Let me start by saying that Native American prehistory is not one of my interests. The Ivory Carver Trilogy, by Sue Harrison, is set in pre-historic Alaska, in the Aleutian Islands. They are proof positive that a good story trumps a reader’s preference for setting. After reading Mother Earth, Father Sky, the first book of the series ( read my review ) there was no question that I had to move on to My Sister the Moon.The novel centers on sixteen-year old Kiin, who begins life without a name because she was born without a soul, and thus undeserving of a name. Her life is a litany of domestic abuse: her father Gray Bird beats her for any actual or imagined shortcoming, and when traders come to the village, Gray Bird always tries to sell them a night with his daughter. Her younger brother Qakan is equally rough on her. Her mother, frightened into submission, can’t protect her.Kiin’s life changes when she is made wife to Amgigh, son of Kayugh the village chief, who made a promise to Gray Bird when Kiin was a baby, that Kiin would be wife to one of his sons. It was a promise made to prevent Gray Bird from killing this unwanted daughter.Kayugh’s household is happy and full of kindness. Kiin’s young husband is good to her. She tells herself she is lucky to have a husband at all, but she can’t help but wish for a different husband. Kiin is in love with Amgigh’s brother Samiq, and he with her. But Samiq’s destiny also has been decided: he is to move to the village where his maternal grandfather lives and learn how to become a Whale Hunter.Yet even as a member of the chief’s family, Kiin is not safe. Hoping to become a trader, her brother Qakan steals furs and tools from the village to begin his career. Before he paddles away, he kidnaps Kiin – if he can take her far enough, he might be able to trade her to a man who doesn't know her reputation -- that Kiin has no soul.At the start of the book, Kiin is archetype of an abused woman, a victim of domestic violence. She accepts that she deserves only ill-treatment. But her inner voice grows stronger as her will to survive asserts itself during the voyage with her brother. When she realizes she is pregnant, it becomes even more imperative for her to live. Yes, there is a love triangle in the novel, but for me the most interesting journey is Kiin’s escape, physically and emotionally, away from domestic violence. Her mental state and low self-esteem give way to a cautious confidence in her carving skills and her worth as a woman. It’s not an easy story to read, but so compelling and immersive you have to keep reading. It’s a highly disturbing yet absorbing journey, aided by well-developed characters and competent prose that puts you right in the Arctic landscape. Harrison’s voice is straightforward, her sentences simple in structure. This may be for the sake of younger readers (see note below), but I found her prose strong and suited to the story’s setting. Even though Kiin suffers at the hands of cruel men, you never forget the impersonal cruelty of the Arctic, its’ dangerous emptiness, icy waters, and sudden shifts of weather. Harrison’s writing makes you shiver with the cold winds and salt spray, the harshness of the land, the precariousness of life. You feel chilled, your skin too thin. NOTE: I was surprised to find reviews which categorized the series as Young Adult books, especially My Sister the Moon. In the Author’s Notes, Harrison says she borrowed the incest storyline from an Aleut sea otter legend. What I Learned About Writing from Reading This BookWhen I read fiction, I always hope for an experience that pulls me in to the book. The more unfamiliar the setting, the more readers need to learn about the culture, everyday objects, and events. One of the perennial challenges of historical fiction is how to draw readers into an unfamiliar time and place without thrusting information into their faces. We need to understand what’s appropriate to the time and place, otherwise we won’t appreciate the story’s conflicts – but we don’t want to get yanked out of the story to learn. There’s nothing more annoying than when a story veers off into a lecture about objects, clothing, or traditions and beliefs.How can a writer convey how ancient tools worked or how a particular society was structured without turning paragraphs into social studies lessons?Harrison never hands us a heavy, awkward chunk of information. Instead, she adds in the details of her world here and there, woven into her characters’ actions and dialogue so that when we read descriptions, they are natural and in context. We see things through the eyes of her characters as they think and talk. She trusts her readers’ intelligence to know that when a hunter goes paddling out to sea in an ikyak, he is in a boat; we don’t need an immediate detailed description about how it’s made from skins stretched over a wooden frame. That can come later. Let’s look at clothing, a detail so essential to the mind’s eye of a reader. (The worst example I ever came across was a novel where each character walked into a scene accompanied by a long paragraph describing his/her appearance. Every time. Every costume change.This isn't it, but it’s pretty close: “Lulu was five-foot eight, with black hair in a blunt bob down to her shoulders. She had pale skin, a Grecian nose and wide-set blue eyes. Her pouty lips were outlined in crimson and filled in with Chanel Power Red gloss. She wore black leather pants , a white silk blouse, black leather gloves and a black leather motorcycle jacket which fit tightly to her slim yet curvaceous figure. She stood on high heeled black boots with silver spurs that made her long legs look even more enticing. A bracelet of heavy, solid platinum …” You get the idea. I didn't read the past the first chapter.)In the world of My Sister the Moon, there is no wool, cloth has yet to be invented, and it’s a climate for which clothing is not optional. People used furs and skins to fashion garments and boots. As readers, our frame of reference barely exists for this. Yet it’s essential for the novel to give us an appreciation of the ingenuity of this prehistoric culture; it gives us more respect for them, elevates them in our mind from primitive tribal folk to characters we can care about. I found Harrison’s descriptions of clothing endlessly fascinating as she explained these early people's resourceful use of materials.For example, a suk is a calf-length hoodless parka with a collar, reversible so that it could be worn with the feathers or fur on the inside for warmth. Our first detailed description of such a garment comes fairly early in the book, when Chagak gifts one to her daughter-in-law Kiin. It’s the most beautiful thing Kiin has ever owned – so it’s natural for her to admire and enumerate its features: “banded at the bottom with a ruff of white cormorant rump feathers hung with shell beads. The sleeves were cuffed with tufts of brown eider feathers and on the outside of the collar rim Chagak had sewn a strip of pale ribbon-seal fur, trimmed into a pattern of ripples, a blessing asked from the sea.”Kiin tries it on, and it fits perfectly, “the sleeves ended just above her fingertips and the bottom edge fell below her knees.”There is nothing contrived when a suk is introduced in this way. And now we know what one looks like. Or, there is the chigadix, a waterproof garment sewn from whale tongue skin or sea lion esophagus. But how are the seams made waterproof? Harrison explains this in a scene where Samiq oils his garment with seal fat to keep water out of the seams. While he cares for his clothing, he muses how men can repair a chigadix but not make it watertight the way his mother and Kiin can. His mind wanders to a memory of Kiin working on a chigadix: “a double seam, sewn one way, then turned and sewn back another.”Informative. Natural. Unobtrusive to the story. When I write about objects, clothing, or traditions and beliefs, I’ll try to blend the descriptions into dialog, thoughts, or the action rather than write about them as standalone descriptions. No social studies lessons.Sue was gracious enough to let me interview her (read here)
much better than the first, and WAY better than the last few Earth's Children novels. i liked most of the characters. a few were kinda of flat. you know what i'm talking about. they're a bad guy, but they don't really have a good reason for being bad. like Kiin's younger brother! what was his motivation? he was lazy and his dad had fed him lies his whole life about how his sister was greedy? pretty boring. but in the end, i was glad with the end of his story line. that bastard totally got what was coming to him. >:D i loved Kiin. :D loved her journey and struggles, loved how she grew as a character. (by which i mean finally stop letting other's treat her like crap and grew the brass to stand up for herself.) she's got a shit life and an even worse family. it sure makes me glad that i'm living in modern america were i don't have to worry about being traded to some sadist bastard for a few seal skins. yeah, i get that that was the culture and they basically veiwed woman as the scum of the earth, but it's still pretty awful to read about. and grey bird totally wins a place in the "worst fictional parents ever" list. next to Thrern from the "Shadowdance" series and John Winchester from "supernatural". i mean, i spent half the book wondering if theis poor girl had freaking brain damage from getting hit in the head one to many times and that was why she stuttered. :'( it's ok kinn! i believe you're worth something! you're not soulless! I also loved the brother rival plot line. i usually hate love triangles, but here, i think, is one of the few authors who happened to make it work. and it's not just with our main girl, the rivalry is with everything in their lives, and i feel pretty bad for the younger one. i think he was my favorite after Kiin. plus, also i'm not sure how strong samqi's feelings really are for her. i mean, i can tell he loves her, but if he REALLY REALLY loved her, shouldn't he have tried a little harder - and a little sooner - to get Kiin away from her father and brother? because she "belongs" to her father, he, and the WHOLE FUCKING VILLAGE IS JUST GOING TO LET HIM ABUSE HIS KID AND WIFE? i don't care if it is in the damned ice age. someone should've done something sooner. never, never, ever is it okay for anyone to treat ANYBODY like that, nameless girl or not. stupid, chauvinistic grey bird. karma's going to get him. just wait and see.and the writing . . .what to say? it's magical. so simple yet i couldn't put it down. i set down a robin hood book to finish "My sister the moon." and if anyone out there actually follows my reviews, they'll understand just how big of a deal that is. :D it's simple but gripping. maybe it's better that it's not trying to be flowery sounding or to text booky. (EARTH'S FREAKING CHILDREN!) The simplicity lets you focus more on the characters and their stories. and that ending! oh, god, i about died. stupid freaking cliffhangers i'm glad when i found this trilogy in a thrift store i bought all three and not just one.:D i don't know what i'd do if i hadn't.
What do You think about My Sister The Moon (1995)?
My Sister the Moon is the second book in the Ivory Carver Trilogy by Sue Harrison. It picks up several years after the first book and follows the same tribe that was formed with Chagak, although the book doesn't focus on her this time.This time it focuses on Kiin, who is only named part of the way into the book because she is so despised by her father. Instead of being left for dead as an infant, the leader of the tribe decided to betroth his son to her and thus force her father to let her live. Because she was not a son, he did everything in his power to make it rough for her. Add in a brother who is jealous and Kiin had a rough childhood. And it didn't stop there, shortly after marrying the leader's son, her brother kidnaps her and sells her, just when she's learned she's pregnant.Kiin is another strong woman, just like in the previous book. She has a lot of hardships thrown at her and the world is especially cruel to her, but she perseveres anyway. And she also has a lot of talent, which helps her try to rise in the world. Although she is still at the mercy of the men around her for the most part. Which is discouraging, but relevant to the time period. Again, the bad guys in this are bad with no redeeming qualities and while you can understand their motives, they still don't seem quite real because they are so bad.There were so many twists and turns in this book. Just when you think good is going to prevail something else happens to screw it up. The theme for this book was very heavily weighted towards power. Everyone wants power and control and don't really care if it hurts others in the process. Because of this the book is pretty dark with topics covering rape, incest and lots of violence. I would strongly suggest not reading it if any of these topics are too hard for you. But it is very real because of that. The world is not always a very nice place and this book illustrates that perfectly. And because this book ended on a cliff-hanger, I of course have to finish the trilogy and find out what happens. But I'm looking forward to it!My Sister the MoonCopyright 1992449 pagesReview by M. Reynard 2015More of my reviews can be found at www.ifithaswords.blogspot.com
—Melissa
En underhållande och lärorik bok.Boken handlar om Kiin som föddes ca. 7055f.kr. och fick uppleva grymhet hemmavid eftersom hon som förstfödd inte var pojke. En av stammens män, Kayugh, räddade henne som liten från att bli given till vinden genom att kräva henne som hustru till en av sina söner, vilket får oanade konsekvenser. Handlingen accelererar ännu mer när Kiins själviske bror bestämmer sig för att bli handelsman, och stjäl sin egen syster för att sälja till en annan stam. Boken är väldigt lärorik då författaren uppenbarligen har gjort omfattande forskningar för att skriva romanen, och eftersom det är en roman är den också underhållande. Boken är inte den första i serien, men man kan mer än väl läsa den separat. Värd att läsa.
—Josefin
My Sister the Moon is the second book in Sue Harrison's Ivory Carver Trilogy and I loved this book best of all 3 . Talk about a new tale and I couldn't put it down. Love and adore the entire trilogy by the way. Brother Wind 3rd book of the Ivory Carver Trilogy does close the story in a lovely way. I like Sue Harrison's writing style very much,I say she's a true storyteller of the best kind.I wish there were going to be more novels like this from her but she is moved into a different avenue of authorship. Best of Luck to her.
—Vivian Ann
