Council of Fire by Eric Flint and Walter H. Hunt
Cover art by Dave Seeley
Published by Baen Books
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
I originally became interested in the Arcane America series when Sarah Hoyt announced in her blog, According to Hoyt, the publication of Uncharted, which she had co-written with Kevin J. Anderson. Just reading the sample chapters, I could see that it was going to hit all the same happy buttons that made me like Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series and Greg Keyes' Age of Unreason tetralogy. Here was yet another distinctly American fantasy, drawing upon the Matter of America, the settlement of the Wild Frontier, but in a world with magic based at least in part upon the folkloric traditions of the various peoples involved.
I went right through that novel, and probably would've gone through it even more quickly if I hadn't forced myself to make it last. And I knew that I wanted to be on the lookout for the next volume in what was clearly presented as a series.
The new volume is out, and much to my surprise and disappointment, it's by a completely different pair of authors. Apparently there was some office politics involved in the change, although it's also possible that it was planned this way from the beginning, and the Arcane America 'verse is going to be so big that a number of teams of authors will be producing volumes in it. However, I do have reliable word that Sarah Hoyt's been dropped from the project, and no further books in it will have her byline.
Uncharted was set some time after the Sundering, the event in which the ways back to England were suddenly cut off. Benjamin Franklin, who had gained great wizard powers in the Sundering, was commissioning a group of explorers to see if a way back to the mother country and King George II could be found by crossing the continent and then sailing across the Pacific. Needless to say, it did not end as expected -- and their discovery reminded me of the old Jerome Bixby short story "It's a GOOD Life," only played across an entire continent, not just one small Midwestern town.
This novel is the story of the actual events of the Sundering, and focuses on a completely different and much larger cast of characters, almost entirely in the more settled parts of North America. We start with a brief prolog written in the voice of one of the characters, commenting on the events in a way that makes it clear that they are looking back upon the events from some time afterward. Thus we are put on notice that, no matter how terrible things may become, someone will be left, and they will have enough of civilization left to be writing for posterity.
The novel proper begins at sea, aboard the Neptune, a ship of the line and flagship of Admiral of the Blue Sir Charles Saunders. Although he is a Historical Domain Character, and apparently was fairly well known within his own time, he is relatively obscure today. And quite honestly, that's the biggest problem with this novel -- most of the major characters who are actual historical personages are so obscure as to be known primarily to specialists in the era, while the historical figures who are actually well-known, such as George Washington and Paul Revere, are at best supporting characters, making brief cameos at key points. I recognized a few of the French generals in subsequent chapters because I'd taken a graduate-level course in the French settlement of North America, which included an examination of the French and Indian War, but the average US reader would probably draw a complete blank at any reference to the Plains of Abraham, let alone know what took place there in our timeline.
When the Sundering comes, it is as much a parapsychological event as a physical one, as everyone starts seeing the ghosts of departed friends and family crowding around them. The next several chapters show that it is not just those at sea, near the point of sundering (which appears to correspond to the Primary World geological feature known as the North Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian plates are being pulled apart and new seafloor laid from magma rising from the mantle). These chapters serve both to introduce us to all the major characters, and to show clearly that the appearance of ghosts is a widespread phenomenon.
The crew of Neptune are the first to discover the physical evidence of the Sundering, as they come up against the mysterious mountains that now rise where there once was open ocean. There they encounter a youngster who had been swept overboard and who presumably perished, who warns them that they are entering regions that are not of men, and that they remain at their grave peril. There is something odd about his manner, enough that they find it sufficiently disturbing to be repelled (probably a phenomenon similar to what we in the here and now call the Uncanny Valley). So they withdraw and try to see if they can sail around the obstacle some other way, until they finally give up and sail westward to seek advice from what authority they can find.
This puts one of their officers in a rather peculiar position. He is called "Mr Prince," but if one pays close attention to details and has some awareness of customs of the Royal Navy of that era, it soon becomes clear that he is a member of the House of Hanover, as the Royal Family was styled in that time (after Queen Victoria it was styled the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, after her Prince Consort, Prince Albert, and during World War I it was renamed the House of Windsor to remove the reference to Germany, which had become an enemy). Specifically, this junior officer is Edward Augustus Hanover, younger brother of George, Prince of Wales (who in our world would go on to become King George III, to Americans the hated king referred to in the Declaration of Independence, to the British the king who reigned through the Napoleonic Wars era). Although "Mr. Prince" is a part of the line of succession, he is far enough from the direct line to the throne that he can be allowed to go to sea as an officer in his grandfather's Royal Navy.
But if the way back to England and their sovereign is irrevocably cut off, a people accustomed to having a king are suddenly cast adrift. And like any people under stress, they are searching for some kind of certainty, some sense that there is a part of the world that is still stable. So it is unsurprising that they begin to look toward the royal prince in their midst for leadership, hesitant as he may be to take up the mantle of kingship. While it appears that North America is now permanently sundered from Europe, he does not wish to undertake an act that would be usurpation, even treason, if communication with the mother country were to be restored.
Meanwhile, there is trouble all over the North American continent, as folkloric magic takes on real power. Among the Iroquois peoples, evil medicine men use mummified hands known as Dry Hands to kill and to summon various malign entities such as the Floating Heads (which oddly reminded me of the Flying Head in the movie Zardoz). Now the Iroquois Confederation is tearing itself apart, with some sachems aligning themselves with these dark forces and others determined to fight against the dying of the light.
Furthermore, there is unrest among the African population of the English colonies, both free and enslaved. When one enslaved blacksmith in New York City (which at that time is a small settlement at the southern end of the island of Manhattan) kills his master and then summons destructive forces, it threatens everyone -- but another man of African descent is able to construct a sort of altar to a less malevolent god, Ogun, god of smiths, to produce small useful things. However, Ogun is a fickle deity and does not appreciate being treated like a cosmic vending machine, as they discover when asking him for goods one too many times results in a lump of base metal shaped vaguely like a clam.
It's interesting to see how the appearance of magic plays out in each of the three major populations in this world. Much as in the Alvin Maker series of Orson Scott Card, it follows the lines of the traditions of each culture, but in different ways. For instance, Europeans' magic is focused around alchemy rather than folk hexery, with the addition of a hint of astrology -- Charles Messier, the French astronomer who in the Primary World is best known for his catalog of nebulas, creates an alchemical device which enables him to shift the course of battles against the monstrous entities raised by the renegade medicine men of the Iroquois, reminiscent of the alchemical devices in J. Gregory Keyes' Age of Unreason tetralogy. And it looks like the authors of this novel did a lot more in-depth research into the historical folkloric beliefs of the Iroquois and of the Yoruba people of Africa in developing their magical systems. For instance, the Iroquois have their own Wee Folk, the Jo-Ge-Oh, who may be reminiscent in many ways of European fairy lore, but are quite different as well.
There is now a third novel in this fascinating universe, Caller of Lightning, which centers around Benjamin Franklin and how the Sundering changed his life. I'm already looking forward to being able to read it.
Buy Council of Fire from Amazon.com
Review posted September 5, 2021
