s we shall eventually learn, the cosmos according to Liz Williams in her third novel is a strange place that defies our conception of modern physics and cosmology. Several planets scattered across the galaxy correspond to various numinous spheres of the Cabalistic system, as long studied by various mystics on Earth. Linked by supernatural faster-than-light portals, these worlds—Earth (or Malkuth), Nethes, Latent Emanation and Hathes—are home to various human and non-human races. Currently, intercourse among these spheres is regulated and proscribed by the Lords of Night: "nine feet high ... armored head[s] ... formed from a mass of shadows: planes of ebony, indigo and storm-cloud gray ... " These eerie, eccentric, cruel masters are particularly dominant on Latent Emanation, the home planet of our heroine, Alivet Dee.
Alivet is an apothecary or alchemist. Schooled in the mystical uses of natural herbs and minerals, she is still an apprentice when our tale opens, making a modest living by catering to the whims of spoiled rich citizens. But when she administers a "fume" that results in the death of a slumming heiress, she is forced to run from the Unpriests, those transfigured Nazgul-like humans who do the bidding of the Night Lords. Barely escaping with her life, she is offered help and refuge by a mysterious figure, Arieth Mahedi Ghairen, who proves to be a visitor from Hathes, the Poison Master of the title. Ari explains to Alivet that he and his guild are plotting the overthrow of the Lords, and need her help to concoct a poison suitable for the odd nature of the Lords. He brings Alivet back to Hathes—a world much different from her native one—and sets her up with her own well-equipped lab. But Alivet is a virtual prisoner, with Ari's true motives obscure. A household tutor, Iraguila Ust, befriends Alivet and informs the girl that Ari has secretly poisoned her to insure her obedience and ultimate death. Alivet throws her lot in with Ust, and together they seek to undo Ari's treachery and undermine his schemes.
But Alivet quickly becomes a double victim, as Ust's story proves a trap. Tricked into captivity on the planet Nethes by a superior being called Gulzhur Elaniel, Alivet seems doomed to a strange servitude. But by summoning up unsuspected inner powers, Alivet is able to escape. Realizing that Ari, despite his fearsome demeanor and close-mouthedness, is her only hope for personal and global salvation, Alivet embarks with him on an assault on the Night Palace where all of Latent Emanation's sadistic rulers are gathered for an annual feast—a feast of doom.
From Elizabethean England to the stars
Hybrid forms are often the most vigorous and interesting, whether in art or as living creatures. The mixed medium known as "science-fantasy" is a case in point. As practiced by such experts as Leigh Brackett, Michael Moorcock and Jack Vance, this melange of spaceships and swords, of quantum physics and weird rituals often affords the best of both parent genres, mixing the rigorous game-playing of SF with the freeform ideation of fantasy. Apparently, Liz Williams understands the potent attractions of such a blend, since she has marvelously delivered just such a hybrid creature, strange as a hippogriff.
Like Majipoor, Robert Silverberg's famed science-fantasy world, Williams' Latent Emanation and its sister worlds are bold, exotic backdrops against which colorful characters can undergo thrilling adventures with a philosophical subtext. By employing alchemy as her ordering intellectual system, Williams manages to invest her creation with a resonant history that extends back centuries. (A parallel track to Alivet's life concerns her ancestor, the infamous Elizabethean magician John Dee, and his discovery of the very world Alivet will inhabit long after Dee's death.) Treating magic as a science insures that sufficient logical strictures bind the plot into shapely form. Additionally, the alien races such as the anubes and shiffreys function both as extraterrestials and as creatures of legend.
Williams adds a sometimes kinky Gothic layer to her tale, with various fetishistic costumings, bindings and tentative seductions insuring that Alivet does not come off as just another young-adult-lit innocent. The other major character, Ari, possesses his own depths as well. And if Williams' coinages and imaginary cultures never quite hit the peaks of exoticism attained by Vance, or by Paul Park in his Starbridge Chronicles—well, Williams is still young, and this is only her third book. Giver her time, and she will no doubt reach these same pinnacles embodied by her literary ancestors. After all, her fourth book, Nine Layers of Sky—like the previous three, a one-of-a-kind non-sequel—is already slated to appear later this year.
