discussion of deep thematic questions!
So don’t get me wrong: this book is full of escapades. It has a really kickass dragon, a loudmouthed magic pen, a chainsmoking volcano goddess with a bad attitude, necromancers and spies and the undead avatar of a terrifying god (who happens to be one of the good guys, don’tchaknow?)
The Lotus Kingdoms also has the normal things you’d expect from an Elizabeth Bear novel, which is to say queer people, old people, and disabled people having adventures; intricate plotting that (hopefully) comes together in the end with a few surprising revelations; and perhaps a passing acknowledgement of the unreliability of memory and perception. Also a giant messy battle, and a big scary guy made out of metal who hits things really hard once in a while.
It also contains megafauna.
And a volcano. Okay, two volcanoes.
You gotta have a volcano.
The Origin of Storms: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s site. Follow on Twitter.
I’m really excited for this one! Couldn’t come at a better time.
She’s one of the few authors whom, if she gathered up a years worth of grocery lists and published it I’d probably buy it.
Don’t worry John, you’re another one.
Very excited about this book! Anything by Bear is automatically on my “to read” list.
That’s a nice cover. Macmillan tells me the artist is Sung Choi. I don’t see the actual cover design credited and I suppose someone else had a hand in that.