[BEYONDE] The Domes of Calrathia

The Domes of Calrathia

The word “stagnation” describes much of fantastic fiction today, stemming from a larger cultural exhaustion in modern society. Sturgeon’s law has always held true, but at least the bad stuff was often colourful, lovable junk; something that could be bad in interesting ways. Today’s junk is a different kind. The institutions of genre publishing have turned their output into a morass of safe mediocrity. Critics highlight the role of the theatre kid invasion and their political manias, but that is only a part of it: it is more that the final result is an extreme case of design-by-committee through social pressures and institutional takeover. Nothing of interest comes out of those cursed ruins anymore, and it can be safely abandoned to the wild beasts and mutants which populate it. If something interesting is happening at all, it takes place in the wilderness far from these structures, where the huddled survivors gather to build their new thing. Outfits like DMR Books, Cirsova Magazine, and a few similar venues is where you can go to for strong heroic fantasy. The results are still mixed, but again, colourful, lovable junk beats dull pap, and sometimes you catch something genuinely great – two or three stories in your average DMR collection, or Mark Mellon’s outstanding Melkart Unchained in an otherwise fairly ho-hum volume of peplum stories. Most of these stories work inside older genres, mainly mid-century pulp, but something puzzling and new is still rarely seen. The following book is something puzzling and new.

The Domes of Calrathia by Isaac Young is a self-published fantasy novel (the first of a two-part story) which comes even from outside these outposts, straight out of the wilderness. I came across it pretty much at random on a political interview podcast. The author had interesting things to say about the state of fantasy, and the kind of fiction he liked. I found my interest piqued. He had an Indiegogo for his first print book, and based on the excerpts, it seemed like a bet worth taking. It turns out the bet was a good one, and the 106 backers (of whom 72 went for the physical book) got something well worth their money.

"Of the men who inhabit the strange lands south of the Great Ice Plain, I was told there are three varieties: the maddened cannibals whose heads are cut in the shape of their hallowed obelisk, the wandering ghost men who eat nothing and yet still live, and the men of Calrathia, sat huddled in their great domes which are vast enough to encompass cities.

I, the Astronomer Sirius, had only heard tall-tales and faded stories of such things. And not long into my journey, it seemed I would die before encountering any of them."

This is a book set at the world’s end, both in the physical and spiritual sense. We are at the end of the great ages, in the winter of civilisation. Mankind, which had once reached across the stars, has become exhausted, living among the ruins of inconceivably grand megastructures it possesses no means or will to replicate, or even maintain. Long-operating infrastructures built aeons ago are starting to fail, and are replaced with stop-gap solutions on a much more minor scale, accompanied by growing dysfunction. This was not by means of war or disaster, just mankind’s slow, long retreat from the heights of its greatness. As things are grinding to a halt, the fringes of the world are claimed by the creeping cold; oceans frozen into the endless Great Ice Plain, and the most distant outpost of civilisation, Terminus, gradually being abandoned as the machines that provide its heat giving out. Strange tribes and mythical beasts reclaim what has been left behind, and things that have been taken for granted – long-distance travel, security, serving automatons, or an ordered civilisation – fade away:

“Up ahead, I saw the walls of Terminus. And until then, I did not realise there were, in fact, two sets of walls. The first was made of wood and stone and seemingly whatever the denizens of Terminus found as construction material from the ruins. It was jagged and piled up in an ill manner. The only part of this wall that seemed to be tended was the gate, which sat squarely in the distance. The divide appeared to serve one purpose, to keep the unwanted firmly outside the boundaries of Terminus proper.

The second wall was on the other side of the city, and it was the one I had spotted from far off. It ran from east to west, disappearing in the long distance. This wall was ancient, and it was so large that it devoured much of the sky, a steel horizon of rust and faded metal. But even more impressively, shooting up from the wall was a spire that towered firmly into the Firmament. Though having seen it from a distance, I never had a vantage point to properly appreciate its immense size. It hung over the city like the fin of a giant fish.

‘I’ve never seen such a structure,’ I spoke to Gereon.

‘That is the Border Wall and Castle Padua. They were built when the Great Ice Plain was an open sea.’

‘But why were they built? I recall no histories of war here, and this must’ve been long before the cannibals took root.’

‘It was against the winter,’ Gereon said. ‘When men realized this land was growing colder, they built the Border Wall to keep the cold at bay. And it did, for a thousand generations, but that was an age ago. Now, the ashen furnaces can barely heat the city.’”

The book’s narrator-protagonist, Sirius, is an Astronomer, the trainee of what might be described an order of scholarly paladins, as versed in the knowledge of the heavenly bodies as hand-to-hand combat and religious philosophy. His voyage across the frozen lands is part pilgrimage and part exile: he has been entrusted with delivering a priceless illuminated manuscript containing his order’s history to Calrathia, the city of all knowledge far beyond the last outposts of men. No attempt has been made to undertake the journey in over 300 years, and it is understood that it is bound to be a death sentence for a murder that would otherwise call for his expulsion and execution. This is also the last such journey that will ever take place before things fall apart for good, and the Astronomers’ knowledge also becomes lost.

Calrathia’s inspirations are plain to see. This is a “dying Earth” book inspired by Gene Wolfe (mainly), Jack Vance, Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. It bears similarities to Leigh Brackett’s Book of Skaith in some of its themes (a frozen, dying world; corrupted and failing civilisation; pockets of strange survivors who have adapted to the spreading cold), although it seems the author was unfamiliar with this book. As an example of the subgenre, it succeeds admirably: it creates a compelling setting filled with strangeness and fine detail without being pedantic about it. Mid-range fantasy explains everything; great fantasy leaves room for interpretation and preserves an air of distance and mystery. The Domes of Calrathia is first and foremost mysterious – we gain glimpses into the world’s workings from the narrator’s point of view, but we do not get a precise picture, and a lot of the context is gained through the resonance of association and careful word choice (these are also devices Wolfe and Vance use in their work). For example, the Astronomers can command anemoi, winged beings who might be angels, elementals, or something in between – but they are not described in detail. Neither are the precise technologies and grand projects alluded to in the book explained. It is fairly clear that humanity was (and might still be) capable of interstellar travel, or that Terminus had a massive port. In the book, these are described from the narrator’s viewpoint, such as:

“It was on the fourth morning that I thought I had spotted the tips of the mountains in the distance, but Odoacer informed me that they were merely the cairns that marked the last leg of our journey. I was confused, but as I saw, these shapes resolved into spires far too thin to be called mountains, though still indisputably large. The tribesmen knew them as markers of a sort, but I immediately recognised them for what they were. Great ancient ships sat in their berths; their bows pointed aimlessly at the sky. They were older than the ones at Terminus, and their hermetically sealed hulls were clearly meant for the empty sea. The vessels were all held in place by titanic scaffolds long rusted over. (…) There have been few times in my life when silence was painful on my ears, and it was not the first instance I had encountered such graveyards. And yet, this place opened a hole in my heart, much more so than the ones at the Border Wall. These ships belonged to my vocation, to men not much different than I.”

There is great wonder and fascination in ruins, and the book is written from the perspective of a scholar standing in the shadow of his forebearers, looking up on works he partially understands, but cannot fully fathom. It is this combination of grief, faith and wonder which gives the novel its own tone. The novel has a distinct late Roman, maybe even early Byzantine vibe in its mythological and spiritual references, along with strong Biblical parallels (sometimes vague, sometimes quite literal). This is also an era where much of the earlier world-spanning civilisation is already lost, or falling into disrepair and ruin in a much smaller age. It is a fascinating setting for adventure, and the book explores its physical and spiritual landscapes in full.

Sirius himself is a compelling character. He is competent in scholarship and swordplay, but naïve in the ways of the world, which gets him in deep trouble more so than other miscalculations. He is also an example of someone laden with grave doubts, and preoccupied with deep moral concerns. The crucial conflict of the book is how to act as a righteous man in this degraded and cold world, balancing the needs of survival with one’s moral principles, and avoiding missteps which would invite spiritual ruin. Epic fantasy often ends up heralding a sort of milquetoast morality that feels easy and tawdry (and its deconstruction simply revels in cynicism and misanthropy), but The Domes of Calrathia treats the subject with a good deal of serious thought. Sirius can see nobility in the conduct of an old guard dog, a dutiful automation serving a patrician family, or the birds he encounters across the vastness of the Great Ice Plain, and he struggles to make the right decisions under the pressures of his quest.

“The dog whimpered and licked her fingers weakly.

‘You do this beast dishonour.’ Gereon kept his gaze away from the animal. ‘If you do not have the heart to kill it, at least remove this creature from the sight of others. It is a foul thing to be decrepit in the full light of day. Cover its shame.

‘Is it so much better to die in a sequestered corner than at your post’ I asked, coming to the aid of Berenice. ‘There is no shame in a well-spent life, and this dog is wise for remaining here. For he knows the day is coming when he shall rejoin his master, and he shall receive his just reward for remaining faithful unto death.’”

The world of Sirius is one ordered by moral principles, and the cosmic plan of the Potentate who had created it, but also contradictions and self-doubt concerning his deeds and mission (a de facto death sentence for a crime he either did not commit, or committed for a very good reason – this is not clarified in the text). Some of the book’s voice recalls St. Augustine more than anything, and some of its plot hints at the deeper spiritual struggle behind the sojourn to Calrathia, whose significance Sirius only begins to realise in the later segments of the book. Again, it is as much pilgrimage as adventure, and this is a novel written from a deeply held Catholic faith.

As this is a first novel (at least as a printed work), it is not without flaws. About two thirds of the novel deals with intrigue in the city of Terminus, while the trek across the Great Ice Plain, which leans more strongly into the setting’s mythic dimensions, is comparatively shorter. The second volume, which promises to complete the story, may correct this imbalance, but presently, this arc feels underdeveloped. Thus, the pacing feels off sometimes, while some of the middle portion lags a little. But these are minor criticisms. The Domes of Calrathia stands up to scrutiny, and as a first, it is a very strong entry. It is also something that feels new in today’s heroic fantasy – it owes a debt to the works it is inspired by, but it continues the tradition in a new and interesting direction.

The Domes of Calrathia is currently available on Amazon as a paperback, a free version is available in full on Royal Road, and an audiobook is available in full on Youtube. There is even a trailer.

Across the Icy Wastes