Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Representation: Persian cast and setting
Published on: 11th April 2023
ISBN: 1250842476
Goodreads

From World Fantasy Award-winning author Fonda Lee comes Untethered Sky, an epic fantasy fable about the pursuit of obsession at all costs.

Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family.

Ester’s path leads her to the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and dedicated rukhers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Ester finds purpose and acclaim by devoting herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice and a creature that will never return her love. The terrifying partnership between woman and roc leads Ester not only on the empire’s most dangerous manticore hunt, but on a journey of perseverance and acceptance.

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Highlights

~old-school manticores
~rocs are the real rockstars
~passionate people are just more interesting

You know when a book is a perfectly lovely reading experience, there’s nothing to criticise, but you kind of instantly forget about it when it’s over? The Untethered Sky was like that for me – an objectively good book, but one that didn’t leave much of an impression. I don’t have any strong feelings about it. This review definitely isn’t going to be an angry rant, but it won’t be all passionate praise-poetry either.

This is a novella about a woman who hunts the manticores that plague her kingdom with the roc – a supernaturally large bird of prey – that she raised and trained from chick-hood. (Is that a thing? Chick-hood? It doesn’t sound like it’s a thing.) Although the deaths of her mother and brother at the hands of a manticore definitely helped nudge her towards her career, this really doesn’t feel or read like a revenge story. Rather than being obsessed with hunting manticores, I think it would be much more accurate to say that Ester is obsessed with Zahra, her roc.

And I actually thought that was a pretty interesting angle: Lee makes it very clear, through Ester, that rukhers are generally pretty odd people; obsessed with their rocs and the munitae of their rearing, training, and care; insular and isolated, serving society but not really a part of it; and mostly indifferent to the world outside of the Royal Mews. I love getting to hear from people who are very passionate about their Thing, whatever that might be, and I liked the approach of making rukhers out to be oddball obsessives rather than revered badasses. It felt more believable, and for me at least, it made the rukhers much more interesting.

It was easy to read them all as autistics sharing a special interest, really. Ester herself definitely comes across as autistic-coded, but I’m not sure if that was intentional. It made her easy for me to relate to, anyway.

It’s very clear that Lee did a lot of research for this story – or possibly is into falconry herself. But I admit to being a bit disappointed by all that realism – I was hoping the rocs would be a little magical, a little more intelligent than ‘normal’ birds, and that’s not the case. Which means Untethered Sky doesn’t really qualify as an animal-companion story, since it’s made very clear that the rocs are ultimately pretty indifferent to their handlers, and even sometimes abandon them. I need more of a bond between human and non-human animal to consider a book an animal-companion story.

But I really liked the worldbuilding, and how the rocs fit into it. The Persian setting is wonderful, and the manticores are properly terrifying – although I didn’t need much convincing there, since I’ve been scared of manticores since I was 8! On which note, it’s worth mentioning that Lee’s manticores are the old-school, traditional kind, not the winged-lion-with-scorpion-tail creatures that dominate if you do an image search for ‘manticore’. I’m not sure where this winged kind came from – maybe Dungeons & Dragons? – but I can assure you that the traditional kind are FAR scarier!

The plot features a surprisingly (but delightfully) modern kind of ‘quest’ – a celebrity roc tour; and now I write it out I see the pun! – and I genuinely adored how predictable the great climax of the story was in hindsight; Lee crafts a foregone conclusion that still took me by gut-wrenching surprise, and I can do nothing but applaud. Untethered Sky feels carefully- and well-crafted; all the pieces coming neatly together, all of the story fitting perfectly into the low page count. This is not one of those times when a novella feels too short for the story it contains; here, it’s exactly right, with an ending that also managed to be completely correct – even if it wasn’t at all the one I wanted!

A good, solid read for those who don’t want their narrative conflict to always mean combat, and anyone looking for a story where the animals are the stars!

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