The Warrior Who Carried Life (1986) - Plot & Excerpts
In his “History of Science Fiction”, Adam Roberts came up with a nifty way of dividing hard science fiction (SF) from soft SF or fantasy, saying that fantasy and soft SF followed in the footsteps of Dante and others who've a more catholic, a more religious or spiritual bent to their writing. Think of Tolkien, of Lewis. Or in the world of SF, the messianic stories of Dune. Roberts places the rise of SF in the 1600s and onwards as part of the conflict between Protestantism and Catholocism and well, science, of course. Cyrano de Bergerac’s “Voyage to the Moon” (ca. 1650) for example, has lots of science in it (talk of germs and flying machines), but it also posits the moon as the Garden of Eden from which God expelled us curious humans to Earth. Such heresy would not have been tolerated a hundred years or so earlier, but by Bergerac’s time, such merging of religious and scientific speculation didn’t quite set the stakes a-burning. Wait isn't this review about Geoff Ryman and “The Warrior Who Carried Life”? And isn’t it a fantasy book and not science fiction? Yes and yes. Trust me, though. The thing about “The Warrior Who Carried Life” is that it's very much in the spiritual/theological part of the speculative spectrum (ooh, alliteration). Ryman's story follows in the footsteps of those SF and fantasy tales like Dante’s “Divine Comedy” or Bergerac’s “Voyage to the Moon”, in which the stories of Christianity are reinterpreted or reinvented through some novel POV. In Ryman’s case, that POV is the sword and sorcery sort of fantasy that became dominant after Tolkien resurrected the genre in the 50s. And yet, the book’s not quite like anything I’ve ever read before. You’ve got your mystical bad guys who can’t be killed and your suspiciously secretive sect of magical women, sure, and you’ve got your young village girl Cal Cara Kerig who witnesses her mother’s death and the ruination of her family before setting out on a revenge fueled journey that will introduce her to the wider world (it’s a good thing we don’t all require the maiming/death of our parents or aunts and uncles to get us out of the house). Heck, you’ve even got the kind of lazy city naming that marks so many fable-tastic fantasies (the Village by Long Water, the City of Better Times). But the brutality and beauty of Ryman’s writing (torture, deformity, everlasting gobstopper mystical flowers…what have you), along with the narrative twists he squeezes Cal into (which I won’t ruin by revealing here), peels away the stereotypical surface of the story and gets at something new, even as it reaches those timeless truths that are older than the oldest stories. “This is a universe that has been ruined by it’s maker,” one of the undying bad guys says at one point. And I supposed you could make the argument that Ryman’s attempt to mix the archetypes of fantasy with the lore of Christianity, might ruin both universes—the fantastic infested with the religion of our reality, and the religion of Christianity reduced to “mere” myth. But even the bad guy rethinks his original thought, saying, “Still, anything that was perfect would not change. It would not be alive.” Christianity, like all religions, is at heart, just a set of stories, a collection of “mere” myths. Why should it or Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism ever be considered perfect? As soon as we imagine we’ve got it all figured out, we stop changing and we die a little bit inside. It’s only in tinkering and experimenting and reinventing the old myths that we can keep them and ourselves really and truly alive.
“Cara’s mother had always said something very strange about dust: that it was the remains of the dead, and should be respected. “The air is full of other people,” she had told Cara. The dust in the sunlight looked like stars.”The Warrior Who Carried Life is Geoff Ryman’s first novel, which has been reprinted by the Canadian Press Chizine. It’s a darkly mythic novel that combines the Epic of Gilgamesh with dashes of Celtic and Indian mythology. A young woman whose family has been dishonored by invaders under takes a vengeance-based quest to oust the evil from her land. To do so, she magically transforms herself into a male warrior who is nearly invincible. Along the way, she discovers the true nature of the invaders and her quest eventually leads her to the land of death. The novel is drenched in magic, not unlike Tanith Lee’s Tales From the Flat Earth series—there are fabulous beasts, wise women, immortality, and miracles. TWWCL engages and subverts mythic tropes left and right, recalling Delany’s classic novel The Einstein Intersection. Despite the magical overlay, this is a brutal story, full of shocking violence.Many of the tropes and themes that ballast Ryman’s oeuvre are here. The violence and war of the imaginary land shares a tenuous connection with other Ryman works that chronicle and examine the horrors faced by Kampuchea (Cambodia)—e.g., The Unconquered Country & The King’s Last Song. It is also a deeply feminist and genderqueer novel, with a transcendent lesbian love story at its spiritual center.
What do You think about The Warrior Who Carried Life (1986)?
A curious, sad retelling of the Adam and Eve story, from a very feminist point of view. I think. The story moves so fast, through so many different terrains and myth structures and beats that at times it felt more like Gilgamesh, at times Beowulf, and at times Biblical. The Gula are (is?) a truly gruesome creation, the stuff of nightmares, and their end is apposite. Which is a way of saying that this book is not for the faint of heart. Compelling, but not a simple or easy ride. Definitely adult SF. Read it if a) you're bored with the creation myths in the Bible; b) you wonder what a feminist re-telling of a variety of origin stories might look like; or c) you want eco-revenge on anyone who tries to sully a planet with pollution.
—Nick
Mutilated and brutalized by a bizarre warrior sect with a dark secret, a young woman transforms herself into a man and seeks revenge. She travels to the Land of the Dead in search of the only weapon that will defeat them, only to learn that she is destined to play a pivotal role in the relationship between God, evil, and man.This extraordinary novel deserves to be reprinted. Geoff Ryman creates an extraordinary world that exists in a kind of proto-Christian alternate universe where an evil snake tries to seduce mankind with the Tree of Life. Ryman is a wonderful stylist and his novel includes passages of thrilling action as well as touching sentiment and chilling horror. Many years ago, I bought a bag of Fantasy & SF back issues at a thrift store. One of them contained Harlan Ellison's favorable review of this novel. Several years after that, I spotted it in a used book store and purchased it. Now, I've finally read it. I came to the book through a long and tortuous path, but it was certainly worth the wait. Thanks, Harlan!
—David Bonesteel
