TITLE: Desdemona and the Deep
AUTHOR: C.S.E. Cooney
221 pages, Tor.com Publishing, ISBN 9781250229830 (softcover)
DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): In Desdemona and the Deep, the spoiled daughter of a rich mining family must retrieve the tithe of men her father promised to the world below. On the surface, her world is rife with industrial pollution that ruins the health of poor factory workers while the idle rich indulge themselves in unheard-of luxury. Below are goblins, mysterious kingdoms, and an entirely different hierarchy. A goblin market narrative that’s also a steep drop into an uncanny, richly painted underworld, C.S.E. Cooney combines 1920s luxury with deeply felt questions of identity and justice that strike at the heart of who we are, human or otherwise.
MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS: In Desdemona and the Deep, C.S.E. Cooney drops the reader into a multi-layered new fantasy world that I hope to see a lot more of. While it tells a complete and compelling story, the novella only scratches the surfaces of each of this world’s layers, with hints of how each has affected the others over their existence.
Cooney gives us “the World,” “the World Beneath,” and “the World Beneath the World Beneath.” The World, known to its human inhabitants as “Athe,” looks and feels very much like our own Earth just before the Great Depression with aspects of where we are in modern times (especially in terms of environmental and human health damage due to uncontrolled industry). The rich get richer off of the toil of the working poor while the natural world is collapsing around them. The “World Beneath” is the Valwode, home of the Gentry (what we might call the Fae), who are concerned about the upheaval of the Valwode’s natural order after the abdication of Queen Nyx. The “World Beneath the World Beneath” is Bana, the home of the kobold-kin (goblins) lead by king Kalos Kantzaros; Bana is a world at odds for different reasons with the worlds “above” it. Humans, Gentry and Kobold can move from realm to realm if they can find the way. But it’s never easy, and always comes with a price. The humans of Athe mostly consider the other two realms to be mythical, but the denizens of the other two realms are all too aware of how actions on Athe affect their own Valwode and Bana.
There is a wonderful lyricality and playfulness to the character names: the alliterativeness of Kalos Kantzaros; the on-the-nose name Mannering for the rich family whose child Desdemona is at the center of the actions; the sensual appropriateness of Gentry names like Nyx the Nighcrawler and Sussura the Nighthag; the regality of a name like Albus Idris and the sheer fun tongue-twister that is The Umber Farkelwhit. Cooney has, across all of her work, a knack for character and place names that conjure immediate and strong images or connections. (The Umber Farkelwhit not only puts me in mind of a Shakespearean court Fool, ala Lear, but also of the character Belaga from the musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 for example.)
One of the things rich-child-turned-activist Desdemona discovers in her travels through the realms is that the richest class is almost always the most clueless and often the most careless. Whether it is the intentional cluelessness of the rich on Athe regarding the human and environmental costs of the industries making them rich, the by-their-very-nature cluelessness of the Gentry regarding how their own attempts to overthrow their previous ruler have doomed them, or the not-quite cluelessness of Kalos Kantzaros regarding the possible misuse of the bargain he struck long ago with members of the Mannering family of Athe, Desdemona sees over and over again the impact of not being aware of the world around you or of your own role in it. The rich of Athe could do more for the poor; the Gentry could do more to recognize their own faults; Kantzaros could temper his search for his missing daughter to find a way out of the contract. But they are all so caught up in their own sense of entitlement that it takes an outsider to set them on redemptive paths. In two cases, that outsider is Desdemona, although it's a different character who sets Desdemona on her own path of redemption.
Early on, Kalos Kantzaros asks Desdemona whose child she is, her father’s or her mother’s, and Desdemona spends the entire book trying to answer that question. We are witness to Desdemona’s incremental transition from spoiled rich child to defender of the weak, and also to the self-discovery journeys of several other characters, notably Desdemona’s closest friend Chaz, Desdemona’s mother Tracy, and the rulers of the other worlds: Albus Idris and Kalos Kantzaros. Each have their own blind spots regarding their better natures or the effect they have on the world around them. All discover that being a part of community is more significant than they previously recognized.
Desdemona’s story may or may not be concluded, but there is so much to explore in these worlds. I’m looking forward to many more visits to Athe, the Valwode, and Bana.