Last night I finished, for all practical purposes, the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. The third book, Ruin and Rising, came out on June 17, and I bought it on Kindle the same day. The books are compelling--interesting, and to me, different. For one thing, the female protagonist has three potential love interests! Okay, I'm kidding. Mostly. I found the characters well developed and the writing lucid and un-self-conscious. I was not burdened, as some readers were, by the Russian-sounding names, wondering whether they were accurate. It was simply a different approach to fantasy naming conventions. I particularly liked some of the snappy dialog in the third book, which really brought the personalities of the characters to the forefront. And I liked the character of Nickolai, the bastard prince/pirate/potential love interest.
I may at some point go back and reread them, but even though some of the names of places were getting fuzzy, I don't feel the need to revisit the stories yet. (I also won't be reading the extensive extra-novel material that sells for $0.99 a short story. That's cheating, in my book...) For one thing, I technically have 9 minutes left in the book, according to the Kindle. There's a loooong denouement. I guess something significant could still happen. But I rather doubt it. It will be interesting to see the "After" chapter--each book has started with a "Before" that was written in a more formal storytelling voice, meant to mimic something like a "Lives of the Saints" prose style, if I'm reading it correctly.
But when I reread, I do it for two reasons: sheer enjoyment, and analysis. If I badly want to relive something, I reread it. If I want to delve further in, I reread it. I did enjoy the books, but I'm not captivated by the world. It's an ugly place, and not a place in which I want to spend more time. I'm also not convinced that there's anything for me to analyze. The themes are large and hard to miss, and the literacy is not tied to theme in a significant way. There is, however, one thing that fascinated me that seems to need to be addressed before I can move on--or back--to the Hunger Games article that I've been trying to write since February or March (and then ultimately to Lord of the Rings): religion.
This ties in a strange way to the Hunger Games. When critics of the Hunger Games go searching for religion, they come up short, here and here and here and here and here and here... and so on. The "spiritual but not religious" claim is the one that makes me chuckle. I would venture to argue that the critical perception of how religion and God can be manifest in literary texts is extraordinarily narrow, and that there are enough very small hints to betray a rather sophisticated religious sensibility--what, after all, is all that bread doing there? And what do we make of the fact that along with the bread, the marriage rituals maintain the flavor of the districts? There is a sacramental subtext to the Hunger Games that has, as far as I know, not been mentioned outside of this blog and one of my Facebook threads.
I bring this up because the presence or absence of "religion" or "God" in a text has nothing to do with explicit reference to religion or the trappings of religion, which becomes clear in The Grisha Trilogy--and in Ruin and Rising in particular. One of the things that intrigued me early on--but not what kept me reading, by any means--was the mention of Saints. There is a book of lives of the Saints, which the priest-figure, who is himself a creepy, opportunistic, exploitative figure, gives to the female protagonist, Alina. There are churches and icons and miracles, and at the center, a mysterious Sankta Ilya, as well as the adoption of Alina as a saint becuase of her powers, and the potential she has to act as a deliverer for Ravka. There are also throngs of believers. THRONGS of faceless believers. But there is, ultimately, no God.
While faith is not actually condemned--it is occasionally useful, and two of the more important characters are devotees of the novel's religion--the narrative leaves no room for God to exist. In fact, the religion is saint-based rather than God-based, which is interesting considering the Russian influence on the setting. It also has nothing to do with morality. Alina has a strong ethical sense, and she is unique because of her capacity for mercy and forgiveness, and she happens to be chaste until a pledge that substitutes for a wedding-that-can-never-be before battle, but there is no moral code. The treatment of sexuality is occasionally blasé, but not in the way you might think with Young Adult fiction. It is also not subject to morality or ethics of any sort. Promiscuity sort of... happens. But again, it's not really a big thing, and it's not a central part of the novel. In fact, it's rather a mistake, if a slight one that doesn't hurt anyone too much. It rather reminds me of how I felt about sex as a teen.
Beyond the "no moral code" thing, I would say that I just kept waiting for religion to be developed. It was there, but it was wholly a construction of people--mortals. Specifically, mortals who are either pathetic and desperate, or opportunisitic and manipulative. The immortals in the story are either completely corrupt and cruel or cruelly bitter. Alina is different, and it is hinted that she, too, is immortal, but we never get to see that for certain. But where the life is sucked from religion is in the treatment of saints. They are not holy. They are not even good, necessarily. They are simply presumed to have been Grisha whose powers to manipulate the elements--or, really, the particles of creation--were used in service to humanity in some way. It is almost an atheistic vision--we are all there is. And so I wonder whether that is why I am not rushing to reread. For all of its outcome, there is still an absence of hope or substance. There is dark. There is light. There is struggle. But ultimately, we are all there is.
**It is interesting to note that the author was born in Jerusalem. I don't have any basis for knowing what cultural influences might have contributed to the worldview of the novels, but that might be an interesting question to explore.
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