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Хозяин зеркал
В мире, изломанном, как отражение в разбившемся зеркале, лишь Долина Семи Колодцев спокойна и неизменна. Но и здесь пролилась кровь, и мальчику Джейкобу приходится отправиться в Город, Чтобы добыть порцию ненависти. Ненависть в Городе не кипит в котле под золотой крышкой, а продается в обычной аптеке. И правят здесь трое Господ -- Глад, Мор и Война, победившие в столетней войне снежную Королеву. Однако тень Королевы все еще витает над Городом, и Джейкобу достается ее поцелуй и осколок ледяного зеркала в сердце. Отныне он — Кей, и ему предстоит сложить из осколков зеркал слово. Но какое?
384 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 11, 2022
Безумная постмодерная смесь "Снежной королевы" и библейского апокалипсиса с сотней культурных и литературных отсылок. Яркие персонажи, фантасмагорический мир и отличный авторский стиль, но хоть сюжетный пазл складывать было интересно, концовка скомканная вышла.
December 28, 2019
This is a fantasy novel by Russian writers Yuliya Zonis and Yekaterina Cherniavskaya, titled “Master of Mirrors”. It won Russian SSF Award Interpresscon in 2014 and the authors were the last (so far) female winners.
This is a story extremely loosely based on The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. It happened that in last few months I’ve read two more novels based on the same tale – The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge and The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher. They are all quite different – a space opera, a feminist/queer fantasy with YA vibes and the current one. While the previous two pay no attention to the start of the original, this one made it a founding stone. To remind, the tale starts not with Kay and Gerda, but with a very wicked hobgoblin, who one day he was in a high state of delight because he had invented a mirror with this peculiarity, that every good and pretty thing reflected in it shrank away to almost nothing. On the other hand, every bad and good-for-nothing thing stood out and looked its worst. The most beautiful landscapes reflected in it looked like boiled spinach, and the best people became hideous, or else they were upside down and had no bodies. Their faces were distorted beyond recognition, and if they had even one freckle it appeared to spread all over the nose and mouth.
This story starts with a boy Jacob. His uncle Poger has just been shot by Bob O’Sullivon, when the uncle tried to kill Bob for Stealing riding ostriches from their cannabis plantation. Jacob’s aunt tells him to avenge the fallen relative, but the boy is more interested in his sand golem than in setting disputes: after all the only remaining gun in house is half-broken after the uncle tries to run up and beat the aunt with it a few years back. The aunt decides that Jacob should go to the City to buy some hate.
The City was once a battleground between the Snow Queen and Three riders of apocalypse, known as misters P, F and W (pestilence, famine and war). Now there is a truce, with the riders controlling the ground and the Queen the sky. The whole universe is known as the Third Circle (of Hell). The story continues with Queen’s servant’s Kay (authors’ assume he is key, but as many Slavs, who read better that speak assume it is pronounced as [kei], not [ki:]) appropriates Jacob’s body and has some shady deals with the riders. While it may sound interesting, for the first third it is more or less average straightforward fantasy story. Where it truly starts to shine is in the last two thirds, which replay the same story from different angles.
I haven’t read Russian language (for actually quite a few authors aren’t Russians, from Marina Dyachenko to Henry Lion Oldie, who are from Ukraine to Belarussians Николай Чадовичand Юрий Брайдер and so on) for almost twenty years: at first just because I shifted to non-fic, then because I was trying to catch up with western SFF scene and finally after 2014 Russian aggression in both the Crimea and Donbas doesn’t really help either. However, as a part of checking SFF books with awards from around the globe I decided to try a bit. There is a world of difference:
In modern western SFF there is a greater diversity compared with classics, strong feminist themes were part of SFF for decades. There is sometimes even a perfunctory wokeness, with racial and gender diversity in almost any modern novel. And the original Anderson’s tale has strong feminist vibes or at least chiefly female characters, while Kay plays a role of damsel in distress. Not so in this book – almost all characters are male (recall – both authors are female), and instead of a strong brave Gerda, we get a girl who starts living with one of the characters, adoring and almost worshiping him, while he regularly beats her, esp., after she started to pose nude for neighboring artists. She cooks for him and washes his clothes even despite she is well aware that he doesn’t love her. This ‘voluntary victim’ is so common in Russian literature but so distant from western SFF…
While the world is pure fantasy, it is a crooked mirror or Russian past and present: under the Queen’s rule here was order, no homeless (they froze), strict rules, centralized planning (including water supply and disposal) – a clear allusion to the USSR. The new rulers are parasites, living from the remaining assets, creating great inequality and disorder, an allusion to the present day.
There is also a thing I haven’t noticed earlier, how much a work of literature can quote, often accidentally, other works. This made me sad that possibly I miss something in English works I read, for I haven’t read children books or watched a lot of TV to catch all nuances.
This is a story extremely loosely based on The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. It happened that in last few months I’ve read two more novels based on the same tale – The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge and The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher. They are all quite different – a space opera, a feminist/queer fantasy with YA vibes and the current one. While the previous two pay no attention to the start of the original, this one made it a founding stone. To remind, the tale starts not with Kay and Gerda, but with a very wicked hobgoblin, who one day he was in a high state of delight because he had invented a mirror with this peculiarity, that every good and pretty thing reflected in it shrank away to almost nothing. On the other hand, every bad and good-for-nothing thing stood out and looked its worst. The most beautiful landscapes reflected in it looked like boiled spinach, and the best people became hideous, or else they were upside down and had no bodies. Their faces were distorted beyond recognition, and if they had even one freckle it appeared to spread all over the nose and mouth.
This story starts with a boy Jacob. His uncle Poger has just been shot by Bob O’Sullivon, when the uncle tried to kill Bob for Stealing riding ostriches from their cannabis plantation. Jacob’s aunt tells him to avenge the fallen relative, but the boy is more interested in his sand golem than in setting disputes: after all the only remaining gun in house is half-broken after the uncle tries to run up and beat the aunt with it a few years back. The aunt decides that Jacob should go to the City to buy some hate.
The City was once a battleground between the Snow Queen and Three riders of apocalypse, known as misters P, F and W (pestilence, famine and war). Now there is a truce, with the riders controlling the ground and the Queen the sky. The whole universe is known as the Third Circle (of Hell). The story continues with Queen’s servant’s Kay (authors’ assume he is key, but as many Slavs, who read better that speak assume it is pronounced as [kei], not [ki:]) appropriates Jacob’s body and has some shady deals with the riders. While it may sound interesting, for the first third it is more or less average straightforward fantasy story. Where it truly starts to shine is in the last two thirds, which replay the same story from different angles.
I haven’t read Russian language (for actually quite a few authors aren’t Russians, from Marina Dyachenko to Henry Lion Oldie, who are from Ukraine to Belarussians Николай Чадовичand Юрий Брайдер and so on) for almost twenty years: at first just because I shifted to non-fic, then because I was trying to catch up with western SFF scene and finally after 2014 Russian aggression in both the Crimea and Donbas doesn’t really help either. However, as a part of checking SFF books with awards from around the globe I decided to try a bit. There is a world of difference:
In modern western SFF there is a greater diversity compared with classics, strong feminist themes were part of SFF for decades. There is sometimes even a perfunctory wokeness, with racial and gender diversity in almost any modern novel. And the original Anderson’s tale has strong feminist vibes or at least chiefly female characters, while Kay plays a role of damsel in distress. Not so in this book – almost all characters are male (recall – both authors are female), and instead of a strong brave Gerda, we get a girl who starts living with one of the characters, adoring and almost worshiping him, while he regularly beats her, esp., after she started to pose nude for neighboring artists. She cooks for him and washes his clothes even despite she is well aware that he doesn’t love her. This ‘voluntary victim’ is so common in Russian literature but so distant from western SFF…
While the world is pure fantasy, it is a crooked mirror or Russian past and present: under the Queen’s rule here was order, no homeless (they froze), strict rules, centralized planning (including water supply and disposal) – a clear allusion to the USSR. The new rulers are parasites, living from the remaining assets, creating great inequality and disorder, an allusion to the present day.
There is also a thing I haven’t noticed earlier, how much a work of literature can quote, often accidentally, other works. This made me sad that possibly I miss something in English works I read, for I haven’t read children books or watched a lot of TV to catch all nuances.
April 4, 2016
Даже не знаю, что написать. Странная, странная сказка. Идет ниоткуда в никуда. Хороший, грамотный, но притом тяжелый для меня язык. Я словно продиралась через дебри какие-то. Не могу сказать, что не понравилось, но, видимо, у этой вселенной должна быть какя-то предыстория.
July 6, 2019
It simply was not a book for me.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews