Lilith Saintcrow has written more novels than I care to count, in a variety of genres and under a variety of names. (Afterwar might be the novel of hers that left the most striking impact: a horrifying near-future imagining of the aftermath of war and genocide.) Spring’s Arcana is her latest, a vivid and atmospheric contemporary fantasy that opens in snowswept Manhattan and takes a roadtrip through an American landscape filled with otherworldly menace and uncomfortable secrets.
Nat Drozdova wants to save her mother’s life. Cancer is eating away at Maria Drozdova’s insides, and the doctors can do little for her. She insists that there is a way to cure her, if Nat meets with a powerful old woman in her sleek skyscraper office. This old woman insists that Nat call her grandmother, and it turns out that she’s a goddess of winter, cold and hungry—and willing to bargain. If Nat retrieves the artefact that her mother stole, this goddess (one of whose names is Baba Yaga) will accept her mother’s deal.
Nat must travel across America in the company of a man who calls himself Dmitri Konets—himself a divinity, patron of thieves and murderers, heartless because it is his heart that Nat’s mother stole—following her mother’s riddle. Nat hasn’t been raised to believe in any of this. Her mother dismissed anything unusual she ever spoke of as her imagination. But Maria Drozdova is herself a divinity of spring, brought to America by the belief of immigrants, their nostalgia for the spring of the old country, and she’s been lying to Nat for her whole life. Nat finds herself growing into power, thrust into the midst of wonder and terror, and pursued by shadows that hunger for the power of a divinity not yet come into her own. At the end of her journey, Konets has promised to kill her for the theft of his heart, but in the meantime, a terrifying protector is better than no protection at all.
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Spring’s Arcana
Spring’s Arcana is a fascinating novel. It reminds me of Elizabeth Bear’s Blood and Iron (2006) or Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin (1991) in its strikingly unsentimental treatment of immortal powers and principalities. I don’t recognise half of Saintcrow’s references, but Spring’s Arcana, like Blood and Iron and Tam Lin, recognises that gods or beings with more-than-human-power, although shaped like humans, aren’t always driven by human imperatives. Though they can be recognisably human in some of the kinds of their ruthlessness or monstrosity.
It’s plain from the outset that Maria Drozdova is an emotionally abusive parent. Nat loves her regardless, or at least thinks she does. When you’re told that you’re supposed to love your mother, told that abuse is a form of love, it’s hard to rip out the roots of affection from where they’ve helped shape your entire personality. (You can love people who hurt you: the hard thing is figuring out how to stop letting that affection allow them to keep hurting you.) She doesn’t want her mother to die. What’s less clear is whether or not Maria Drozdova cares whether Nat survives her bargain with Grandmother Winter. The reader develops a creeping suspicion, hardening slowly into certainty as more and more is revealed, that Nat’s mother really, really doesn’t. It’s an interesting examination of an uncomfortable—or say better, toxic—familial relationship.
Spring’s Arcana is told in part from Nat’s point of view, and in part from Konets’. Nat’s very relatable, her bewilderment and initial disbelief at a whole world filled with powers and divinities developing into a desperate kind of focus and a determination not to be overwhelmed by each fresh new bewildering occurrence. She’s naive and ignorant of the world into which she’s been suddenly thrust, which isn’t exactly her fault, and she’s learning as well as she can. And she’s well-meaning, which combined with her ignorance may well get her killed. It makes for an interesting contrast with Dmitri “Dima” Konets’ viewpoint.
Dima is another immigrant divinity, and by virtue of his nature, he’s a cynic: at his most optimistic, perhaps a realist. He’s the most human of predators, vicious and charming by turns, no more cruel than any force of nature and less so than many. He cut out his own heart and traded it to Baba Yaga in order to be able to stay on America’s shores as himself, rather than fade away to be replaced by a more American version of what he represents, and the fact that Maria Drozdova stole it from Baba’s keeping is a source of great offence. His half-mocking needling of Nat’s ignorance and his half-earnest attempts to educate her, paired with his threatening violence—never seriously directed at Natz—gives the roadtrip in quest of Maria Drozdova’s riddle much of its tension. The two of them are coiled springs wound in opposite directions, and the reader’s constantly waiting for one of them to snap.
Their relationship here is not in the least romantic, for which I’m grateful. Aside from the power and knowledge imbalance that would make such a thing deeply uncomfortable, the tension of their forced proximity is more interesting (and less predictable) this way.
Vividly atmospheric, with fascinating worldbuilding and compelling characters, Spring’s Arcana is an accomplished novel by a writer in peak form. I’m already looking forward to the sequel.
Spring’s Arcana is published by Tor Books.
Read a excerpt here.
Liz Bourke is a cranky queer person who reads books. She holds a Ph.D in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her first book, Sleeping With Monsters, a collection of reviews and criticism, was published in 2017 by Aqueduct Press. It was a finalist for the 2018 Locus Awards and was nominated for a 2018 Hugo Award in Best Related Work. She was a finalist for the inaugural 2020 Ignyte Critic Award, and has also been a finalist for the BSFA nonfiction award. She lives in Ireland with an insomniac toddler, her wife, and their two very put-upon cats.
