Book Review | Scale-Bright by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Julienne’s aunts are the archer who shot down the suns and the woman who lives on the moon. They teach her that there’s more to the city of her birth than meets the eye—that beneath the modern chrome and glass of Hong Kong there are demons, gods, and the seethe of ancient feuds. As a mortal Julienne is to give them a wide berth, for unlike her divine aunts she is painfully vulnerable, and choice prey for any demon.

Until one day, she comes across a bleeding, wounded woman no one else can see, and is drawn into an old, old story of love, snake women, and the deathless monk who hunts them.

***

World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar has it that Benjanun Sriduangkaew may be "the most exciting new voice in speculative fiction today," and on the basis of Scale-Bright, he might be right. A love story set in heaven and Hong Kong arranged around a troubled young woman's belated coming of age, it's the longest and most involved tale Sriduangkaew has told to date, and considered alongside The Sun-Moon Cycle, it represents an achievement without equal.

"An orphan who spent seven years hating equally the parents that died and the extended family that did not," Julienne, when we join her, lives what you might describe as a quiet life with her adoptive aunts, Hau Ngai and Seung Ngo. The fact that they're myths in mortal form complicates things a little, admittedly.

Julienne adores them both, though. They've given her everything—not least love—and their greatness is an inspiration:

She can't stop thinking about them. To adore each other so much after so long, for all the complications neither will voice. Julienne hopes that by the time she looks their age she'll have fixed herself. All her neuroses will be gone, as amusing and harmless as baby pictures. She doesn't want to think it's taken Hau Ngai and Seung Ngo centuries to become who they are. They have forever, and she has only a handful of decades. It doesn't seem right that at twenty-four she still finds herself with problems that should've been shed with adolescence, like bad hair and acne.

"To be well, to know confidence, to have someone like Hau Ngai—just a little like, more human and less legend—for her own." These are her humble hopes. Alas, when your aunts are the archer who shot down the suns and the woman who lives on the moon, all is not so straightforward.

Guest Post | "Interconnection and Telling Myths" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

When Niall asked me to pick a blog topic and suggested, as one option, why I kept coming back to the mythological grounding of Scale-Bright and its related stories, I jumped at the chance: it seems like a perfect way to combine that particular subject and the more general one of writing interconnected short stories that share a world or characters.

I have it on good genre authority—mainly Rachel Swirsky and Niall Harrison—that interconnected short stories are far from uncommon; Aliette de Bodard is famous for it with her Xuya stories, which share a space opera universe best known for its sentient ship AIs and complex families, and the novella On a Red Station, Drifting in the same setting. We know Ann Leckie’s Radchaai mostly from Ancillary Justice, but there are also short stories like They Sink and Are Vanished Away’ and ‘Night’s Slow Poison’. Richard Parks has his Lord Yamada stories and the novel Yamada Monogatari. Lavie Tidhar has built up his Central Station over the years. E. Catherine Tobler has her Unreal Circus, Jason Sanford his Plague Birds while Mike Allen has phantasmagoria SF Hierophants stories and poetry. That’s just to name a handful! It seems to me that the drive to establish a sense of continuity is shared by many writers; sometimes we come up with a world, or a set of characters, we can’t entirely let go after just one story.

But another draw for me is that while reconfigurations of folktales and myths are plentiful, the type of what gets retold tends to be particular. Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and so on are the frequent choices. I wanted to pick a story outside that range. It’s far from obscure; the story of the archer Houyi and the legend of the White Snake are staples—but to some the fact that I gender-flipped Houyi can go entirely unnoticed! So it’s interesting to try this out, introducing tales that are new to some readers while being deeply familiar with others. I’ve observed that retellings tend to give sly nods to readers who know the original—through motif, iconic moments—and that’s part of the delight; I do it too, though I also like to think that I’ve drawn these stories in a manner that can be enjoyed by those unfamiliar with them as well. And once I did one part of this, the rest demanded their turn. ‘Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon’ came first, focusing on Chang’e and Houyi; it led me to research Xihe, the mother of the suns Houyi (somewhat inconsiderately) brings down, and then I wanted to give her a story too—one mostly of my own invention, taking elements from the original material and reconfiguring them to varying degrees. I couldn’t stop there though; at the time I wanted to do so much more with these characters, but ran into the issue that Houyi and Chang’e had already finished their arc, if you will. They’d overcome most of their obstacles, achieved narrative closure, and it’s time to relegate them to secondary roles.

I needed a new character, a new focus, and a new story. Bringing all of this to our time seemed like a fine way to do it, and making the main character a many-times removed grandniece of Chang’e’s gives them a crucial family connection. Then I lit on the concept of tying it into a different myth—which offers its own (relatively) young, hot-headed figure in the Green Snake as foil to the young, uncertain woman I’ve made the lead of Scale-Bright. Things ballooned and before I knew it, I had in my hand an entire novella. It couldn’t be squeezed back into a short story anymore.

It’s not all smooth as this is not my culture, but I hope that I’ve put in thought and research, though if concerns are raised I would be more than happy to attend to them. Part of my goal was relentless fidelity in specific aspects. I never include glossaries in my work, as it’s important to me that words are understood through their contexts organically. The characters speak more than one Chinese—readers who know will recognize the markers around that. There are terms in the novella I leave untranslated and undefined, and while that might make the reading experience challenging to some, in that regard I’m of the Junot Díaz school of thought: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao comes without a glossary, so I like to think I’m safe, or at least in good company!

And it’s satisfying, as well, to fulfill the obligation to characters who’ve taken root in your head. To make them complete, while simultaneously sharing something you love—a body of myth that resonates with me, recast slightly in a way I hope will resonate with others too. That, to me, is one of the best things of this business: sharing what you care about, what matters to you, and writing from a place of joy.

***

Benjanun Sriduangkaew is "a writer of SF, F, and other things in the between" whose fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Dark, GigaNotoSaurus, Tor.com and a number of anthologies such as Solaris Rising 3, Phantasm Japan and The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures. A 2014 Campbell Award finalist for Best New Writer, her debut novella Scale-Bright is out now from Immersion Press. Find out more about it and its author at A Bee Writes.

Coming Attractions | Scale-Bright by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Lavie Tidhar has it that Benjanun Sriduangkaew is amongst "the most exciting new voices in speculative fiction today," and readers? I don't disagree. I've only read a few of her short stories—'Fade to Gold' in End of the Road and 'Silent Bridge, Pale Cascade' in Clarkesworld Magazine—but both have been (excuse the hyperbole here) mindblowing.

To wit, I met the news of her new novella—her first, unless I'm very much mistaken—with more than a mite of excitement. Due out sometime this month from the fine folks at Immersion Press, Scale-Bright is "a contemporary fantasy" narrative blending "Chinese myth, interstitial cities, and the difficulties of being mortal and ordinary when everyone around you has stepped out of legends."

Here's the wonderful Richard Wagner cover, in all its high resolution loveliness:

I've got a blurb for the book, to boot. Behold!

Julienne’s aunts are the archer who shot down the suns and the woman who lives on the moon. They teach her that there’s more to the city of her birth than meets the eye—that beneath the modern chrome and glass of Hong Kong there are demons, gods, and the seethe of ancient feuds. As a mortal Julienne is to give them wide berth, for unlike her divine aunts she is painfully vulnerable, and choice prey for any demon.

Until one day, she comes across a wounded, bleeding woman no one else can see, and is drawn into an old, old story of love, snake women, and the deathless monk who hunts them.

If, like me, you can't contain your anticipation, check out these three free short stories—'Chang'e Dashes from the Moon', 'Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon' and 'The Crows Her Dragon's Gate'—all of which "provide further background to the mythological grounding of Scale-Bright." And then get your orders in, alright?