Our Lady of the Artilects – Bless This Undoubtable Mess

My tastes have always been a little off kilter within science fiction, and lately they’ve become even weirder. The use of spirituality and religion to inform science fiction in non-Christian cultures has opened a need for me to dive into Christian themes as well. I’ve already stated my love for Lina Rather’s novellas involving space nuns, but as always there can be more. This is especially odd considering that my relationship with Christianity is not particularly strong. I only went to church for Christmas, and only cracked open a bible after recently discovering the deep lore surrounding the Mormon Church. So a book wherein the Holy Roman Empire has been re-established in the next couple of centuries, and the ramifications of a robot possessed was pure bait. Unfortunately, Our Lady of the Artilects by Andrew Gillsmith, gets lost within its own conspiracies, losing some of the thematic tension that I came for.

Rome and the revived Holy Roman Empire are on the cusp of reconciliation with the Chinese Economic Interest Zone after decades of Cold War. However, a mass hallucination of a lady in white experienced by synths around the world causes a tremor in international relations. When an artilect claims to be possessed, the Emperor dispatches exorcist and neuroscientist, Father Serafian, to investigate. What he finds is both confounding and chilling, and could possibly stem from his own work on developing synth morality. The implications and person involved are so far-reaching, that the Emperor pulls in his Praetor, and calls in a few favors from his friend, the Caliph. What they discover is a conspiracy that could be hundreds of years old, and would question the future of humanity’s relation to God.

This book had me at the demonic possession of a robot. The opening chapters are a tense, if not particularly deep, discussion on the nature of possession, exorcism, and Father Serafian’s skills. His meeting with the synth, Thierry, is fun and filled with a curious dread. It was compelling in the way that introductions should be. It brings up more questions than it answers and ends with a pact between the father and the presence he discovers. It’s the kind of opener I crave when it comes to explorations of spirituality, consciousness, and the search for a soul. But it wasn’t long after that that Our Lady of the Artilects started to spin out of control for me.

My main gripe that overshadows everything is that Gillsmith tries to do too much with too little time and space. There are a bunch of characters and a plethora of perspectives that the reader has to keep track of as the story pans out, and none of them have a distinctive voice, either in their dialogue or in how their stories are presented. This is exacerbated by the chapter lengths, which rarely pass the ten-page mark, and are further clouded by characters reminding the reader what happened in other characters’ chapters. At times I was grateful for the reminder because of the blinding speed, but other times I was like “Wait shit, that happened to that character? I thought it was this person?” It led to confusion on many occasions, but since so much of it was plot-oriented confusion I also didn’t feel particularly moved to be as studious as I could have been.

Where this really became an issue is that the thematic tension shifted away from the inciting event of robot possession, and moved into conspiracy territory. While not inherently bad, it’s just rarely my cup of tea because I rarely feel the tension that the mysterious puppet master is supposed to be supplying. A sort of ticking time bomb is added, but it’s so far removed from the main plot (though it drives it), that I just couldn’t buy into it. And since everything moved so fast, there wasn’t any room to really engage in the types of conversations that I was particularly excited to engage in. There weren’t really any of the conversations on the nature of creation, intelligence, and God that were teased in the beginning. That isn’t to say that these ideas weren’t mentioned, they were often alluded to in droves, but there wasn’t depth. Gillsmith had other plans in mind that I just couldn’t bring myself to truly care about. The denouement ultimately fell flat for me, and I was left even more confused and dissatisfied than I could have imagined.

Another aspect that I wrestled with was the sincerity with which aspects of Catholicism were accepted wholeheartedly as part of the world. Being someone of a non-religious orientation, I tend to like the God works in mysterious ways trope, because it lends a bit of ambiguity to themes, and characters, along with readers are left to ponder their own relationship with the divine and weigh the evidence for themselves. Our Lady of the Artilects takes Catholic history and teachings at face value, something that I found frustrating, and immensely interesting. Gillsmith isn’t really worried about the existence or will of God, and it was refreshing, from my perspective, to engage in a work that is so up-front about it. But it also got in the way of a lot of the quandaries I had come expecting to grapple with. It’s not even that these questions were already answered, so much as they didn’t even register as worth the time of the characters.

Another aspect of Catholic heavy presence within the novel was its primacy within the narrative. Gillsmith put a lot of effort into creating Muslim characters, both side and perspective characters that felt steeped in their faith in the same way that the Catholic characters were. The Caliphate felt like a real presence that had to be taken into account, even with its friendly relations with the Holy Roman Empire. Where I do take some issue though is that those same characters often talked in riddles, quoting passages of the Qu’ran in ways that the Catholic never really pulled from the bible, sermons or the catechisms. My girlfriend informs me that this is not what Catholics do, but it still served as a reminder that those of the Caliphate were the other, despite being close allies of the Holy Roman Empire. There is also a weird bit where a real-world situation involving the Uyghurs in China is used within the story, and then surpassed by an even bigger Chinese genocide of Christians within their territory, giving a real “we’re the real martyrs” sheen to the whole affair.

I came into Our Lady of the Artilects with a hungry curiosity and left with a bitter taste in my mouth. Where I was expecting a Christian meditation on the nature of consciousness, creation and existence of God, I was treated to an action-packed, conspiracy-laden, speed run of Catholics against the non-religious. It hasn’t dampened my need to find more of what I am looking for, but it has reminded me that the search may be longer than the bible itself.

Rating: Our Lady of The Artliects -I’m Still an Atheist After All.
-Alex