Skin-Singer: Tales of the Kaltaoven by Heather Rose Jones
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F, queernorm world
PoV: First-person, past-tense
ISBN: 1942794061
Goodreads
Laaki and Ashóli are skin-singers--byal-dónen--who can craft cloaks of fur and feathers to let their people wear the shapes of beasts. These are the stories of how they traveled through an often-hostile world and came at last to find a home where their people could gather, then thrive in safety. The tales of these people--the Kaltaoven--originally appeared in the Sword and Sorceress anthology series. Now for the first time they are collected together, finished off with a brand new novelette.
Highlights
~shapeshifting via song
~demanding different choices
~sometimes self-interested people are very helpful
~squirrel shapeshifters make excellent wood-carvers
~‘I will give you wings.’
Heather Rose Jones is the author of the very sapphic Regency fantasy Alpennia, which I love very much and recommend. So when I heard she was publishing a new collection – of queer shapeshifter stories! – OBVIOUSLY I POUNCED!
I have no idea how I was unaware of the Kaltaoven stories, but unsurprisingly I love them! The Kaltaoven are a secretive, oft-persecuted people who use enchanted animal skins and songs to transform into birds and animals. The skins – which are usually in cloak-form – are not something just any Kaltaoven can create; only someone with the inmate gifts and (crucially!) the training of a skin-singer can make new ones. Skin-singers can also pick up and use any skin, whereas other Kaltaoven can only use a skin whose song they know. Each skin’s song is unique, and I do mean each individual skin – two raven-skins will each have their own song, rather than all raven-skins sharing the same one.
Most of the Kaltaoven stories were written and first published decades ago, but a) since I never read the originals these were all new to me, b) Jones has edited here and there to help with continuity, and c) the final and longest story is new to this book. They form a very clear arc; we first meet Laaki, a skin-singer without a clan, in very dramatic circumstances, and through her we are introduced to Ashóli, who is the narrator and protagonist of all but the first two stories, and who is pivotal in the Kaltaoven people finding a new place in the world. The final story ties off the knot of the tale in an immensely satisfying way – and even if some might find the shape of the happy ending a little cliche, the story itself is wonderful enough that I doubt anyone will mind (and besides, it’s very in-character for a certain character to want this kind of ‘white picket fence’). Myself, I cheered at the final lines!
Besides the superficially simple but extremely excellent worldbuilding (the Kaltaoven culture was so interesting!) what I loved about this series was how completely it went against genre expectations – and in the process, was very gently anti-grimdark. Kaltaoven are often persecuted – Laaki is running for her life when we first meet her – and in most books a happy ending would probably involve them building a new home in some place without non-Kaltaoven people, or stumbling across a realm that was already a haven for shapeshifters. Jones takes neither approach, and while she never claims people are perfect – the non-Kaltaoven who open their arms to the shapeshifters are absolutely doing so for their own interest – there’s nonetheless a quietly powerful messaging throughout that most humans aren’t terrible, actually. I loved seeing how, story by story, Ashóli and the rest were able to let go of Kaltaoven habits of secrecy, bit by bit, as the people around them made that secrecy less and less necessary – or, rather, proved day by day that the Kaltaoven could trust them.
This makes for changes to Kaltaoven culture that, again, were really interesting – and it was very believable to me that Ashóli et al weren’t always sure all those changes were good. But they weren’t bad, either.
I don’t know: it just made me really happy to see, for once, stories where prejudice was worn away, and fear was gradually proven unnecessary, rather than a theme of Human Nature Is Immutably Awful And Will Never Improve. The latter is very depressing, and boring, and I don’t buy it anyway (if you need convincing, please check out Humankind by Rutger Bregman, which I think ought to be mandatory reading) but it’s frustratingly common in fantasy – especially in Medieval- or pre-Medieval-esque settings, like the one in Skin-Singer.
The prose was plainer than I prefer, but not blunt or dry, and I appreciated how much Jones shows rather than tells us – a fair bit is left for the reader to put together or infer, rather than beating us around the head with spelling everything out. There’s the strong sense that Jones trusts the reader to understand her stories, her world and her characters, and I really enjoyed that. Speaking of, every character we met was incredibly life-like – there were basically decent people making terrible decisions, characters doing awful things out of fear, people desperate or keeping secrets or making irrational choices because they’re lovestruck. Everybody felt complicated – and, important for me personally, not intentionally cruel or evil, just scared or stupid. (I grant, you can still do plenty of harm acting out of fear or ignorance, whatever your intentions.) Even the most minor characters with the smallest amount of page-time felt like real, breathing people – which shouldn’t have surprised me, since the Alpennia series is the same way! And throughout all the stories, I loved the emphasis on cleverness and what I can only call diplomacy or social skills, how often the characters succeed with tricksiness and by thinking outside of the box, instead of conventional strength or overwhelming magical power or the like.
So yes – I enjoyed this greatly, and strongly recommend it!
Trigger warnings: View Spoiler »
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