Willful and Free: Neon Yang’s The Black Tides of Heaven

When the Head Abbott Sung approached the Protector about payment for services his Grand Monastery rendered in the defense of the nation, he expected a grown child to join his ranks to learn the ways of the Monastery’s pugilism and mystical arts. He did not anticipate receiving a pair of newborn twins. However, the Protector is a devious woman, indeed, and she seems to have conceived and birthed the two specifically to resolve the debt without depleting her supply of children useful to her own purposes. Stunned as he may be, Sung accepts the children with one caveat—the Monastery will not allow children younger than six into their ranks. Well, then come back in a few years their mother says, and continues to rule as she sees fit.

Right there in the opening chapter, we see an unexpected situation. The rest of the book plays around with familiar fantasy world concepts—twin siblings who grow up, grow apart, and then must ultimately come back together in order to save the world they know—but it does so from a skewed or slanted perspective that engenders resonance, new perspective, and freshness. This is all fitting for a work that takes the subjects of fate and free will as its themes:

A considered silence simmered. Then Yongcheow spoke. “The saying goes, ‘The black tides of heaven direct the courses of human lives.’ To which a wise teacher said, ‘But as with all waters, one can swim against the tide.'”

His gaze was unshakeable as it fixed on Akeha. “I chose to swim. So can you.”

The Black Tides of Heaven, Location 1399

And this passage, which comes late in the work, gives the whole book its title and provides us a statement of purpose for all we have seen thus far and will see to the end. This volume is one big meditation on prophecy, fate, willfulness, and the freedom to choose your path.

Neon Yang’s fiction is attentive stuff. The author reveals an attentiveness to language, resulting in a lyrical, poetic style that is never stuffy or concerned with its own beauty, which nevertheless manages to impress with its concise beauty. Yang writes in a way that uses small details to build enough of a structure for our own imagination to get the skeleton and invites us to fill in the blanks. Chapters gallop ahead, bypassing the boring stuff that often clutters lengthy novels, giving us perfectly realized moments of crisis and interaction. The short novel chronicles thirty plus years of time, giving several well drawn characters and quite a bit of intrigue and action in a convincing world. That it does so in a fraction of the 500+ pages populating many doorstop fantasy novels is a pleasant surprise.

Despite the novel’s brevity, The Black Tides of Heaven boasts a richly detailed setting. This is a mystical Asia nation where champions of slackcraft (a kind of magic tethered to elements of fire, water, air, earth, forest, metal, and an unspecified “extra”) and technology stand in opposition to one another. The mystic Tensors are the powers that be, but the tech-minded Machinists are prophesized to kick off a rebellion; the dominant power wants to do away with the other, while the underdog sees a world where both can work in a kind of harmony. However, unlike some fantasy works, we get an intermingling of other countries and countryfolk in this play. When the Grand Monastery’s leader is replaced midway through the book, it is a surprising choice:

Leading the procession was a young man Akeha had never seen before. Lean and broad, dark-skinned, jaw framed by a hefty beard that seemed impossibly neat. His head had been shorn and tattooed with the sigils of the five natures. This was him. The new Head Abbott. He was a boy. And it was preposterous. He looked like a student dressed up in ceremonial robes for a play.

At five-step intervals, the new Head Abbot stopped and bowed, pressing his forehead to the ground. The boy’s face was perfectly serious. Akeha watched as he got to his feet, walked five steps, and bowed again. Deep-set eyes, straight and narrow nose. He had a presence that could be felt even through the echo of a vision. And the vision lingered on him—in a way that Mokoya’s visions never did—as if the fortunes, too, found him irresistible.

A Gauri boy. Extraordinary.

The Black Tides of Heaven, Location 554

The petty stereotypes that come about and the prejudices that accompany them add drama. The new leader is soon revealed to be more than the hurtful stereotypes suggest, however, and becomes a power of his own. Later, as Akeha makes something of a nomadic/smuggling life for themselves, we get snippets of the world outside the core setting of the opening sections. What we get a sense of is something akin to Guy Gavriel Kay’s ornate worldbuilding, though at a fraction of the page count. Here we find poetic snapshots instead of loving travelogue. It’s powerful stuff, indeed.

Of interest to our Pride month celebration is the way the world utilizes non-binary gender identities as a core element in its worldbuilding. In this universe, children are treated as neither boys nor girls, always they until a certain age. At that point, they choose which of the genders to be and with that choice comes body sculpting (if necessary) and adulthood rites. Sadly, the Kuanjin nation treats non-binary only as a childhood condition:

Akeha stared at themselves: the shorn head, the genderless robes, the stark facial features that were identical to Mokoya’s. Until a young person confirmed their gender, the masters of the forest-nature kept the markers of adulthood at bay. They had never imagined themselves any other way. It frightened them to think that this was not true for Mokoya.

The Black Tides of Heaven, Location 982

This becomes a serious concern for Akeha, who at a young age decided to buck that trend and convinced their sister to do likewise. Mokoya agreed—it seemed like the thing to do at age six—but changed their mind later. This, of course, causes no small ruffles to Akeha:

Silence from the other side of the room. Then Mokoya sat up, slowly. “Our birthday is less than two weeks. I want to be confirmed.”

Akeha sucked air between their teeth, willing what they’d just heard to change. “What?”

Mokoya turned. “I want to be conf—”

“I heard you. Why?“

“Why? Keha, we’re turning seventeen. We have to do it at some point.”

“We made a promise never to get confirmed.”

“We were six when we made that promise. We’re not children anymore.” Mokoya shifted on the bed. “Keha, you didn’t really think we could avoid confirmation forever, did you?”

Akeha shrugged, not trusting their mouth to say the right things. Nobody jumped from undeclared gender straight to confirmation. They’d take a couple of years to be sure. Unless they were Sonami, and Akeha wasn’t Sonami.

Mokoya sighted noisily. “Keha.”

“So that’s why you didn’t talk to me? You thought I’d be upset?”

“Well, you are.”

Akeha wordlessly clambered back into bed. I’m not upset, they thought. This is not a big matter. But it was.

The Black Tides of Heaven, Location 580

It’s a touching, telling, and very personal choice Mokoya makes. Akeha cannot understand why their sibling would want to do such a thing. It’s drama wrung from an unexpected source, fantasy fiction that appeals to the heart and the head on a seemingly simple but richly resonant level with some of the great fantasy that authors like Gene Wolfe conceived.

This is not to suggest that the book is all philosophy and no action, of course. Yang writes a scene of conflict with the same attention to detail and language as they do sequences of character relationship. There are several active moments, mostly with Akeha as an adult, making a living on the fringes of society and legality, which involve the gut as much as they do the emotions.

However, the real conflicts here are always of a personal nature. This is not a story about a lone hero defeating faceless mooks and rising to eventually challenge the tyrannical queen of a nation. There are elements of that sort of narrative at work here, but the work itself is greater than such a conceit. Instead, the story is really about a pair of twins and their relationship to each other as well as to their manipulative and possibly tyrannical mother. Of course, at some point in their lives, all children must grow to and typically through the idea that their parent is also a jailer and tyrant. Such concepts usually evaporate completely not when the kids move out, but by the time they become parents themselves and see the world from the other side of the cycle. Of course, the Protector is capable of some rotten behavior, putting people to death at the hint of prophecy or the threat of rebellion, something most kids do not have to experience. But that’s fantasy fiction for you.

Some of the jumps in time might be a bit disorienting to readers looking for a more seamless narrative. Instead of a long journey, Yang’s book can read like a hurried slideshow. I found this approach refreshing, giving us a breathless rush in the narrative from one key scene to the next. Those accustomed to fatter fantasy novels may find it a little too jarring for comfort.

The Black Tides of Heaven is a provocative read. The first of four linked novellas. While I cannot yet speak to the way the works all tie together or the satisfaction of the four works taken as a whole, I look forward to considering each of them over the rest of the year.

#

The Black Tides of Heaven is available in eBook and paperback editions from the folks at Tor.com. There is an audiobook edition, as well. An eBook and paperback bundle of the four novellas also exists. Some of the books still appear under the author’s former name of JY Yang. Neon Yang is the name they have since adopted.

Though this ends out Pride month celebrations (at least on the book side of things), we’re going to effectively spill over into next month regardless. Next Thursday, we will consider the second of Yang’s series, The Red Threads of Fortune. While The Black Tides of Heaven is predominantly Akeha’s book, the follow-up focuses on their sibling, Mokoya. That book is also available in eBook, paperback, and audiobook editions.

WORKS CITED

Yang, Neon. The Black Tides of Heaven. Tor.com: 2017.

“Willful and Free: Neon Yang’s The Black Tides of Heaven” is copyright © 2021 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Quotes and cover image taken from the Tor.com eBook edition, released in 2017.

Disclosure: Considering Stories is a member of the Amazon Associates program. Qualifying purchases made using the product links above can result in Considering Stories receiving a percentage of the purchase price as a payment from Amazon.com. There are a plethora of options for acquiring a copy, including your local library, but if you want to buy a copy, why not use the link above and help our site out?

If you like what we do here at Considering Stories, I hope you’ll consider Liking or Sharing the post as well as Following our site.

Next month we kick off an ambitious series looking at weird western writings on the weekends in addition to a bunch of crime, suspense, and dark fantasy reads on Thursdays.

On Thursday of next week, we hope to take a look at the new Joe R. Lansdale novel, Moon Lake. It saw release in eBook, paperback, and audiobook editions just this past Tuesday, June 22. Hopefully we have a chance to read it and give it due consideration.