Ka Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr Review

John Crowley has long been one of the most contentious names in fantasy literature. While lauded by critics and erudite readers, his popularity remains minimal in the mainstream. And the reasons are clear. Steering wide of melodrama, stereotype, contrived plots, and other familiar elements of popular fiction, Crowley has always utilized afar prose to grapple with abstruse albeit homo ideas. Lilliputian, Big, Aegypt, and other such novels utilized elements of genre (faires, alternate history, etc.) in setting and plot, but focused their content on the value of stories, memory, and other such broad themes. In 2017, however, Crowley set out to write a more than accessible novel, Ka: Dar Oakley and the Ruin of Ymr being the effect. Thankfully, Crowley did not stray far from his roots.

Ka is foremost a frame story—or at least a story that begins in media res. An unnamed elderly man finds Dar Oakley the crow in his backyard ane day. In poor wellness, the bird starts to relate his life story to the erstwhile human. And information technology'southward an amazing story. Dar Oakley, or as he was originally known, Dar Oak of Lee, was born into a murder in the woods of primeval Wales. Befriending a immature native girl named Play a trick on Cap, he watches as the daughter grows up to become something of a shaman among her people. Deciding to embark on a trip to the underworld to bring back a cauldron that volition cure the mortality—wars, illness, erstwhile age—plaguing her people, Play a joke on Cap asks Dar Oakley if he wants to go with her, and he agrees. But things surreptitious don't go every bit planned. Emerging back into the earth, Dar Oakley finds himself caught in a loop of life and death that persists through the centuries, and, interestingly enough, at a prime viewing spot to come across evolution of mankind through the branches below him.

I have read a few reviews of Ka since finishing the novel, and most seem to center on the idea of the novel as a meditation on story and storytelling. Inarguably these are key parts of the narrative, and something that Crowley would even seem to directly highlight on occasion. But I would argue they are only a portion of theme. Crows the symbol of decease for some cultures or people, or at least associated with death bz Westerners, it's only natural that bloodshed is also a key theme. Crows eating meat regardless human or animal, each battle and war amongst humans provides the crows a steady diet. Add to this what Dar Oakley's witnesses in his ain cycle of life and death, and an interesting perspective on homo bloodshed emerges. Despite the centuries that pass, however, information technology should be stated Dar Oakley is never presented every bit a wise former seer of birds, gravity in every word he utters. There is no such commentary, rather, Crowley keeps his black bird quotidian (if such a discussion can exist applied to crows) in that Dar maintains a elementary outlook for life; detect food, maintain safe shelter, detect a mate, collaborate a chip with others, and that'south information technology (a remarkable analog to the bulk of human lives). By doing so, Crowley allows the reader to draw their own conclusions on the human being penchant for killing and the significant of the life cycle we each are given.

And I believe there is all the same ane more key theme to Ka. Derived from the subtitle (Dar Oakley and the Ruin of Ymr), information technology should be noted 'Ka' is the earth which crows come from and 'Ymr' is the crow word for Earth. Thus it should be no surprise the novel'southward prologue features a hill of motley humans scavenging a landfill, even as the elderly homo from the frame narrative is dying of an unnamed ailment. Moreover, Fox Cap's primeval world, though every bit innocent as information technology is, is never presented equally idyllic. And certainly the American Civil War and the onset of the industrial age, which go ont o form of import chapters in the narrative, are likewise far from ideal. More than just killers, humans reach are presented in the wider view as destroyers, even to the bespeak of the world they occupy. The sometime homo's ragged situation framing the novel thus forms an open-close biological/environmental/human/whatever you want to call it bulletin for the novel every bit a whole.

John Crowley is not a author for anybody. Nigh of his most critically acclaimed work somewhat distant and obfuscated, a practiced deal of mainstream readers bounce due to the relative lack of familiar plot dichotomies and cookie-cutter characters. In this regard, Ka: Dar Oakley and the Ruin of Ymr is Crowley'due south well-nigh accessible novel in many years. Surprising even me, the novel has a number of overtly fantastical moments that provide color to Dar Oakley's corvid globe as well as lighten and diversify the development of events. Crowley'southward prose remains somewhat remote, merely in terms of the story attempting to be told, is fully complementary. In curt, information technology'southward possible Ka could be read and enjoyed by readers who have disliked Crowley's centre period of novels (Little Large, Aegypt, etc.) but were more akin to his earlier novels, like Engine Summer, The Deep, etc. Ka is not Watership Down starring crows, just is but every bit fascinating for thematic depth. Dar Oakley will live on in retentiveness after the last folio is turned.

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Source: http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2018/03/review-of-ka-dar-oakley-and-ruin-of-ymr.html