THE GAUTAM BHATIA PAGE: THE WALL, an apt title for a claustrophobic tale & THE HORIZON, the consequences of trading agoraphobia for claustrophobia

THE WALL
GAUTAM BHATIA (Sumer #1)
HarperCollins India (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Mithila’s world is bound by a Wall enclosing the city of Sumer—nobody goes out, nothing comes in. The days pass as they have for two thousand years: just enough to eat for just enough people, living by the rules. Within the city, everyone knows their place.

But when Mithila tries to cross the Wall, every power in Sumer comes together to stop her. To break the rules is to risk all of civilization collapsing. But to follow them is to never know: who built the Wall? Why? And what would the world look like if it didn’t exist?

As Mithila and her friends search for the truth, they must risk losing their families, the ones they love, and even their lives. Is a world they can’t imagine worth the only world they have?

For fans of Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall and Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed comes an astonishingly powerful voice in speculative fiction that explores what it means to truly be free.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHOR. THANK YOU.

My Review: The author is a social-media acquaintance of mine, one whose work in the world of Indian Constitutional law I admire unreservedly. He is also among those who run Strange Horizons magazine, which work I admire immoderately as well. I think it's fair to say I approached this read with the dread of a fan...

...who then became a stan. The pace of this book probably puts a lot of sci-fi fans off but, for me, it was a perfect and langourous introduction to a two-thousand-year-old utopia whose principles hadn't changed but whose use of them had. The oppressive weight of a society that is sure that it's Right can not be overdramatized. What Author Gautam did, choosing a pace for its affect on the reader, was evoke a deep and abiding dread, a building sense of wrongness, that worked so much better than a more whiz-bang approach would have done. I found the legal sections, pertaining to Sumer's laws, to be the grace notes I've always enjoyed in my speculative fiction. They set the stakes of the rebellion against the status quo better than any other choice...rebelling against a government, after all, is rebelling against its laws.

Mithila, our PoV character, is a woman on a mission: GET OUT OF SUMER. Her rebellion isn't against intolerable and burdensome living conditions, there's enough food and plenty of stuff that one actually needs. It's a deeper rebellion: Mithila needs to be free, to have the chance to make her own choices and decisions. It's simply too much for her spirit to bear to conform.

Young people have ever felt thus, it's true. In a utopian society where you simply can not speak your mind or ask questions that deserve and require answers, it really becomes a Hell for the Mithilas of the world. She and some like-minded friends aren't glad to be safe inside the walls of Sumer. They want OUT, and the ever-threatened consequences seem like small potatoes to them.

The Powers That Be can't take that challenge lying down...and don't...but the end of the story sees Mithila and her faction winning the war because, once you introduce doubt into the world, things fall apart pretty quickly. The eternal verity that monoliths aren't stable and can fall with a well-placed shove is demonstrable using physics (Stonehenge hasn't always been the way it is now). People's hearts and minds, once engaged on a project of destruction, are very powerfully motivated to see the project through. (There's a recent example of this in the US.)

But in the end, even a novel of ideas needs to bring its concerns to a personal level or it fails to entertain...a novel's first duty. The concepts of Wallrise and Wallset, exactly what you are thinking they are, break a seaside-dwelling ocean lover's heart. The concept of a horizon is so utterly beyond the ken of people who have always lived inside encircling walls...Imagine water extending from your feet, buildings and fields receding and disappearing, imagine the water filling the empty space elicits exhilaration in a few, terror in many...and doesn't that just scare you! And, lest you wonder if the world-building is dry and flavorless, I present you the concept of the Towers of Rebirth...remembering that Sumer is a closed society, with limited resources, imagine what "rebirth" might entail for a *real* scare....

Enough to move on to the sequel, it did, and procure same with my very own United States dollars.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HORIZON
GAUTAM BHATIA
HarperCollins India (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$20.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: ‘Did we not once promise that we would always be honest with each other?’

‘I no longer ask for honesty. Just tell me a lie that I can forgive.’

After 2000 years, the Wall has been breached. As Mithila steps into a world unknown, her sister Minakshi tightens her grasp on a city bracing for chaos and violence under a red sky. The ghost of an old Revolution stalks the streets, while the shadow of a new one threatens to tear Sumer apart.

Spreading word about this historical transgression, Alvar and Mankala find themselves facing new perils in a City they can barely recognise—one torn between old fears and new desires, while caught in a deadly power struggle. But soon, they will know that the crossing of the Wall has consequences not just for the City, but for the world.

My Review: Be careful what you ask the gods for, lest the answer be "Yes."

Mithila's prayers were assented to; now she must live in the aftermath. The Walls of Sumer are no more; this doesn't mean Sumer is no more, of course, any more than the ending of Constantinople's play-Roman society meant it didn't exist anymore. (What do you imagine sparked the Renaissance if not the sudden outflow of people and books that had been behind Constantinople's walls?) The discovery that there is...stuff, people, a whole Universe...outside Sumer's walls doens't mean that Mithila and her peeps just win because Mithila has a sister. Sibling rivalry will do more than a little to prevent things from moving too fast, and Minakshi (Author Gautam! These names, so many are so similar! NOT COOL, DUDE) is a sibling in the throes of serious rivalry. She uses Mithila's discovery of the outside to force a confrontation with Powers That Be who previously defeated *her* attempt to take over Sumer and she is ripe and ready for revenge against them. And if Mithila suffers too, well, omelettes, eggs....

Writing about chaotic change in a society whose stasis was thoroughly established earlier should feel, I don't know, complicated. It does here. I was also very pleased that the read was propulsive, violent where necessary and exciting throughout, and driven from the real-feeling needs and desires of characters unafraid to throw their hearts and bodies into the future. There is no landing in safety, there is no landing even, visible to them. But Mithila and Rama (her lesbian lover) do it anyway, commit themselves and their people to a brave new world. (Arrogant, of course, as one must be to be a rebel.) What became difficult for me as I read this book is my sense that I am empathizing with people who aren't in sympathy with the world they were born into so they...tear it all down...? That's a very big step to take with no plan for the future. I understand that Author Gautam has said he's done with this storyverse. I'm really not sure if the characters agree with him. I predict sleepless nights flipping the pillow, looking for some way to cool their anger as they struggle to get out of his brain.

There is an appendix where Author Gautam goes through the sources and inspirations for Sumer, and it by itself should be required reading for aspiring fantasy/speculative fiction writers. It is thorough without feeling like a course syllabus.

All in all, two books telling one story in a deeply, empathetically imagined alternate reality to our own. Spending time in this place poised on the brink of rebellion is, strange to say, a great escape from a darkening world.