House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Review by Jordan S.
Last year I reviewed Adrian Tchaikovsky’s excellent City of Last Chances and had eagerly been waiting for an opportunity to jump into the sequel, House of Open Wounds. Whereas City of Last Chances felt like a series of interconnected stories that end up being more an ode to the city of Ilmar itself, House of Open Wounds was more like a season of M*A*S*H set in a terrifying world populated by demons and giant robots. In this story, we are reintroduced to our former sorta main character Yasnic who is now going by the nickname, Maric Jack. After the events of the first book, he’s become something of a god-smuggler and is carrying three such gods on his back in a big box. He’s found himself indentured as an orderly foran army medical unit populated by a motley assortment of medics, soldiers, and administrators. As this army is a part of the perfection-obsessed and very anti-god Palleseen Empire, it doesn’t take long for Maric Jack to find himself in way over his head. I really enjoyed City of Last Chances but it was also a book that jumped from disparate viewpoint to equally disparate viewpoints pretty frequently. It took a while to get used to and while I enjoyed it, I’m not sure it would be to everyone's taste. House of Open Wounds is definitely more reader friendly. While there is still a huge cast of characters that we jump between, most of them are members of the medical troop Jack finds himself in. This provides a helpful link that makes this book feel far less like it’s jumping around. Also having Jack/Yasnic back deepens that feeling. Whereas the previous book felt like the city was the only main character, starting the second book with Jack helps make him feel like he is definitely our main character. This book continues its predecessor's task of addressing weighty topics. Tchaikovsky is a master of writing not only the huge fantasy setpieces and battles but also the smaller, poignant moments. We get musings on colonization, bigotry, PTSD, and other mental health ailments in ways that most authors could only dream of handling as deftly and, even more remarkably, Tchaikovsky juggles all these subjects and does it better than most probably do with just one of these topics. The moment that will sit with me for a long time is when Jack is taken to a play that is making fun of his people, the Marics. Tchaikovsky handles this scene brilliantly, writing,
“Hoping he meant the play rather than life in general she said, ‘Well, they’ve told him that this is a magic fish and he’s desperate to get it off them, so he gives them all his money, because…’ And again, belatedly, her brain intervened and she petered off into, ‘You know.’
Jack gave her the sort of reproachful look she usually only got from teachers and superior officers. ‘Well, I don’t know.’
‘Because…’ She squirmed. ‘Marics are, er,’ and as though if she mumbled it quickly then it wouldn’t count, ‘greedy and gullible’
…
‘I’m sorry. This is a crap play. Let’s - ‘
‘I’m fine,’ he said, sounding more like he meant it. ‘Come on, I want to see how it ends.’
‘You haven’t followed a moment of it, have you?’
‘I mean, no, not as such. But I want to see that it ends. I don’t want to go to bed tonight and have nightmares about this nonsense still going on.’”
Something about this play and Banders, Jack’s colleague who he attends the play with, not realizing that it would impact Jack so much and Jack’s response nearly brought me to tears. It was such a real moment and in it we learned so much about both Jack and Banders and the world that they live in. And this wasn’t the only moment that almost brought me to tears. There were beautiful and poignant moments throughout the book that were both illustrative of how good this series is and how strong of a writer Tchaikovsky is. House of Open Wounds was the kind of book that I love starting the year off with. It’ll keep rattling around in my brain for a long time to come and was beautifully written. Fortunately, the follow-up to this book comes out in the US in March, specifically Days of Shattered Faith and I’m so excited to see another slice of this world that Tchaikovsky is showing us. Hopefully there will be more opportunities as well in the years to come.