The Alchemy of Stone
Author – Ekaterina Sedia
Hardcover
Pages: 304
Publisher: Prime Books
Release Date: November 1st, 2009
ISBN-10: 1607012154
ISBN-13: 978-1607012153
I stumbled into reading Ekaterina Sedia’s The Alchemy of Stone via a twitter conversation between Paul Jessup and Matthew Delman. It wasn’t a conversation about the novel’s themes or its characterizations, nor was it even about the quality; rather, they debated tone and setting. Delman likened the setting to Eastern Europe, akin to medieval Prague or Moscow, but Jessup didn’t see the connection. Having travelled quite extensively through that part of the world (in modern times, not medieval, mind you), I was curious about the distinction, and so took the novel from the (proverbial) pile and jumped into it knowing very little about Sedia or her work.
With the tale behind me now, I’m not surprised that Delman and Jessup’s conversation so heavily leaned on atmosphere. The nameless city in which the novel’s set is as important a character as any of the other characters: human, automaton or otherwise. Through the living stone Gargoyles, Sedia gives the city a voice:
There is a house on the top of the hill – no man’s land, no-place, too steep for agriculture and too rocky for pasture, out-of-the-way and inconvenient for city dwellers and farmers both. This hill, the Ram’s Skull, the bald forehead of the once-mountain worn to a nub by time (slipping, slipping, faster and faster) is nothing but bedrock and loose stones. The house on the top sits lopsided already, its northern corner sinking with the decay of the slope under its supports
The mechanical girl and the Soul-Smoker enter the house – we hear the long squeal of a door as it opens and a slam as it closes behind them. We do not know what is happening inside, but we can guess – there is light in the fireplace and the gurgling of a kettle, and low, guilty voices. And we think of the souls and we count them – we had known every ghost in the city, and we can recall their names. We marvel at the cruelty of their fate without having the capacity to truly comprehend it – no more than to merely recognize it as grotesque. But, like the mechanical girl, we have no souls, and we are not afraid of the Soul-Smoker, we have no reason to worry that the souls inside him will somehow lure ours away and we will fall dead on the spot, abandoned by our animating essence. We think about the nature of souls and listen to the small domestic noises reaching us from the little house on top of the hill.
But the nameless city, and its gradual degradation and destruction as two warring factions wage war in its streets, isn’t the ultimate make-it-or-break-it facet of the novel. Rather, that’s Mattie, a mechanical girl, an automaton, as she’s coined in the novel, trying to break free from the shackles that society has placed on her. The reader’s willingness to buy into Mattie will likely determine their attachment to the novel. She’s a well drawn, sympathetic character, much moreso than many of the secondary human characters (the only one who comes close to her level of complexity is Loharri, who’s woefully under-explored), but, in the end… she’s also a mechanical construction with little explanation of how a gunpowder society is able to create a fully sentient, emotional and adaptable A.I. This is doubly hard to buy into when much of the crux of the novel’s plot (which happens around and despite Mattie, rather than because of her) centres around a massive computer (for lack of a better term) that is powered by coal and much less sophisticated than Mattie. I was often enthralled by her, but then she would do something too human, and I’d be whisked away from the story. Ironically, perhaps, her character would have been better served if she was more alien – Ted Chiang’s Exhalation is a brilliant example of how to draw a sympathetic but believable robotic character. Her struggles with trying to break away from the preconceptions cast on her by society were fascinating, but her emotional relationships with human characters are hard to empathize with. Ultimately, had Sedia pulled back the curtain on Mattie’s creation, and given reason for why she was so far ahead of the technology curve (and I believe there was a very ample opportunity to do this, if she’d just followed one plot string about a trio of young boys to a deeper conclusion), all of a sudden the dichotomy of Mattie’s personality and emotional abilities would have been worlds easier to accept.
At first blush, The Alchemy of Stone struck me as a strong Young Adult novel. Like Coraline by Neil Gaiman, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin or The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, The Alchemy of Stone starts with a strong central character, an agreeable, but respectful tone, and an interesting setting; but unlike those classics, Sedia’s novel becomes more adult as Mattie’s world begins to fall apart around her. It looses none of the charm, but what begins as an innocent attempt to save the city’s gargoyles soon encompasses human/automaton sex and its emotional fallout, civil war, opium and torture.
Compare this excerpt from Chapter One:
Still, Mattie tried not to think of politics too much. She thought about gargoyles and of Loharri’s words. He called them their overlords, even though the city owed its existence to the gargoyles, and they had been nothing but benefactors to the people. Did he know something she didn’t? And if he were so disdainful of gargoyles, why did he offer to help?
Mattie walked leisurely along the river. It was a nice day, and many people strolled along the embankment, enjoying the first spring warmth and the sweet, dank smell of the river. She received a few curious looks, but overall people paid her no mind. She passed a paper factory that squatted over the river like an ugly toad, disgorging a stream of white foam into the water; a strong smell of bleach surrounded it like a cloud.
to this excerpt from Chapter Thirteen:
“Afraid of being home all by yourself?”
“No.”Afraid of being home with someone else, she thought, but never said it out loud. “Eat your sandwich.”
He obeyed, still smiling. “You don’t hate me as much as you make out, do you, Mattie?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she said. “And I never said I hated you.”
“You make a fairly good impression. No words needed, dear girl, and you know full well that I’m not entirely dim. Surely, you expected me to pick up on some of your mannerisms.”
“I just don’t want you touching me,” she said. “And I want my key.”
“I left it to you in my will,” he said. ?You won’t kill me though, will you?”
“I’ll consider it,” she said.
He didn’t think her dangerous – if he did, he wouldn’t joke about it and pretend that her anger was indeed a concern to him. He occasionally enjoyed making a show out of capitulating to her, but only because they both knew he held more power. “Not any more, Mattie thought.
It’s difficult to capture in just a couple of pulled quotes, but it’s a subtle evolution through the novel, and masterfully handled by Sedia, but certainly not something I’d read to my children as I’d first thought when opening the novel. This growth and change in tone develops alongside both Mattie’s evolving maturity and the city’s fall into anarchy, and there’re some lovely reverse parallels as Mattie grows up and the humans around her devolve towards their baser instincts.
For all its strengths in atmosphere, prose and originality, The Alchemy of Stone has its share of struggles, too – mainly, the underdeveloped nature of nearly every character and plot string in the novel. They’re all interesting, and Sedia certainly has the gumption to come up with great characters and scenarios, but it often felt as though the novel was an outline of something much bigger. The early drive of the novel is Mattie’s endeavour to set the city’s Gargoyles free. There’s an intriguing little metaphor here, as, unable to free herself from the shackles of her own prison (a winding key, held by her emotionally damaged creator) she struggles to give freedom to another group, who’re slowly dying as the world they’ve crafted is left in the dust of advancing science and civilization. It’s a good story, and more than enough to build a novel around, but by the end of the novel it seemed liked little more than an aside compared to the destruction of the city. We’re never really given a solid reason why we’re supposed to care about the Gargoyles, beyond that Mattie does, and their history is so shrouded that it goes beyond mysterious into, simply, underdeveloped. They often make references to Mattie and how she’s the only one who can save them, but there’s never any reason given to why this is so. The reader has absolutely no stake in the Gargoyles or their continued survival.
On top of this, the motivations of nearly all the characters are just as cloudy. Mattie makes friends with several people, all of whom are important to their respective sides in the struggle for control to the city – unfortunately, it’s often hard to fathom why a well-to-do courtier is fighting with a resistance group, why an exiled mechanic is fighting against his peers, or why a foreigner is caught up in the trouble at all. I imagine Sedia had grand plans in her head for how all the relationships in the novel would intertwine (in a way similar to Zafon’s universally-lauded The Shadow of the Wind), but in the end she simply didn’t have enough room to develop any of them significantly. Most heartbreaking is the allusions to the past relationship between Ilmarekh and Loharri, a tale of two childhood friends that seems to be heading to a climactic conclusion, but simply putters out with more questions raised than answered.
Rather than telling the story directly, The Alchemy of Stone skirts around it, observing the story from the outside, instead of getting right into the heart of it. Sedia is obviously making a point about technology and it’s booming advance as it takes over as the main obsession of our civilization, but she dances around the subject too lightly, and does so with a character that’s just hard enough to empathize with. It’s not often I say it, especially about an author so versed in short fiction, but had Sedia taken a bit more time, added 50-100 pages and fleshed out the relationships and conflicts in the novel, it’d likely be more successful at conveying her themes.
By casting The Alchemy of Stone through the light of a pair of non-human eyes, Sedia allows herself to analyze the human condition from a distance. As Mattie tries to separate herself from her mechanical roots, the reader’s often left to wonder why she’s so eager to become human, to adopt all our illogical, subjective tendencies. It’s a flawed novel, but also an enjoyable one and Sedia shows that she has the ability to write with originality, flair and tone; it just doesn’t gel quite perfectly in The Alchemy of Stone.
That’s about what I thought about the book when I read it a while ago. (https://andrewliptak.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/review-the-alchemy-of-stone/) I thought it was a very good premise, and that while there was a lot of promise, there was a lot that was undersupported. Plus, the new cover is just abysmal compared to the one that it was first released with.
This book has been on my TBR pile for a long time and despite your cautionary words I think I’ll give a try. In my own reading, I’ve been weary saying things are underdeveloped, especially when I enjoyed what’s on the pages before me (as you seemed to with this book.) As a performer, I was always told, “It’s better to leave the stage with your audience wanting more, rather than wishing you finished ten minutes ago.” Perhaps the issues you see as underdeveloped are overshadowing other issue that were more important in the authors eye. Or perhaps not…
Neil Gaiman’s Stardust wasn’t the story I wanted it to be nor did he–with his gifts–go in the directions I wanted him to; that doesn’t mean it wasn’t well done. After understanding the difference in what I wanted as opposed to what was given and appreciating it for the merits it had my perspective of the novel changed. The preceeding may or may not apply to your feelings on The Alchemy of Stone.
I’ve often wondered why it’s harder to accept some fantastic elements over others. Dragons and magic can exists in a swords and sorcery novel without explanation, but advanced AI in a gunpowder era novel needs exposition and back-story to feel convincing?
The banality of saying that material ‘doesn’t gel quite perfectly’ does a disservice to your ability to critique as perfection seems to elude us all. I know you’ve done them before, but I think this is the first of your reviews I’ve read. I liked it.
Ditto the cover comment
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@Andrew You dislike the cover I posted, or the cover you posted?
@Chad Thanks for the thoughts, Chad. While I agree with you on leaving the audience wanting more, and certainly have no issue with interpretations being left open for a reader, it becomes a problem when it affects nearly every aspect of a novel.
As for Mattie, and my suspension of belief as a reader – I wouldn’t have minded Mattie’s development if the rest of technology was anywhere near her abilities. When the rest of the automatons are mindless, voiceless husks, Mattie’s emotional and cognitive abilities are so far beyond any other mechanical construct’s that she’s simply out of place in the world. Even the “supercomputer” constructed in the novel (by the same person who created Mattie) is to Mattie as a Ferrari is to a Ford Model T. It would be like writing a novel in modern day, but including a spaceship that can travel at the speed of light, and asking the reader to assume there’s some explanation because it’s convenient to the plot of the novel. It doesn’t work that way, inconsistencies can exist, but they need to have some sort of logical connection to the world. It’s hard to go into specifics without spilling into major spoiler territory, but Sedia, in my opinion, had a great opportunity to explore Mattie’s abilities, and connect them heavily to the story of Ilmarekh, Loharri and an unnamed boy, but, instead, both tales were left underdeveloped and under-explained.
As for expectations, I literally had none for The Alchemy of Stone, besides the vaguely Eastern European setting and a vaguely Steampunk asthetic. I bought an eBook and didn’t even read the back cover blurb.
Glad you enjoyed the review, even if you found issue with it! :)
Not to belabor the issue ( hesitate use that word, I really did like the review!), I felt that all your points of praise were substantiated by the text and concrete ‘things’ you could point out. While your criticism of other parts being underdeveloped are inherently subjective can can only be supported with, “I feel, I wish, I would’ve done, ect.”
That is not to undermine your feelings as a reader–indeed, that may be most important issue to consider when leaving commentary–but to say something is flawed due to a subjective matter of personal taste (someone else who read the book may not have thought any issues were underdeveloped) is a bit like me saying, “Strawberry ice cream is of a lesser quality than chocolate, because I like chocolate more.”
My analogy isn’t as cleverly stated as yours.
The cover that you’ve got there, and the one that seems to be on the current run of books is downright hideous. Not a fan, at all. The one that I’ve got on my review is the same cover that I’ve got, and I think that one’s one of the better covers that I’ve seen. I’ve always wondered what prompted the change.
@Chad – Certainly you’re touching on one of the fundamentals of reviewing. I’ve never really believed that objectivity exists in reviews (at least not on a casual or semi-professional level), so I choose to inform my own reviews based on those gut feelings; it’s why I feel comfortable using phrases like ‘I feel’, ‘I wish’ and ‘I would’. I don’t really know of another way to articulate my feelings. Certainly there’s something to be said about more literary reviews/critiques where the reviewer is more removed from the text, but it’s just not a style I’m comfortable in.
Thankfully, I fully agree that everyone should read this book (and all books I review) and make up their own mind. Despite my reservations about the way Sedia handled many of the novel’s aspects, I tried to reinforce my opinions with the many positive aspects of the book. Bottom line, it’s a good book and I enjoyed reading it, but there were aspects that kept it from being great, in my opinion. I’d love for my readers to give The Alchemy of Stone a go, love it, and tell me why they think I’m wrong. Bottom line, a review should be subjective and informed by the reader, otherwise there’d be no need for myriad reviewers or diverse opinions to exist.
Thanks for making me think about my approach to reviewing. It’s something I want to improve each time I sit down with a novel.
Huh. I love that cover! It’s part of what originally drew me to the novel.
The old one or the new one?
There is a great amount of subjective taste when it comes to reviewing. Often times, I’ve found that I dislike a book because of any number of elements, only to find that someone likes it for very different reasons. The words of reviewers should never be taken in completely. Certainly, there’s a number of reviewers that I trust, but people have a certain amount of responsibility to make up their own minds when it comes to things.
Generally, it’s not an empirical science.
Eugh, that posted cover! Gives me the shudders. This (original?) cover was what prompted me to give it a shot: http://www.cloudherder.net/post/255418759/wind-up-hearts-and-cities-in-dream-new-urban-fantasy
(sorry for the terribly long url.)
I loved Mattie as a narrator, especially once it was made abundantly clear that her narration could be made unreliable. I too wished there had been more said about her technology, but then again, I wished there had been more said about everything in “Alchemy.” Sedia seemed in such a rush to throw her plot into high gear that she almost threw the most interesting plot threads out the window along with it.
I also found the ending so abrupt that I honestly had to make sure I hadn’t bought a stripped copy!
Yet, even after these gripes, I ended up enjoying it very thoroughly and even read it through again (anticipating that falling-off-a-cliff ending), finding the second read-through pretty rewarding.
My $0.02.
This is an interesting discussion.
I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but really–are bloggers professional reviewers? Most of us don’t actually get paid, some of us might get free books, but really, we aren’t Roger Ebert.
All I can be and all I feel a responsibility to be is a reader with an open mind. And all I can do on my blog is express my reactions to a piece and explain my reasons. If someone doesn’t agree, well, that’s to be expected. But I don’t agree that we, as readers and reviewers, have any kind of higher calling to be universally accepting, and that we can’t offer our subjective reactions to something. And if a work leaves me, as a reader with an open mind, utterly unsatisfied and confused due to a lot of unanswered questions…Am I supposed to say “These unresolved plot issues distracted me from the story, but that’s my fault for wanting a story to finish what it starts. I’m sorry.”
The line is very thin, I think, but there are a lot of very good reviewers out there. The mark of the good reviewers is in how they cover things, understand the text, and articulate that to an audience, not their paycheck.
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