May 12 2018

The Rig by Roger Levy

It’s been quite a while since I’ve taken this long to read a book (four days, to be precise, which is a total humble brag given that I’ve read 72 books in the past 4 months and 11 days.) Granted, The Rig clocks in at over 600 pages and since I had it in paperback — the better to enjoy that gorgeous cover — it was harder to binge read in the dark as I do with ebooks on my Paperwhite before I go to sleep. But ooh, what an intelligent, layered 600+ pages! Imagine a far future where humanity has abandoned a dying Earth to colonize a system of planets far less conducive to human health and happiness. This is the setting for the interwoven tales of two men who met as boys on the fanatically religious planet of Gehenna, and a plucky writer sent to interview two other men, a cop and an engineer, on the appropriately named planet of Bleak. As we follow these narratives, pieces slowly shift and slide into place to present us with an overarching picture that is as breathtaking as that cover. Some of these pieces are more obvious than others (Pireve, the origin of the cancer) but many more are unexpected enough to make even the most seen-it-all readers stop and say “Oh.”

At its heart, The Rig is a novel about faith that, in my opinion, does a much better job of looking for the divine in the stars of the future than most of the overtly religious science fiction out there. I really, really loved the ending even as I wanted much, much more from the climactic scene on the titular Rig. A lot of that has to do with The Question, which I think is at once an elegant concept and one that needs more explaining than Roger Levy gives us in this novel. Granted, it is entirely likely that this was done on purpose, to provoke readers to form their own thoughts regarding the issue (and if I get a chance to interview the author, hopefully, we’ll find out more!) But don’t mistake The Rig for a pious novel. The social media system known as AfterLife, which gives its subscribers a shot at resurrection via the votes of other subscribers, is presented as a completely viable alternative to goddery, as the holdover religions from Earth are known. The Rig thoughtfully explores the need for and forms of faith through fiction that is part space opera, part noir novel (I’m still mad about Delta) without ever sermonizing. It raises terrific questions of power, technology and omniscience in an atmosphere as perpetually unstable as a rig floating on a turbulent sea.

I also loved Mr Levy’s way with linguistic evolution, with the aforementioned “goddery” as just one example. “Putery” was the one awkward extrapolation, I felt, but I really appreciated the use of words like “threedy” and “flycykcle” that perfectly captured the way technological advances come to be just another part of language. And, of course, I am a sucker for a good, intelligent pun, with which The Rig is perfectly peppered.

Recommended if you want thought-provoking scifi that acknowledges human frailty while celebrating our resilience. I do hope he writes more on The Question (or perhaps the subject is explored in his previous books and I should go read those!)

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/12/the-rig-by-roger-levy/

May 11 2018

A Hero Born by Jin Yong

“The Chinese Lord of the Rings.” Or, as translator Anna Holmwood puts it in her introduction, “one of the world’s best-loved stories and one of its grandest epics, a series that can count its fans in the hundreds of millions. And yet this is the first time it has been published in English, despite making its appearance in a Hong Kong newspaper over half a century ago. … Generations of young readers have stayed up past their bedtimes, following Guo Jing and his descendants in their fight to regain the glories of the past…” (p. ix) The promise and the peril of A Hero Born are all right there in the description.

Holmwood sets the scene, “We begin in the year 1205, as the Song Empire has been pushed southwards out of its capital by the Jurchen Jin Empire. Meanwhile, the great Mongol commander Temujin, who will later become known as Genghis Khan, is gathering power and men out on the steppes.” (p. viii) Last year, I read a specialist collection of scholarly essays that also covered this period and was enthusiastic about the stories implied by even the smallest historical details. “The nativist-irredentist movement that acquired momentum in the late 1120s was led by the monk Myoch’ong, who was able to gain influence over the young king Injong by virtue of his thaumaturgic reputation,” is from history, but is the kind of story that would fit perfectly into the world of A Hero Born, the first of a prospective twelve translated volumes in the Legends of the Condor Heroes.

Indeed, A Hero Born is full of wandering monks, martial arts warriors, hidden princes, cunning soldiers, mysterious travelers, corrupt officials, and much more. The story sweeps from China’s south to the Mongolian steppes and back to the northern capital, known today as Beijing. It follows the coming of age of Guo Jing, whose life is shaped by the circumstances of his father’s death and by an encounter among different schools of martial artists when he is still in his mother’s womb. It ought to be an amazing and wonderful story, and for many millions of people it clearly is. I wasn’t one of them.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the book was first serialized in 1959. Although it was revised in 1976 and 2003, the book still felt dated in a way that was neither charming nor historically interesting. Fantasy storytelling has developed in the decades since, leaving A Hero Born a bit stranded in the twenty-first century. It’s new to the English-speaking world, but it’s also of its time, as if the first episodes of Doctor Who were expecting to compete for audiences’ favor with Game of Thrones or the Marvel movies. Yes, I can see why people love it, but no, it’s not the equal of the best of what today has to offer.

Another part is that I want greater depth and sophistication from what I read, even when I am reading just for fun. The book is all plot, and plot of the one thing after another variety. Consequences sometimes arise from characters’ choices, but essentially never from the characters’ nature. One of the longest narrative threads arise from a bet taken between an antagonist and a group of martial artists. It’s a clever way of solving the conflict between the two, but it’s also a terribly contrived way to drive the story. The characters do things that, on the surface, involve a lot of action, but there isn’t any depth to them. They go here, they go there, and they fight a lot.

One aspect that Jin does not stint on is descriptions of the fights. They were sometimes fun to read, and it was interesting to see what kind of inventive names he gave to the kung fu moves, but I did not find that their contribution to the story warranted the amount of space Jin gave them. I would have preferred to find out more about the settings, or to have the characters more fully developed.

I’m glad that the Condor Heroes are available in English, and particularly that younger readers will have a chance to take these stories to heart and make them their own. I may peek in on later volumes to see if Jin took them in the directions that I would enjoy reading about, and I will definitely leave A Hero Born lying around to see whether the next generation in my household discovers this beloved set of stories.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/11/a-hero-born-by-jin-yong/

May 02 2018

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

The fairy tales that we’re familiar with have spent centuries being smoothed down by retelling after retelling, retaining their magic despite the years and multiple minor tweaks because, as stories, they make sense to us. Some might argue that those minor tweaks Disney-fy the process, but I believe that they whittle away the things that we, as human beings, find implausible or unacceptable. There is a reason that it is never the venal siblings who are rewarded, that wit and courage trump power and wealth, and that goodness and love triumph in the end. Fairy tales make sense to our innate moral compasses.

The proven longevity of these narratives inspire each new generation to spin their own versions in hopes theirs too will join the slipstream of folk consciousness. Unfortunately, Victor LaValle’s The Changeling likely will not succeed in this as, despite the trappings of myth and the (clever) allusions to modernity, it relies too goddamn much on the main characters doing things that are either under-explained or fly directly in the face of everything you know about the character till then. Emma’s transition from doting mother to homicidal maniac is completely glossed over, which is a really weird oversight in a book that enjoys having its main character, Emma’s husband, Apollo, have exhaustive conversations with just about everybody. And there’s a crucial decision in Little Norway (>when he takes Emma back to the house where he just killed the homeowner and left the front door standing wide open, what the fuck?!) which makes not a lick of sense for his character, given how justifiably paranoid he is about the negative attention of white people and cops. But Mr LaValle needed it to happen in order to further the plot, which is some cheap ass writing right there (also? Gratuitous sex scene. Hard pass.)

And, crucially, I didn’t like Apollo. Or rather, I didn’t see him as the “good man” that the book was trying to portray him as. He’s a conflicted individual trying to do the best he can, but he treated Emma poorly, right from the incident with the red bracelet, IMO. I’m definitely of the camp (that Mr LaValle is aware enough of in the book to mention) who would view what he did as a total dick move. And again, it’s only towards the end that you get the idea that Emma’s decline came gradually and not just out of nowhere. I really, really hated how awful they were to each other, and wonder, especially after reading Everything I Never Told You, if this is some sort of thing Americans since the 70s or so have been raised to believe, that it’s okay (even funny! Fuck you, crappy sitcoms) to be casually cruel to your spouse because true love or something dumb.

Anyway, I really enjoyed The Ballad Of Black Tom but The Changeling just didn’t work for me despite the fact that the modernization aspect of it was impressively good. I neither believed in nor cared about that characters. And wtf was up with Apollo’s parents? There’s the bones of a good story there but Mr LaValle did an awful job of telling it. Literally, it was all tell from Lillian, not show. And, as a woman, I didn’t care for the overarching portrayal of women finding their own feminine mystical powers only after deep betrayal turns them into monsters (tho I guess this is progress after TBoBT erases Ms Suydam from the narrative altogether.) Still, I’ll look out for his next novel because there’s promise here, and I want Mr LaValle to succeed. He writes about modern fatherhood really well, and I absolutely support his mission to explore the African-American experience via fantasy and horror writing. I just want him to write better.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/02/the-changeling-by-victor-lavalle/

May 01 2018

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

Of the later Discworld books, I like the ones about Tiffany Aching best because their stories arise from the characters and the natural interactions that flow from their natures as Pratchett has described them. Naturally there is the overarching theme of Tiffany growing up — and in Wintersmith her precociousness is easier for me to accept in an almost thirteen-year-old than it was in the much younger Tiffany of The Wee Free Men — and there is also a plot device to get the story rolling, but mostly Wintersmith is about he characters being who they are and becoming who they ought to be. Even the antagonist means well.

Tiffany has gone from her home area, the Chalk, up to the Lancre mountains to learn from the region’s witches by living with them and observing what they do, how they perform the role, how they relate to one another. A younger witch stays with an older one for a period, learning what she can, before moving on. Eventually, an older witch will pass away, opening up a cottage for one of the younger ones to take on and settle down more or less permanently. The witches perform medical and magical services for the people they live among, dispensing assistance and sometimes justice. The communities respect the witches and provide for them; the witches also visit one another quite a bit.

In those times when people hated witches, they were often accused of talking to their cats. Of course they talked to their cats. After three weeks without an intelligent conversation that wasn’t about cows, you’d talk to the wall. And that was an early sign of cackling.
“Cackling,” to a witch, didn’t just mean nasty laughter. It meant your mind drifting away from its anchor. It meant you losing your grip. It meant loneliness and hard work and responsibility and other people’s problems driving you crazy a little bit at a time until you thought it was normal to stop washing and wear a kettle on your head. It meant you thinking that the fact you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. It meant thinking that right and wrong were negotiable. And, in the end, it meant you “going to the dark,” as the witches said. That was a bad road. At the end of that road were poisoned spinning-wheels and gingerbread cottages. (p. 20)

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/01/wintersmith-by-terry-pratchett/

Apr 30 2018

Snow by Night Volume 2: Dissolution by Eric Menge & Brittany Michel

Devoured this in one sitting. I’m a huge fan (and personal friend) of Eric Menge’s and I strongly believe that Dissolution builds on the terrific first volume to really immerse us in the fantasy world of Corthis. This book contains chapters 5 to 8 of the excellent webcomic, as well as five vignettes that give us more background and insight into our cast of characters. I especially enjoyed the art of S. Y. Lee in the Losing By Winning vignette, but I am a sucker for garden parties and pretty dresses. There’s also a wonderful sketchbook section with commentary, as well as maps, hilarious parody panels and a list of Kickstarter backers included.

In Dissolution, Snow-by-Night grows weary of her alliance with Blaise and Jassart, our gentleman thieves in the colonial frontier town of Sherbourg (based loosely on colonial Quebec City.) Jassart, however, has grown feelings for the manitou, to the alarm of Blaise and his belle, Mathilde. While Mathilde is willing to help Jassart continue on his quest to help Snow-by-Night find her heart, Blaise has other plans that may wreck their thieving crew for good.

It was fascinating to see how the light-hearted hijinks of the first book took a decidedly darker turn here, as Blaise began to show more of his true colors (how Mathilde puts up with him, I don’t know.) And while I loved reading more of our human cast, especially the badass Vivienne, the best scenes belonged to the supernatural elements of our story. I really, really want to read more but my antipathy to reading comics electronically (as detailed in my review of the first volume here) makes it so I’ll just have to wait impatiently for the physical publication of Volume III. Is there a Kickstarter where I can help make this happen faster? If I can persuade Eric to do an interview here, perhaps we’ll find out together!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/30/snow-by-night-volume-2-dissolution-by-eric-menge-brittany-michel/

Apr 30 2018

Snow by Night Volume 1: Calcination by Eric Menge & Brittany Michel

Several things to admit: first, I’m friends with the creators of this excellent webcomic. Despite this friendship, and my knowledge that Eric Menge is a brilliant writer, I’m absolutely wretched at keeping up with webcomics as they publish, even his. I get sidetracked and forget to check in, and while I’m not one of those “real book” elitists, there’s just something missing to me when I read a comic electronically instead of in physical format. Maybe it has to do with how I feel there aren’t any really good electronic readers for comics, the kind that let you breeze through a story yet adjust your viewing so you can drill down into the art without straining your eyesight or fiddling with unwieldy controls. So when Eric gave me the first two books in his series, I was absolutely delighted to be able to catch up with his rich fantasy world of Corthis.

Set primarily in a land based on French Canada, the first volume of Snow By Night follows the exploits of a pair of master thieves (or rooks, in this world’s parlance) who are bewildered by a thief who keeps beating them to their spoils. Worse, said thief is robbing those who pay Jassart and Blaise for the privilege of protection. Our dynamic duo sets a trap for this thief, and are stunned to discover that she’s really a manitou named Snow By Night, who has come to the mortal world in search of her heart.

This volume contains the first four chapters of the story (roughly akin to comic book issues) along with five shorter vignettes that serve to illuminate the background of the setting and the minor characters. It also includes some terrific maps, as well as sketches of the characters, complete with commentary on their designs, and bonus artwork. I really enjoyed the amount of thought Brittany Michel put into her art, as well as the behind the scenes look into what goes into creating this comic.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the main draw of Snow By Night for me is Eric’s excellent writing. It takes skill to write a story of rogues and magic that is at once humorous and suspenseful, and on top of this (or perhaps below, as its foundation,) Eric has created a wholly original setting, with its own mythologies and linguistics that are that much more striking for being based off of our own. The website provides further insight via its Almanac section, but is it terrible that I’m holding out till more physical volumes are published? Review of Vol II coming very soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/30/snow-by-night-volume-1-calcination-by-eric-menge-brittany-michel/

Apr 28 2018

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

What an incredibly annoying book.

Imagine, if you will, a family where the parents ignore two of their children but place all their hopes and dreams and crushing projections on the one daughter who winds up dead soon after her sixteenth birthday, after which the parents learn to become better parents, and maybe better partners to each other? Lydia Lee essentially gets refrigerated so her parents can become better people. It’s hella stupid. Honestly, a lot of the things the members of the Lee family do in this book are hella stupid, but it’s forgivable in the children: they’re kids, after all. Their feelings are harder to control and they make stupid assumptions about the world and each other. And I get that lots of adults never really grow beyond this adolescent stage of poor decision-making but damn, for this book to need the death of a beloved daughter to be the catalyst for that growth feels icky. Everything I Never Told You doesn’t read like the portrait of a family struggling to heal, it’s honestly more of a grotesque exercise in “take away the thing the parents love and maybe they’ll learn from it” only the thing is a girl. Gross.

Oh, and the thing Celeste Ng wants James and Marilyn Lee to learn? Is how to talk to each other. Honest to God, I don’t understand how an interracial couple that deals with the bullshit they do just navigating 1970s America does not already know how to talk to each other. Like when Marilyn wants to get a job in order to use her intellect but James thinks she’s only doing it out of concern for their finances, so he tells her not to because he’ll make tenure (he’s a college professor) soon and she’s all “okay” but then quietly seethes. Bitch, tell him it’s not about the money! Tell him you’re bored out of your mind! There is zero reason for them not to have a discussion about this! And I’m supposed to believe that these two love each other deeply when they never talk about their problems. Fucking ridiculous. It also freaks me out that Ms Ng claims she grew more sympathetic to the parents as she wrote this book, not less, as she became a parent herself. As the Asian parent of interracial children, I find this appalling. James and Marilyn are self-absorbed assholes. I’m just happy that Nath at least will perhaps literally escape their orbit.

Anyway, the prose is quite readable even if the plot veers between unbelievable and insultingly ludicrous. It’s very much MFA writing, as someone more clever than I pointed out. Technically proficient but kinda like if Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones somehow managed to have a half-Asian baby. Some people will like that kind of thing, I guess. I did not, tho at least Ms Ng is a better writer than Mr Franzen and Ms Sebold, particularly when it came to describing the children’s interior lives.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/28/everything-i-never-told-you-by-celeste-ng/

Apr 25 2018

Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands #1) by Alwyn Hamilton

This book has such amazing world-building that I absolutely went and put a hold on the next book in the series as soon as I was done with this one. I mean, Western gunslingers meets Arabian Nights? Sign me up! The land of Miraji is a stand-in for the Middle East in this terrific alternate world that, astoundingly, also features heroic characters from the Far Eastern stand-in of Xicha and villainous colonizers from Gallan, clearly modeled after the French (with really cool callbacks to the other major powers of our earth.) There’s also a heroic genderfluid character, so there is a lot of excellent representation in addition to our heroine, a gunslinging Miraji girl who just wants to escape her small town of Dustwalk and decide her own fate, and who winds up participating in an exiled prince’s rebellion.

The only problem is that the storytelling is kind of not great. I mean, it’s not terrible, it just needs a lot of work on pacing and paying attention to detail and not making absurd leaps of logic. It’s serviceable, and with such a great setting the lapses are easy to forgive, but I spent way too much of the book going “but wait” either because something felt too rushed or contradicted something from pages earlier (or just made no damn sense at all.) I’m hoping Alwyn Hamilton’s skills improve for the second book, tho in all honesty, my fears are not assuaged by the tagline “Forget everything you thought you knew…” Given how I often felt I had to conveniently forget things just to enjoy this novel, the fact that that’s a direct command for the next book bodes ill.

The good news, tho, is that storytelling is a skill that grows stronger with practice, so I’m optimistic that Ms Hamilton will come through. Her world-building on its own is really terrific and inclusive, and those are much harder traits to learn.

Want it now? For the Kindle version, click here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/25/rebel-of-the-sands-rebel-of-the-sands-1-by-alwyn-hamilton/

Apr 25 2018

A Sorcerer and a Gentleman by Elizabeth Willey

A Sorcerer and a Gentleman. One character who is both? Or two characters and one of each? Elizabeth Willey’s second novel, set in the same multiverse as The Well-Favored Man, offers numerous candidates for each appellation. She starts her story with an unknown person and the “proverb, often quoted but seldom applied, that all a gentleman needs to travel is a good cloak, a good horse, and a good sword.” In her second paragraph, she spells out what is more commonly applied, by detailing what a gentleman with just those three things lacks: “This man has no baggage but the saddlebags on his horse; he is alone, without a single servant to attend him; moreover, he is on horseback rather than in a carriage with the fine horse ridden by his lackey; and furthermore, he is plainly galloping … and his hair is blown about and his clothing disordered by the exercise. Lastly and most tellingly, it is night-time … long after sundown, a time when any true gentleman would long since have been snugly established in his chosen inn for the night with a good dinner and a bottle of wine.” (p. 9)

Having informed her readers that she will be playing with expectations about gentlemen, Willey then switches to a sorcerer, Prospero. Like the other Prospero, he is in exile, denied his rightful throne by a usurping brother. He, too, commands magical servants called Ariel and Caliban. He speaks less often in iambic pentameter than he did in The Well-Favored Man, but he does often enough for his mode of speech to be distinctive among this book’s characters. Unlike the other Prospero, this one has a daughter named Freia. She has accompanied him in exile to Argylle, a land he has either discovered or created, or perhaps a bit of both, with assistance from the magic of the Spring, which has given him command over the element of water. Prospero’s original home, Landuc, is in the realm of the Well of Fire. Other events not seen in the book have given him power over earth via the Stone in Phesaotois; he is also named Duke of Winds, though Willey does not say how he came by this title.

Willey next introduces Prince Josquin, and by way of accessories to him, the Emperor and Empress. Josquin is by definition a gentleman, but his first scene finds him recovering from prostration, and not from the usual pursuit of too much wine, but rather because another gentleman has played him false and caused him to fall into deep sleep for several days. Was the false player the person seen at the very beginning, fleeing with horse, cloak and sword? Circumstances suggest he was; they further suggest that he worked at least a minor sorcery on Josquin, quite apart from whatever charms caused the two of them to retire alone to the prince’s chambers.

The title can be weighed against each of the male characters as he is introduced, and kept in mind as events draw reactions from the people Willey depicts on the page. Who is a sorcerer? Who is a gentleman? Does the one preclude the other? Are these characters as they seem? Thinking back, I also wonder what questions Willey would pose for her female characters. They are equally vivid — Freia at once fierce and vulnerable, Luneté the Countess of Lys an enthusiastic young bride and mistress of her own realm, the sorceress Odile Prospero’s peer, and several others. Though Willey has chosen to tell a story mostly about the men of the worlds she creates, neither readers nor male characters should underestimate the women.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/25/a-sorcerer-and-a-gentleman-by-elizabeth-willey/

Apr 23 2018

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair

The Secret Lives of Color fairly leaped off the display table at me. Once I had it in my hands, I had to own it. The book itself is an argument for books as tangible objects, thanks to the efforts of designer James Edgar and the production team at Penguin who all made it such a pleasure to pick up, leaf through, and read.

The main texts of the book tell the stories of 75 different colors, and St. Clair’s efforts to “take a different shade and pull it apart tat the seams to discover its hidden mysteries. When was it fashionable? How and when was it made? Is it associated with a particular artist or designer or brand? What is its history?” (p. 10) Naples yellow, orpiment, Mountbatten pink, cochineal, Tyrian purple, ultramarine, celadon — who could resist even the names? Each story’s page has generous margins of the appropriate color, so that looking at the book’s side or flipping through it is like zipping through the spectrum.

And what stories! I can’t count how many times I read a description of the process of making a pigment and wondered how on earth people discovered the process. The purple that the Caesars wore was made from two Mediterranean shellfish. To get the color, the Romans cracked open the shellfish, squeezed a gland that crossed the body and captured “a single drop of clear liquid, smelling of garlic … Within moments, the sunlight would turn the liquid first pale yellow, then sea green, then blue, and finally a dark purple-red.” (p. 162) The best color, however, came from mixing the fluids from both kinds of shellfish. How did people come up with the idea of squeezing snails for colors? Not only that, but the next part of the process was to place the liquid in a vat of stale urine for 10 days before adding the cloth. Who thinks, “Well, I’ll just put some cloth into week-old pee and see what happens”? Who even makes these connections? In the case of Tyrian purple, it’s even trickier: “Since each specimen contained a single drop [of the crucial liquid], it took around 250,000 to make an ounce of dye.” (p. 163) Somewhere along the way, people discovered that cracking open a quarter million snails, squeezing one of their organs, and then taking the resulting liquid and mixing it with stale urine for a week or more was a great way to make a color. I’m torn as to whether this is testimony to humanity’s infinite ingenuity or proof of the absurdity of the universe.

Gamboge, a yellow that St. Clair describes as “so bright and luminous it almost seemed fluorescent,” (p. 80) is made from the sap of a particular tree in Cambodia. A particular tree that is at least ten years old, whose sap has been collected and left to harden for more than a year. Coloration is not its only attribute. In 1836, gamboge was described as “an excellent and powerful purgative.” St. Clair continues, “Just a small amount could produce ‘profuse watery discharges’; larger doses could be fatal. Workers who crushed gamboge at Winsor & Newton would have to rush to the toilet once an hour while working with it.” (p. 81)

Mummy, a rich brown, was made of just that. “There was some debate as to which bits of the mummy to use to get the best and richest browns—recommended for transluscent glazing layers for shadows and skin tones.” (pp. 254–55) Toward the end of the nineteenth century, though, artists came to dislike some of the color’s traits (permanency and finish, writes St. Clair), and were unhappy about its origin. She notes that a London art shop that had opened in 1810 ran out of mummy in the 1960s.

The other great change in the nineteenth century was the coming of applied chemistry to the science and industry of pigments. For centuries, ultramarine had been made from ground up lapis lazuli. In Europe, the main source was a single mine in the mountains of Afghanistan. As a result, it was enormously expensive. In the late 1820s, however, a French chemist discovered a way to synthesize ultramarine. In 1856, a London teenager discovered a way to make a purple dye, which he named mauve after the French for mallow plant, from coal tar. That substance yielded a large family of manufactured colors, beginning with magenta in 1858 and continuing with a yellow, two violets, green, several blues and a black in the next few years.

Contemporary searches for new pigments are more systematic, but there is still a large element of chance and surprise, as this story of new colors attests.

The stories of pigments are full of unexpected wonders, and The Secret Lives of Colors shares them in all their delightful vividness.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/23/the-secret-lives-of-color-by-kassia-st-clair/