This year, I’ve tried to take a sizeable step back from relying on ARCs and limit the amount of times I peruse that old standby, NetGalley. Partly because I still have some books from last year I need to get to and partly because chasing new releases was burning me out. But earlier this summer, I fired up the site and stumbled across the cover of this next book. Enraptured, I read the synopsis and could not stop myself from requesting a copy. And The Sky Bled, by S. Hati, is a laser focused debut that examines our relationship with fossil fuels through intricate characters as they try to survive in a world on the brink of collapse.
Calor used to be found everywhere, and it powered everything. The continents to the North controlled much of the supply, and when extraction began to dwindle, they formed a council to control whatever was left. Occupying the city of Tejomaya, located in the southern hemisphere, they harvest what is left from the blood rains in the sky. After a six month drought, however, rumors of a secret reserve that had been buried decades ago begin to re-circulate. Zain, an orphan who stole calor in service of her slumlords, is back in the game. Iravan, one of those slumlords, has revolutionary ambitions and begins to take the rumors seriously. And Anastasia Drakos, seeking a position on the council, sees finding the reserve as her ticket to total control. As tensions rise, these three lives will intersect again in the search for the treasure that could uplift, or bury, the city of Tejomaya.
It’s been a while since a debut kicked in my door as hard as And The Sky Bled did. Hati confidently beckons the reader into her world, trusting they will be able to pick up on how it works. There aren’t pages of exposition setting everything up; it’s just Zain, sneaking around stealing what little calor she can and the trouble that ensues during the gathering. There is an energy to the events that makes sopping up the details easy without weighing them down. Before I knew it, I was several chapters deep and still not willing to put the book away. It certainly helps that Hati is a sharp writer. Not only are events clear, but the metaphors sink deep. I particularly resonated with her ability to write metaphors you could feel, hear, and smell. She also had a knack for metaphors that pulled you into the world, and gave you insight into each character’s relationship with calor. It made the whole experience intense, so that when the character drama ensued, you were primed for it.
I can not explain how much I loved Hati’s character work. Zain, Iravan, and Anastasia were fleshed out, each with baggage that could fill a cargo container. Watching them orbit around each other, seeing their decisions affect one another while they barely interacted physically was a dance I could watch again and again. Seeing their individual and collective pasts begin to surface as the novel moved forward was an act in emotional archaeology. Slow, methodical sifting of the dirt to uncover things both important and unimportant. Despite having good access to their minds through perspective shifts, Hati convincingly hides their sins as they lie and convince themselves to keep their pasts bottled. And when things start to come together, the full reveal is a heartbreaker. I’ve recently read a few books wherein a character with a purportedly troubled past hasn’t done anything truly wrong. Hati does no such thing as these people have done real damage to others, the world, and themselves. I loved the destruction, while also feeling the horror of it.
While these are things that people often look for in a good book, it’s rare to see them executed so confidently. Where And The Sky Bled truly soared is how the writing, characters, and plot all get intertwined in heavy themes around colonialism, power, environmental degradation, and community. Calor is one of the best composites for fossil fuels I’ve encountered in fiction. It’s powerful, it’s nasty, it causes problems for the handlers and harvesters, and it suffuses everyday life in invisible ways. Those who have it need more, those who don’t can barely keep their communities running. And not because the people are reliant personally, but because the spaces they exist in have been designed to need it as much as everyone else. The systems that maintain its flow are rampant and brutal. Oppression in all forms is utilized to keep the game running, and the game allows for power plays by individuals. Hati captures it all wonderfully, in small and big ways.
Hati then steps beyond the normal shit surrounding fossil fuels and looks into how our relationship with them taints all other relationships. Not in a “you’re contributing too,” but how the constant search for extraction of calor, pushes onto the characters a similar mining mentality when it comes to their relationships. They look at how to leverage situations for power or survival, only to require more and more of someone until they are drained and tapped. This feels more purposeful here because of her use of metaphors. They are often directly linked to each other. They are taught only to think in terms of calor, therefore people are also resources. And it suffuses every strata from top to bottom. It’s not a question of guilt or personal conviction, it’s just how society is organized. There are even small moments where Hati mentions that life, especially in Tejomaya wasn’t always this way, that there used to be a respectful relationship with the world that was lost after the calor revolution (ie industrial revolution). The northern continents built up the southern ones with calor infrastructure so that everyone was stuck in the cycle.
It’s an incredibly dense packing of the themes in a 330 page standalone, and this would have been a perfect book had the ending not happened the way it did. I won’t say Hati threw it all out, but I found myself disappointed with the sharp thematic turn. It doesn’t undo all the value that I found in the book, it just was an unfortunate stumble at the end of a mind blowing routine that combined technique with artistry. I don’t want to get into details because, spoilers, but I had a hard time wrestling with its implications after everything that pushed me towards it.
And The Sky Bled is a fantastic debut that makes S. Hati an author to watch. It’s a book I will cherish and tell people about whenever they want an environmentally themed science fiction book. If you need an exciting debut in your life, definitely pick this one up when it comes out.
Rating: And The Sky Bled – Yeah, Just Read This One
-Alex
An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.
