Review: The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang

The beginning of JY Yang\’s The Black Tides of Heaven drops the reader straight into political intrigue in a world we don\’t really understand yet.  We learn that the kingdom is ruled by a ruthless Protector who treats her children as bargaining chips in her efforts to solidify her political power against some unknown rebellion; we know the Grand Monastery also wields some power (using, as we soon learn, the mystical \”Tensor\” power they command) and used that power to help the Protector; and we see the youngest children of the Protector, the twins Akeha and Mokoya, sent to the Monastery in return for its aid.

The world unfolds in bits and pieces from there, as the nature of the Machinists\’ rebellion against the Protector becomes better understood, as does the powers wielded by Tensors – and the power of prophecy Mokoya is discovered to have.  The story takes place in a series of vignettes over the course of multiple decades, and the readers don\’t get many explicit details about the history that passes in between each section, instead piecing it together from the way the twins interact with the world.

One particularly interesting thing we learn is the way the Tensorate society handles gender.  A child is considered ungendered until they choose their gender for themselves; they go through a ceremony of \”confirming\” their gender, and their body is modified as needed (through what seems to be a combination of tensor magic and medical surgery).  A small number of people choose to remain unconfirmed for their entire lives.  The process is considered completely normal and unremarkable, except to the extent that choosing one\’s gender and being confirmed is considered a rite of passage into adulthood.

Just because it\’s normal doesn\’t mean it\’s free of complications, though.  Akeha\’s and Mokoya\’s differing choices of gender are not the first thing that fractures their formerly-inseparable relationship as twins, but it\’s one of the strongest indications that they\’re growing apart as they\’re growing up.  And indeed, they part ways shortly thereafter, and the rest of the novella follows Akeha as he gradually becomes involved in the Machinist rebellion.  (Mokoya\’s story picks up in The Red Threads of Fortune, the simultaneously-published companion novella.)

The Protector\’s influence over Akeha\’s and Mokoya\’s lives is insidious and destructive; reading this so soon after Down Among the Sticks and Bones, there are certainly comparisons to be made between the narcissistic, emotionally abusive parents in each story.  But unlike the Wolcotts, the Protector casts a long shadow over the twins\’ lives despite being very rarely present; as the despotic ruler of their nation, the Protector\’s influence is hard to escape from, and this is a big part of what ultimately drives Akeha into the rebellion.

I enjoyed the story, but the episodic and incomplete nature of it ultimately left me unsatisfied.  Perhaps I\’d feel differently had I picked up The Red Threads of Fortune immediately afterwards, but I hadn\’t realized how tightly the novellas were paired until I was looking up information about them for writing this review.  But for purposes of the Hugo ballot, this one novella is all I had to go on.

My Best Novella ballot so far:

1. All Systems Red, Martha Wells
2. Binti: Home, Nnedi Okorafor
3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire
4. The Black Tides of Heaven, JY Yang
5. River of Teeth, Sarah Gailey​