TITLE: Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit (Wraeththu, Book 01)
AUTHOR: Storm Constantine
GENRE: Science Fiction/Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 30/03/2007
RATING: DNF (Did Not Finish)
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Review: The Oxford Dictionary defines a cult classic as ‘something…that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society.’ I’ve always understood the term to mean something which has a passionate, but relatively small, following. Either definition applies equally well to Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu series: although it’s hardly well-known (Constantine had to set up her own publishing house, Immanion Press, in order to keep the books consistently in print) those who know it tend to love it to extremes. As well as publishing Constantine’s own novels, Immanion Press has also released several anthologies of short stories and novellas set in the Wraeththu world but written by fans. I don’t know of any other authors who have such a strong and, honestly, wonderful relationship with their fans.
None of this is enough to rescue the books themselves.
The original Wraeththu trilogy was published in 1989. I’ve read those books, and was disappointed by them, but I’d hoped that the 2007 re-issued trilogy – supposedly including a lot of new material – would smooth out the clunky characterizations and dialogue.
No dice.
The story goes like this: somewhere in the north (of where? The USA? It’s never made clear)(hells, this may or may not be set in our world, or on some other planet entirely), creatures known as Wraeththu have evolved from humanity. They are beautiful and wild, with magical powers and strange rituals; they pass their mutation on though the blood, although only human males can survive the transition. Humanity, terrified of what they can’t understand, is seeking to exterminate the Wraeththu, but it’s a doomed attempt. Humanity’s time is done; the Wraeththu are the next step in evolution.
Pellaz, a human boy living in a small backwater town, recognises that the stranger who comes to stay with his family is one of these Wraeththu. When the mysterious Cal leaves, Pell goes with him into the unknown. He is inducted into the ranks of the Wraeththu and sets out to rise through the complex caste of his new people, the ranks of which are determined by knowledge and magical ability. Always whispering in the background are the machinations of the impossibly inhuman Thiede, a high-ranking shaman whose plans for Pell will have consequences for the entire race of Wraeththu.
Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? It gets better: the Wraeththu are biological hermaphrodites! Here is a chance to play around with gender roles and expectations, to mess with traditional notions of sexuality, to question all that we accept as ‘normal’. Right?
Well, no. Not really.
The 2007 edition of Enchantments is a much more self-aware book than the original; for that, Constantine deserves some kudos. The Wraeththu aren’t perfect beings seeking spiritual enlightenment, although a lot of them paint that picture of themselves; and far from overcoming humanity’s petty prejudices, the Wraeththu almost immediately begin splitting into separate tribes and going to war with each other. Instead of trying to embrace their new feminine aspects (remember, all the Wraeththu we meet in Enchantments were born human men), most of the characters Constantine introduces us to ‘split off’ along completely imaginary gender lines. This is most obvious with the Varr tribe, where ‘hostlings’ are the only ones to wear their hair long or dress in feminine-esque clothing, but it’s equally if more subtly present among the more ‘advanced’ tribes too.
However – this is all commented upon.
‘Male and female?’ Cal queried with his usual acerbity… ‘They are splitting off again,’ he continued. ‘Wraeththu combined the sexes, but they are splitting off.’
‘Is that so bad, so immoral?’ I argued. ‘Wraeththu combined the sexes by favouring the male. There are too many issues that haven’t been raised, too many uncomfortable questions unanswered.’
That it is commented upon in the text makes me think that Constantine had no intention of portraying the Wraeththu as some perfect race; it makes the Wraeththu much more realistic, that they are still flawed.
Where was the proof of the Utopian visions Orien had spoken of? We had seen only the ophidian cruelty of the Kakkahaar, then the sordid apathy of the Irraka, now this. What had really changed since the first Wraeththu had come into the world? One selfish, ignorant race had been exchanged for another, more powerful, selfish, ignorant race.
But that little conversation above – ‘Male and female?’ – highlights my biggest problem with this book, and that’s the dialogue. Pell goes directly from saying that Wraeththu favours the male (which it does – despite being hermaphrodites, Wraeththu refer to themselves as ‘he’ and ‘him’, and of course women can’t become Wraeththu at all) to talking about issues that haven’t been raised, with no clear explanation of what those are. It’s a clunky bit of dialogue that is in no way the exception. Virtually every conversation is rough and jerky, with non-sequiturs all over the place (I completely fail to understand why everyone is happy to use contractions one moment, and won’t use them the next). Nothing flows; none of it sounds natural. It’s all horribly stilted.
The characters are no better. Although other characters are constantly calling Pell some variation of a sweet angel, there’s really no reason for that; he’s as boring as rice pudding, seemingly without any personality at all. There’s no explanation for why he follows Cal – a complete stranger, of a species he’s only heard horror stories about – into the unknown; after the horrific circumstances of his initiation into Wraeththu, he immediately gets over the fact that he was forcefully transformed, despite the fact that he declared he’d rather die than change when he had the full truth of what it would entail. Over and over again, the narrative, via other characters, tells us Pell is special; the coldly bland Thiede ‘sees something’ in him; the creepy Kakkahaar leader is attracted to him; and Cal’s motivation for taking Pell at all is the ‘light’ Cal sees in him. But there’s no actual evidence for it. We’re only told it, not shown it.
Everyone else is similarly…wishy-washy. Cal is mood-swingy without apparent reason; none of the other characters are around long enough to develop any kind of personalities at all. The great and powerful Thiede, who we’re supposed to be either terrified or in awe of, is just plain boring, talking in the kind of quasi-philosophical circles that make him sound like a vaguely creepy fortune cookie.
I wanted to like this book. I wanted it so badly that I went and bought the re-issued books in the hopes of loving the updated versions as I never did the originals. It’s such a wonderful idea, this hermaphrodite race rising from the ashes of a dying humanity, reaching for the stars and uncovering the secrets of the universe with their magic. I wanted them to be a merging of the masculine and feminine to create something new – not necessarily better, especially given the youth of this new species in the first trilogy, but different. And they aren’t. The story wouldn’t be noticeably different if you did away entirely with the hermaphrodite issue entirely, and even the fantastic idea at the core of the series – the Wraeththu themselves – isn’t enough to make me care. The occasional passages of almost-poetic prose which so many fans rave about does not offset the overall clumsy, stop-motion style of most of the book. And finally – I read 2/3s of Enchantment and couldn’t stand reading about these stupid, personality-less characters for one more second. I don’t care what happens to them. I don’t care where they’re going, or why – especially when they don’t even know why themselves, it feels like.
Maybe the reason there’s so much passionate fanfiction for this series is that the world, the idea, of the Wraeththu books has so much potential. But everyone’s writing their own stories in it because it means they can create their own characters – characters someone will actually give a damn about.