Review: Green

Review by Lora Friedenthal

Summary: An unwanted girl from a distant land is purchased from her father’s farm and brought to Copper Downs, a city of sleeping gods, where she will be trained as a courtly lady of wealth, taste, and fine breeding. All this so that she may have a chance at becoming the next wife of the Duke, the city’s unnatural ruler, who uses stolen magic to retain his youth and power. But she will be no one’s slave, not even for those who have secretly crafted a new purpose for her endless training. And she will be no one’s weapon but her own.

Commentary: Jay Lake is best known for his steampunk series of novels, and yet by weird coincidence (for I am a steampunk myself), the first book of his that I’ve read is Green, which is a standalone fantasy. I cannot judge how this novel ranks against those others.

Green seems to me to be very much a blending of two books: Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart and Karen Miller’s Empress. I love Dart in part for its intricate politics and elevation of vast knowledge into a thing of beauty and power and in part for its adventure. I didn’t like Empress, largely because I found the main character to be contemptible and unsympathic in a way I simply could not get around. In Green, I find echoes of both of these aspects.

The story is told from Green’s perspective and could almost be subtitled: The Life and Times of a Teenage Ninja. Through at least half of the book, she has no name at all. She is simply Girl. And Girl is continuously rebellious against her abusive mistresses, as they teach her how to cook, clean, perceive the quality of an item in a glance, play music, and read.

She was bought because of her headstrong nature. And while most of her captors find her irritating at best, there is one who sees value in her determination to escape her captivity: the Dancing Mistress—a member of a magical catlike race called pardines—who, like Girl, has no name.

It is the schooling that reminds me of Dart. Although given how much of the book is devoted to this, Green makes shockingly little use of most of it as the plot unfolds. The poise, learning, and culture she’s acquired seem to bring her nothing when she leaves, in contrast to the profound way in which Jacqueline Carey’s heroine uses her intellect and knowledge against her enemies. I can’t help but feel that this is a waste, both for Green herself and for readers.

But it is Green’s personality that reminds me of Empress. She is selfish, self-righteous, and unforgiving. This isn’t to say that someone in her situation wouldn’t or shouldn’t be. She’s been enslaved and beaten since she was small. Other people, even the Dancing Mistress, who seems to be working to help Green affect her escape, have their own plans and purposes for her. She is everyone’s chess piece, and as her determination to find out her real name implies, what she wants is to be a person. Since the story is told from Green’s perspective, we know why she acts the way she does. And yet… it is still infuriating to see her cast people aside when they do not suit her agenda. Much as people treated her like a thing, so does she seem to treat them.

Green also speaks to a god. And she acts with the according arrogance that such a thing would suggest. The people around her fade to insignificance, and again, she has the luxury of not caring about who they are or what they stand for.

Yet, her wants are simple. Her needs are few and familiar. She wants a home. She wants to be loved. She wants to be free. And these are the impulses that make her insufferable nature easier to handle. These remind us that she is, for all her bravado and training, a broken child.

The plot beyond Green herself is one largely concerned with faith. In her original home, which she can barely remember, the divine took the shape of local spirits, tulpas. In Copper Downs, gods are real and many. They exist in bodily form, though they have been sleeping for many centuries. In Kalimpura, they are alive and active, speaking to their followers, making edicts, and changing destinies. What readers come to learn about the divine, among other things, is that part of what sustains the gods is the faith of their followers. As much as the gods can intervene in the lives of humans, humans can influence the existence of the divine through their faith and their will.

Green is, in many ways, a celebration of choice and free will, an angry manifesto on the necessity of freedom. Readers not familiar with the two books I mentioned may find this one a bit fresher than I did. I’d classify it as a good read, while not a furious page turner, and would look forward to reading one of Lake’s other books in the future.

Lora Friedenthal

Green by Jay Lake
Publisher: Tor Books (June 9, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0765321858
ISBN-13: 978-0765321855
Genre: Fantasy