The Warrior Who Carried Life by Geoff Ryman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Cara’s mother had always said something very strange about dust: that it was the remains of the dead, and should be respected. “The air is full of other people,” she had told Cara. The dust in the sunlight looked like stars.”
The Warrior Who Carried Life is Geoff Ryman’s first novel, which has been reprinted by the Canadian Press Chizine. It’s a darkly mythic novel that combines the Epic of Gilgamesh with dashes of Celtic and Indian mythology.
A young woman whose family has been dishonored by invaders undertakes a vengeance-based quest to oust the evil from her land. To do so, she magically transforms herself into a male warrior who is nearly invincible. Along the way, she discovers the true nature of the invaders and her quest eventually leads her to the land of death. The novel is drenched in magic, not unlike Tanith Lee’s Tales From the Flat Earth series—there are fabulous beasts, wise women, immortality, and miracles. TWWCL engages and subverts mythic tropes left and right, recalling Samuel R. Delany’s classic novel The Einstein Intersection. Despite the magical overlay, this is a brutal story, full of shocking violence.
Many of the tropes and themes that ballast Ryman’s oeuvre are here. The violence and war of the imaginary land shares a tenuous connection with other Ryman works that chronicle and examine the horrors faced by Kampuchea (Cambodia)—e.g., The Unconquered Country & The King’s Last Song. It is also a deeply feminist and genderqueer novel, with a transcendent lesbian love story at its spiritual center.
Craig Laurance Gidney 