THE CELDAN HERESIES

In Carnes’ debut fantasy novel, a willful girl leads a rebellion against the religious status quo.

Before Gaelle was a heretical nun being held in a prison cell suspended high in the air, she was just a girl. Her mother died in childbirth, and her woodsman father raised her with the help of her mother’s sister, her wise aunt Jillian. When Gaelle is 15, her father is killed by a horse. By the law of the Imperial Church of Esaosh, the strict religion that governs Gaelle’s homeland of Celd, the horse is to be put to death, and the horse’s owner, Wilm, is to be beaten. It falls to Gaelle to carry out the punishment herself, and when she refuses, she learns that there are consequences for those who disobey: “If the victim doesn’t immediately carry out the law, the victim becomes a criminal.” Gaelle is willing to live as an outlaw, though she doesn’t yet know what that entails; Jillian, who bears a brand burned onto her chest for her own trespasses against Church law, has a better idea. Together, they question more deeply the tenets of the faith that was forced upon them, eventually discovering a new god to worship. Will the Church suffer these heretics to live, or will they be forced to bring down the Church itself? The narration shifts back and forth between the perspective of an elderly Gaelle in her prison and her younger self. Carnes unspools both threads with entrancing lyricism, as here, when the older woman describes the bird who roosts with her in her cage: “This co-sunning is the closest the bird has allowed me to get to him, so far. What I consider sharing might actually amount to his version of a territory war, but he doesn’t hiss or posture. When the warmth makes him redolent, he smells a little of dust.” It’s a slow, thoughtful book, one that takes both its characters and the systems that ensnare them seriously. While the pacing may be a bit too leisurely for some, patient readers will be rewarded.

A deeply imagined fable of faith and revolt.