Ukrainian Books: Vita Nostra by Marina and Serhiy Dyachenko
Hello, Stranger.
Technobabble: Lots o fantasy babble, but that's the point.
Review: There is something refreshing about a "school of magic" book that is truly about the school. Learning magic should be hard: unlearning reality is a painful process. Vita Nostra is about the process of learning magic and the cost that people pay for it. There are a handful of compelling characters, including Sasha, but most are flat. Starts slow and spends too much time on everything before the school itself, but once at the school everything picks up.
“Here, girls. We’re roommates now. Help yourself: the sausage is homemade, and here are some pickles. And the bread, well, whatever is left.”“Drink – this early in the morning?” Lisa specified.“We’ll have just a drop,” Oksana picked up a thick slice of the sausage. “To good grades, to easy living. Cheers!”Sasha held the cup; whitish liquid splashed on the bottom. It smelled of yeast.“What is it?”“Moonshine,” Oksana gave her a cheerful grin. “Come on, bottoms up!”She bumped her glass with Lisa’s, then with Sasha’s, drank, widened her eyes, and bit into the sausage. Lisa took a small sip. Sasha wanted to refuse, but then thought, Why shouldn’t she? She held her breath and swallowed the murky liquid like medicine.She’s never tasted anything worse. All the alcohol beverages she’d tasted before—champagne on New Year’s Eve and her birthday, the occasional dry red wine—had had a pleasant taste and a nice smell. The moonshine remained stuck in her throat, preventing her from breathing.“Eat!” Oksana yelled at her. “Have a pickle.”Letting tears stream down her face, Sasha bit into a pickle and then into a fatty sausage, and black bread with caraway seeds.
As is probably obvious, this book was chosen because there are remarkably few Ukrainian SF or fantasy books which have been translated to English. The translation is a bit rough at points, but one thing is does well is maintain those details that make this more distinctly Ukrainian. A "region shifted" translation would probably have Sasha's roommates hustling to give her a different chaser: the pickle/meat/bread as a shot chaser is absolutely typical. There's a note in the book that this was translated by a fan as a passion project, and was then published for real - but there is a certain stuttering nature to some of the text that is hard to ignore. Also, if you like chapter breaks, sorry. No idea if this is the same in the original text.
This is not a cultural artefact; it is a book, and this is a book review, so let's do that. The first twenty-ish percent of the book is poorly paced and a struggle to get through. It starts very slow, briefly becomes engaging, and then drags - all the way until Sasha begins school. Even then, it takes a bit for things to come together. Characterization starts poorly as well; Sasha seems a hollow shell defined only by fear; her mother is a mother-character; there are no classmates, friends, or others who stand out. The exception is Farit - a perpetually threatening presence, and the main reason to keep reading through the first chunk of the book.
Magic School tends to be easy. We peek at classes in Harry Potter and the Magicians, but the real struggle is always something external - a greater antagonist. There is no such antagonist here - and in some sense, this is a book without an antagonist at all. Classes are usually there to set the scene or provide information. This really is a book about a girl learning magic. We see the exercises in her textbooks, join her for her exams, watch her in tutoring. Here the writing is what keeps it interesting. Vita Nostra does a remarkably good job of conveying Sasha's fear, anger, and frustration with her ever-more mind-bending lessons without becoming itself frustrating and tedious - a mean feat.
There are aspects of this that feel extremely dated. Some of the usual pitfalls: cell phones are a big deal, and Sasha spends a lot of time waiting for phone booths; people trying to find out about a place by checking atlases. And some are more acutely dated, in the context of the world as it is: someone commuting back and forth from his home in Kiev to his kids in Moscow; the opening beach holiday in Crimea.
I have consumed a lot of books over the past couple of years, and there really is something stylistically distinct here. I stayed intrigued through the end, and would happily read books two and three of the trilogy... if they were translated. Boom! Big twist: this is the first book of a trilogy, and the others don't exist in English. It still has a satisfying arc, and it's worth a read... but it would be nice if those ended up translated one day.
I lieu of the usual affiliate book link, here are a few organizations doing work related to Ukraine. Consider donating if you can!
Also open to other suggestions of Ukrainian books in English. Hit me up if you know of any! I'll continue with a few more of these as a brief interruption to your regularly scheduled reviews of awarded books.
“At first I thought you were simply the kind of student who crams day and night,” Portnov muttered. “Then I suspected you had a talent… Then I realized you are a verb. It happened when you regained your speech. When I made you silent, and you found the right word in a matter of only few days. Remember?”
Sasha nodded.
“Then everything seemed to hang by a thread, and I thought I had made a mistake… and so did Nikolay Valerievich… and then you transformed in a single leap. It became obvious you were a verb, and I strongly suspected,” Portnov leaned forward maintaining an eye contact with Sasha, “that you were a verb in the imperative mood. You are an imperative, Sasha, you are a command.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will,” Portnov squinted. “It’s the nature of our specialty: nothing can be explained. One can only achieve understanding on one’s own. You are a command, a part of the Speech of Creation…. A load-bearing structure. I told you once you were a projection. Remember? Here it is: you are a projection of the Word that is destined to reverberate. And every day you get closer to the original. You are a foundation upon which an entire universe can be built. And this cannot be explained, Sasha, it can only be understood.”
Ah. Well, I can't say that I fully understand. But I like your funny words, magic man!
This is the crux of Vita Nostra - that the students are not truly people, rather they shape and manipulate reality. All of this is kept ambiguous throughout: we don't know what anyone is learning, and it's all mind games and twists and tricks. Many characters ask one another what it is that they're actually learning. The only way to offer a satisfactory answer is to go so profoundly bonkers and metaphysical that it's hard to say exactly what is going on.
Hard to give a spoiler-filled review when I'm not sure how the book ended. Did she become God?
Darkness.
“In the beginning was the Word.”
Slow rotation.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”
Luminous dust folds into a flat silver curve with two soft spiral arms.—Do not be afraid.
If she didn't, I have no idea what happened. I'm not a Biblical scholar, but "In the beginning was the Word" sounded familiar enough:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
So, she's God, right? That's the point?
How do you write a sequel when the protagonist becomes God at the end?
It's a good type of confusion, but it's definitely confusion.
Let's look out for one another, Stranger.And don't forget to read a book!
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