Welcome to Steve’s Novella Corner, where we dive into the less conventional depths of the indie ocean and return with strange treasures that you can read in a day or two.
Here we’ll share the stuff we love, but are too short to feature in one of our boxes.
This month, it’s HER UNBOUND HALLUX, by Haldane B. Doyle.
It’s fitting that this novella has a lot of DNA from different genres, because first and foremost Her Unbound Hallux is about biology. Haldane B. Doyle takes a series of somewhat familiar story elements from classic Fantasy and Sci-Fi, and pours them into a rich setting that is equally bizarre and beautiful.
I don’t know much about biology, but I do know about good writing. The prose isn’t just beautiful, it has range. I laughed, I felt my heart go, I raised my eye-brows, and through it all the quality of the writing never dipped. It travels at a comfortable pace, never quite rushed, always happy to meander and smell the intoxicating roses. We go deep into the weird, on both human and biological levels.
We follow the forlorn Miobeth, a sacrificial weapon-in-waiting, through a coming-of-age story that seems familiar at first. She’s a fish out of water, after all, denied any kind of knowledge about the world, or machinery, or music, or love. Kept obedient by an abusive mother, using a shock collar. When she has passed on her bloodline and borne children, she’ll ascend as a weapon in an endless war of attrition against an army of robots.
It would have been enough to hook me anyway. But the moment that really nailed it for me was when the first of many twists came. The world, the story we have been told, is not the whole story. I had this lingering feeling as I read that this story was set deep in time, and boy is it.
I don’t want to spoil anything, because it’s strikingly original, a blend of strangeness I’ve not seen before. Eastern cultivation fantasy meets genetic opera. A singular POV story that puts us squarely in the newcomers’ shoes, then peels back layer after layer of this beautifully built world. It is there, at the heart of the story, that you’ll realise how deep the biology rabbit-hole goes. This story is about genetics, diseases and pandemics, the immune system, about pheromones and procreation and…
It doesn’t shy away from anything, and so if you’re adverse to a bit of dangling and swangling then this may not be for you, but I mean – it’s about biology. It made me desperate to read on, to learn what becomes of Miobeth, and her children, and for that I can gladly tell you that this is the first of a completed 4-part series of novellas, titled Our Vitreous Womb.
It’s bold, bizarre, and beautifully told. Highly recommended if, like me, you love to be surprised.
You can find Haldane B. Doyle and more about his books at haldanebdoyle.com
And if you aren’t already subscribed to Your Paper Quest, our indie-only book box, then you can find us (or submit your own work!) here: www.yourpaperquest.com