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A+ Library Review: "The Bruising of Qilwa" by Naseem Jamnia
Review #3! We're on a roll, and breaking into my favorite genre: fantasy. The book description for this one is:
Firuz-e Jafari is fortunate enough to have immigrated to the Free Democratic City-State of Qilwa, fleeing the slaughter of other traditional Sassanian blood magic practitioners in their homeland. Despite the status of refugees in their new home, Firuz has a good job at a free healing clinic in Qilwa, working with Kofi, a kindly new employer, and mentoring Afsoneh, a troubled orphan refugee with powerful magic.
But Firuz and Kofi have discovered a terrible new disease which leaves mysterious bruises on its victims. The illness is spreading quickly through Qilwa, and there are dangerous accusations of ineptly performed blood magic. In order to survive, Firuz must break a deadly cycle of prejudice, untangle sociopolitical constraints, and find a fresh start for their both their blood and found family.
The character: Firuz-e Jafari, aro/ace
Final verdict: Thumbs up
The Asexual Rep
There's honestly not much to say on this front. Outside the one-off mention of Firuz finding sex and romance both as appealing as a maggoty banana, there's really nothing else that addresses their orientation. In terms of queer identity, there's a lot more time in the book devoted to their brother Parviz being trans than to Firuz's sexuality. There's no awkwardly unrequited crushes, or jokes about obliviousness to flirting (in fact, Firuz immediately picks up on Parviz and Afsoneh's interest in each other), or angsting about a perpetually-single future.
If you're looking for a book that explores an aro or ace identity, this will likely disappoint you. If you want a book with ace or aro characters that doesn't center on their identity, this may be perfect.
The Rest
The Bruising of Qilwa is a pretty short book, almost a novella. It barely hits 150 pages. As such, I feel it doesn't explore its many focuses as much as it could.
One prong of the book deals with Firuz's interpersonal relationships--with their brother, with Afsoneh, with Kofi. This part of the book I really enjoyed. I think it does a wonderful job showing how even well-intentioned and loving people can end up at odds. I did think it was slightly odd how little Firuz's mother is a part of the story even though she's around. This is often hand-waived as her being off at prayer, and she doesn't have to be a core of the story, but it did seem odd to me.
Firuz's relationship with Afsoneh is particularly touching, given where her story began. Another author would have made this a YA novel with Afsoneh or Parviz as the star, and Firuz as the often-absent-at-work older sibling, so I thought it was very interesting to see this sort of relationship from the mentor's perspective. Afsoneh is remarkably powerful in magic, and often sour and sulky when she feels like Firuz is holding her back or keeping more knowledge from her--but of course, Firuz is desperately trying to train her with their own limited knowledge, and their early awareness that Afsoneh is much more powerful than they are. From Afsoneh's view, Firuz may appear adult and in control, but the reader can see them as the late 20s/early 30s harried "Oh shit I'm the adult in the room" person they are.
A second prong has to do with the fantasy history of Qilwa, the island where Firuz and their family are refugees, and the neighboring country of Delmune, which also harbors the remnants of the Sassanians--former residents of the now-defunct Sassanid Empire. Bruising does pose some interesting questions about identity where a people is presently oppressed or disfavored, but has been oppressor themselves in the past. We see so much of Firuz's struggle as a Sassanian in Qilwa--the Sassanian refugees are predictably scorned by the local Qilwans--that you can almost understand their shock when Kofi points out that to Qilwans, Sassanians are the ones carrying a legacy of oppressing (Firuz even jumps in to point out how many intellectual achievements the Sassanid Empire made, which I think made for a reasonably realistic response to a perspective they had obviously never considered).
However, because the book is so short, there's not really much room to dig into these things. We know only a skeletal outline of the history of these three cultures, and very little about what defines them, except that blood magic affinity seems to appear--or at least be nurtured--exclusively by Sassanians, while Qilwans worship something called "The Nameless One." There's some mysterious killing of Sassanians going on back in Delmune which is mentioned several times (this is why Firuz and their family left), but it's never resolved or even confirmed as an intentional ethnic cleansing. Not that every plotline in a book must resolve--but this seemed like a significant thing to leave hanging to me.
The third prong of the book is what I'm calling the "fantasy medical mystery." A new plague has cropped up by Firuz's second year in Qilwa, and they and their mentor Kofi are desperate to find a cure. In Bruising, there are both healers, who use magic to heal, and physikers, who are what we would call doctors. Illnesses can be both mundane or magical. Firuz and Kofi are up against a baffling and deadly malady, the prejudice of the locals, a serious lack of funding, the meddling of a clumsy government, and the question of whether or not someone has created this disease on purpose.
If the book had focused exclusively on this aspect, 153 pages might have been plenty to really dig into it. As it is, while this feels like the "main" aspect of the book, it often gets sacrificed to the first two prongs, because there's just not enough space for all three. We don't get to see much of Firuz looking for answers about the illness, but it is interesting to see the social ramifications play out across the city. The notion of magic as a science--as it explicitly referred to in the book--and a world where magic and mundane sciences work together was also very interesting, although we see less of it than I'd like.
Overall, this book was enjoyable, and if you want a book with no sex or romance in it, this is a great choice. It simply doesn't come up, outside the brief implication that Parviz and Afsoneh share a mutual crush. To Firuz, what matters is their family and their patients. I do think this book would have benefited from being longer, and I would have liked to see its fantasy cultures fleshed out more. It didn't leave a strong impression on me, but it definitely kept me entertained while I was reading it.
no subject
Sounds like an interesting story! I feel it's really tough to do a good novella, and this author seemed ambitious. Hmm, if the book is that short then I might put it on my tbr.
no subject
I think it's nice to have a balance of books that DO focus on the identity and those that just let it be, so this was a nice contrast to my last read, which was really ABOUT the MC's identity.