The Black Tides of Heaven

Starred review from August 14, 2017
Yang introduces a captivating Buddhist-inflected steampunk setting in their (Yang’s preferred pronoun) delightful debut novella. The imperious Protector, needing to satisfy her debt to an important abbot, gives her newborn twins, Mokoya and Akeha, to a monastery. As they grow, they show prodigious abilities in Slackcraft, Yang’s version of magic, which is based on shaping the flows of natural elements. Like all youth in this society, they remain ungendered until they choose genders for themselves. When Mokoya develops the ability to see the future in her dreams, the twins’ mother reneges on her promise and takes them back to better exploit Mokoya’s foreknowledge. Mokoya decides to become female and leverage her visions to help Thennjay, an outsider of a different ethnic group, become head abbot; this drives a wedge between the siblings. Akeha takes a different route, becoming male and living as a smuggler on the fringes of the Protectorate. Decades later, as a revolution fueled by new machines heats up, the estranged twins are drawn together once again. Yang captures an epic sweep in compact, precise prose. The only complaint readers will have is the brevity of their time in this evocative new world. Agent: DongWon Song, Morhaim Literary.

September 15, 2017

To satisfy a debt to the Grand Monastery, the Protector has promised to give the abbot one of her children to raise. Unwilling to part with her grown offspring, the Protector magically conceives again late in life and gives birth to twins Mokoya and Akeha. At six years old, they are sent to the monastery. The two are inseparable, until Mokoya develops a prophetic ability that makes her valuable to her mother once again. This ability sets the twins on different paths, placing their relationship at the heart of these two novellas by nonbinary Singaporean writer Yang.

The first volume, "The Black Tides of Heaven," focuses on Akeha and how his world is changed once Mokoya's gifts manifest. The second title, "The Red Threads of Fortune," concentrates on Mokoya and the growing forces resisting the rule of the Protectorate. Yang's world is imbued with magic, yet a burgeoning rebellion eschews that magic for technology. The other striking bit of worldbuilding is that children in this world do not have gender until they choose which sex they wish to be, and the stories are full of fascinating gender explorations. VERDICT While published simultaneously, each volume can be read separately, as each story builds nicely upon the other. Taken together, they make an impressive, fresh debut steeped in Chinese culture. A second pair of novellas are scheduled for 2018.--MM

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