Tanya Huff has published many novels across the broad spectrum of Speculative Fiction: Urban Fantasy, Vampire Novels, Secondary world fantasy, and Military Science Fiction. Many of those novels are part of a larger series. With The Silvered, Huff gives readers that rarest of beasts in Fantasy – a stand-alone novel. In other words, for readers like myself, a great entry point to sample her writing and storytelling. Speaking of beasts, The Silvered concerns itself very much with werewolves or beasts as the mad Emperor refers to them with great derision.

The novel concerns two nations amidst war and conflict based, in part, on conflicting ideologies: the small land of Aydori and the Kresentian Empire. The empire has a science based understanding of the world whereas the Aydori relies on magic and werewolves. Our protagonist, Mirian Maylin is a first year student at the University who isn’t keen on returning. Her mother pushes her to primp herself and make herself presentable in society as a potential mate for the Pack, the werewolves who protect Aydori along with mages. The Aydori balance the power in this fashion; the women are the mages whilst the men are the werewolves and together they comprise the Mage-Pack. While her family is fleeing the invasion from the Empire, Mirian learns of the Emperor’s kidnapping of females of the mage-pack whose pregnancy ties them to a prophecy the emperor has received from his soothsayers about the future of his empire. During her pursuit of the kidnapped women, Mirian finds herself abducted after a harrowing chase on the waterways. Luckily, Mirian flees her captors and partners with Tomas, the last male heir of the werewolf pack. Tomas and Mirian combine their forces in the hopes of rescuing the women, one of whom is the widow of Tomas’s brother who was killed during the attack that allowed the lady werewolves to be kidnapped. Huff made their respective character arcs a rewarding experience, especially as Mirian begins overly headstrong and grows into the women she didn’t realize she was born to become.

Huff also focuses a good portion of the narrative on Captain Reiter, one of the Emperor’s military officials responsible for the kidnapping. Through him, we can see what is like to be part of a military beholden to a leader with little grip on sanity. Reiter struggles with his orders as he sees the women being demoralized and continues to question the Emperor’s orders, at least in his own mind. Another point-of-view is from Danika, the alpha of the women mages as she tries to keep her pack-mates from going crazy as prisoners. Their magic is blocked by ‘artifacts,’ but through it all, an admirable strength of character can be seen in these women.

There’s a lot to like in this novel; strong, well-realized characters, believable conflict, but most of all for me it was Huff’s incredible world-building. The world is similar to our own during the 19th Century, except magic is real and conflicts with science in many ways. Science and magic don’t often coexist in Fantasy novels, but here they both work together and are in conflict with each other. The Emperor uses his soothsayers (magic) to determine how to acquire the werewolves so he can use science to experiment on them. There’s a strong steampunk feel to the Empire, an aesthetic which is often a blend of science and magic. Huff has crafted such a logical and well-rounded pack dynamic for her werewolves that it seems the only way it could have existed.

In many ways, I found The Silvered quite resonant with Kate Elliott’s Cold Magic; there’s a similar feel to the two worlds, especially the interweaving of science and magic in the world. I also found the protagonist of Cold Magic – Cat – to have much in common with Huff’s Mirian. Both are headstrong and seek to do the right thing and find themselves at odds at the constraints their station in life have placed on them.

While this is a stand-alone, I’m looking forward to reading more work from Tanya Huff.

The book was brought to my attention by the SF Signal column, Recommended Reading by Professionals with Joshua Bilmes. As such, I purchased the copy I reviewed.

© 2014 Rob H. Bedford

http://andpuff.livejournal.com/

DAW – 496 Pages – November 2013

978-0-756-40806-0, Mass Market Paperback

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