#CBR9 Book 9: "Of Dreams and Rust" by Sarah Fine

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Spoiler warning! This is book two in a duology and it will be absolutely impossible for me to review this book without giving away some spoilers for book one, Of Metal and Wishes. Neither book stands well on its own, and they are clearly meant to be read as a whole. If you like going into books completely unspoiled, skip this review until you've finished book one.

It's been a year since the dramatic events that brought down the entire slaughterhouse where Wen and her father worked. Bo, formerly the Ghost of Gochan One, has now made his home underneath the machine factory of Gochan Two, where he also steals parts for his various inventions. Wen frequently spends much of her early mornings with him, tending to his scars and keeping him company. She's worried about this new obsession of making himself a mechanical suit, encasing even his healthy body parts in metal armour. She's also can't put Melik out of her mind. She knows he and his brother returned to their own people. There is a Noor rebellion raging, they're no longer content to be oppressed by the Itanyan empire. The factory where Wen works has just received a new, massive order for new war machines, and she realises they are to be used to crush the Noor once and for all.

Leaving behind her father and everything she's ever known, Wen sneaks out of the factory compound and boards a train toward the border region where the battles have been raging. She needs to try to find Melik and warn him about the upcoming escalation from the Itanyai. Safely away from her former home, she discovers that with the exception of one carriage of civilians, the whole train is full of soldiers disguised as factory workers. The counter-attack on the Noor is clearly happening even sooner than she expected.

When Wen and Melik are finally reunited, there isn't much resemblance to the thoughtful and courteous young man Wen befriended and started falling for a year ago. Guerilla warfare has changed Melik and he appears cold, callous and ruthless now. Cursing her naivety and foolish infatuation, Wen questions the wisdom of her actions, especially after she finds herself a captive of the Noor who believe her to be an Itanyai spy. They want to take her to their commander, to be questioned, possibly tortured and killed. Was Wen entirely wrong about Melik? Has war so changed him that he will choose his loyalty to the Noor rebellion over his feelings for Wen?

While the first book was a slightly flawed, but nonetheless interesting retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, complete with love triangle and Steampunk elements. In the second part, things get a lot more serious, and few of the things that bothered me about the first book are troubling here. Bo, Wen and Melik's characters and personalities are developed very well over the course of the book and the romance that is in its early tentative stages in the first book has more of a chance to blossom here, despite the dramatic situation the characters find themselves in.

Even after Wen discovers that even a war-hardened Melik hasn't completely lost his humanity and compassion, and that he has in fact been thinking of her just as much as she's thought of him, the road of their love doesn't run entirely smooth. Their two peoples have vastly different cultural norms and traditions. The Itanayi are a very reserved and private people, taught that emotional outbursts of any kind are vulgar and inappropriate. They value decorum, and their society is heavily patriarchal. Expressing their emotions in actions or words is difficult for them. The Noor, on the other hand, are very tactile and openly emotional. They are very openly affectionate, and do not hesitate to show anger or grief. They happily express how they feel, and allow their women a much more equal position in their society. So even if there wasn't a war raging around them, with the powerful war machines of the Itanyan empire about to arrive to crush the Noor villages once and for all (no matter what the collateral damage to poorer, rural Itanyai residents in the area), Wen and Melik would have to work to sort out their true feelings for each other.

While Of Metal and Wishes had a lot of unfortunate rape culture and frankly a surprisingly large cast of dislikable supporting characters, the emotional resonance of this book would not be as great if I hadn't read that one first. Wen becomes a proper heroine in her own right, rather than mostly a damsel in distress. Melik is fighting for the liberty and future of his own people, while struggling not to give into the temptation of mindless violence against those who have oppressed them for so long. The odds are certainly not in the Noor's favour, and the costs of the near-impossible victory are likely to be very high indeed.

I liked the unusual location of this fantasy duology, but can absolutely understand while a lot of other reviewers have wished that the Asian influences were more pronounced and obvious. As it is, it all becomes a bit tokenistic. While the beginning had it's problems, the duology as a whole is a very satisfying and emotional read. I was absolutely teary-eyed for parts of Of Dreams and Rust.

Judging a book by its cover: It looks like they've changed cover models from Of Metal and Wishes, but I can't imagine from the cover image that this isn't supposed to be Wen. She wears the distinctive red outfit with the wide sash at a particularly significant scene in the book, but I wish they'd arranged the cover model's hair to fit the scene as well. Also, the robes are supposed to be quite a bit too big for Wen, but I guess they didn't want things to look slouchy on the cover of the book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR9 Book 8: "Of Metal and Wishes" by Sarah Fine

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Wen, a young woman, whose family were clearly of a higher social status before her mother got sick and died, now works as a doctor's apprentice for her father. Wen and her father are Itanyai. They both live in a large factory complex, Gochan One, treating to the workers of a large slaughterhouse. In the same larger compound, there is a factory producing textiles and one making advanced war machines, to further the military might of their country. Most of the workers at the factory know that the bosses charge them heavily for uniforms, lodgings and clothes, but they have no choice but to keep working, if they want to make money.

No one's as heavily indentured as the new seasonal workers, who are Noor. While the Itanyai are clearly described as more traditionally Asian, with almond skin, dark hair and eyes, the Noor seemed a lot more Caucasian, probably more Slavic of origin. The Noor are believed to be a savage and brutish people, who have tried to rebell against their Ita overlords, and been subdued every time. Many of the regular workers are unhappy about the arrival of the Noor, believing they will bring bad luck to the slaughterhouse.

One of the beliefs among the workers is that there is a ghost haunting the premises. Someone has carved out an altar, where superstitious workers leave their most treasured possessions to wish for favours. Wen scoffs at this, and goaded by some of the other women, challenges the ghost to prove his existence. Shortly after one of the Noor workers, who had humiliated Wen in the cafeteria by tripping her and trying to look up her skirt, is badly injured on the factory floor. Wen is terrified that she indirectly caused the injury and wows to befriend and help the Noor boy. She sells some of her beautifully embroidered dresses to pay for his care, and later risks her own health to help her father nurse the Noor workers through a flu epidemic, which seems to hit the foreign workers harder than the natives. She grows especially close with Melik, who's one of only two Noor workers who speak her language and the de facto leader of the foreign work crew.

Having had terrible proof that the Ghost does in fact exist, Wen can't help but be curious and starts to investigate. She discovers that a young Itanyai worker died on the factory floor several years before, and that her father was the one to pronounce him dead. She starts to suspect that her father knows more than he's letting on, and as she continues to snoop, discovers that the Ghost seems very interested in her as well. Once she discovers the truth of his identity, she needs to acknowledge that he seems to have a peculiar attachment to her, and is willing to do pretty much anything to protect her, whether she wants him to or not.

This book is like an alternate universe retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, set in a sort of Steampunk version of Asia. It's an interesting book, and I liked the twists on a familiar story, as well as the explorations of prejudice, imperialism, misogyny and racism, but the world-building is distinctly vague and some of the characterisations leave a lot to be desired. Wen is clearly quite stubborn and an open-minded and good person. She seems to be a very dutiful daughter, but possibly due to the subservient position of women in Itanyai society, she's quite passive. She and her father seem to be the only ones who don't pretty much demonise the Noor and are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

There's not just rampant sexism everywhere in this story, pretty much every guy who isn't Wen's father, Melik or the Ghost seems to see it as their natural right to ogle, grope and generally sexually harass Wen. Her boss is clearly a sexual predator, with a history of abusing women, but also other guys seem to see any woman who doesn't conform to the strict purity standards of the society as completely fair game. It's also implied that Wen is bringing this unwanted attention on herself, because she tends to wear the beautifully fitted and embroidered dresses her mother made her, rather than the shapeless brown sacks that the other women at the Gochan One complex wear. This is problematic, and made for an uncomfortable read.

The Ghost is clearly more than a bit unhinged, and has an unhealthy obsession towards Wen, willing to seriously injure or even arrange deadly accidents towards anyone who he feels mistreats her. I was both fascinated and extremely creeped out by the various defensive measures he's set up in the cellars of the slaughterhouse to keep his lair secret. Melik is almost unbelievably sensitive and chivalrous compared to all the other dudes in the story (Wen's dad excepted, he's great, if underused). He never pressures Wen about anything she isn't ready for, which may explain why she appears to fall for him so incredibly quickly.

I really wish that there had been a bit more complexity and nuance to the supporting cast in this book. Everyone working at the factory hate the Noor and while Wen have a few women who initially seem to be friendly towards her, they are quick to judge her and abandon her when things start getting complicated. It seems strange that no one apart from Wen and her father are even the slightest bit progressive and open-minded.

All in all, I liked the book, but didn't love it. It did interesting things with the source material and while neither of the main characters were all that complex, they are at least entertaining tropes to read about. For the faint of heart, there is some gore in this book, what with being set in a slaughterhouse and some really gruesome accidents/attacks take place later in the book. It's also important to note that while the general plot of the story is finished off, the book ends on a cliffhanger. This is part one of two, and would be very unsatisfying to read on its own.

Judging a book by its cover: I like the strange dream-like quality of this cover, with the model's features very hazy because of the thin sheeting she's looking through. The dress is reminiscent of several that Wen wears over the course of the book, and I also like how it reminds me of an old-fashioned nurse's outfit, since that is pretty much the role Wen plays in the book. It's a good, if not exactly striking cover.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.