Review: Magnificent - a new classic
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 5, 2011
I have just finished this very large book and enjoyed every minute, every word. I really love it. I hope no spoilers slip by, because the book is rare in offering no hint whether it will be a happy or tragic ending, or which characters will make it and whether they will be together or not...and I came to care deeply and worry about what would happen to so many of them.Synopsis of this sprawling story: Olivia Blake is abducted along with a number of other women one rainy night by a band of Gulla hunters, beings who resemble medieval images of flying devils, or perhaps 7-foot tall humanoid bats -- monsters, in any case. Their ancient tribe has been driven into hiding by human encroachment, picking at the edges of modern human life to survive, on the cusp of extinction. An infusion of new genes is the only hope, and Gullan legend says it will be human. Tough luck, ladies: Our need to survive trumps your life.Olivia is a truly great and fulfilling character - human and fallible, but couragous, smart, forgiving, and bottom-line pragmatic. You must adapt or die, and the first part of the story is about her efforts to adjust to life as the enslaved 'mate' of Vorgullum, the leader of the tribe, and the successes and failures of some of the other women.In the process we meet and come to appreciate, and then to trust and like, some of the Gulla. They slowly change for the reader as they do for Olivia from a blur of nameless monster captors and rapists to real individuals - people trying against all odds to survive. We celebrate and we mourn with Olivia, and with them.The second section of the book expands on the evolving, uncertain friendships and affection, the hostilities and horrors and betrayals, between the human women and Gullan males and females. We experience the slow trickle of Gullan legend and religion into Olivia's consciousness as she settles into this new life and becomes an apprentice healer and reluctant shaman.Struggling to accept or change the harshest aspects of the Gullan world, and Olivia's unwilling evolution into a mythic source of salvation for the Gullan tribe make up the next and last parts of the story.Vorgullum's cold discipline in putting the survival and continuity of his people above anything or anyone else, and Olivia's own very different path towards the same goal, will rend the fragile fabric of relationships that have come to mean so much to Olivia, to the Gulla, and to the reader. Even as the story becomes increasingly mystical it remains jagged, exciting, frightening, ennobling, and always, always fascinating.R. Lee Smith vividly depicts a strange, primitive humanoid tribal society, a dying culture barely skirting disaster and grappling with change. She is raw and blunt and explicit where the story demands -- there are brutal rape scenes that will curdle your blood, but they have to be there. There is violence, rage, hate, and there is pleasure, joy, passion, hope, and humor, all necessary and all portrayed in rich detail.I am totally blown away that this was a first novel. There is nothing that shouldn't be here, and everything that is here is handled fearlessly.  R. Lee Smith is simply masterful in plot, pace, character, dialogue, setting, suspense, and mythology -- in pure story-telling. Between Olivia and the other book of Smith's I've read, Heat, she has become my number-one living must-read favorite author. R. Lee Smith is writing classics.