This is Ukrainian fantasy post-apoc novel, published in 2023 and written, according to the note at the end during 鈥極ctober 2019 - 24 February 2022鈥� i.e. finished exactly on the very day of the full-scale Russian aggression. Is it true or one of the mystifications some authors like to add to their texts I鈥檓 unsure. has several books in different genres, including her shorter prose, scripts for comics and children's books. Her only other SFF novel is , which I reviewed here and which is quite different.
The English title is House of Salt and there is a line at the bottom, which isn鈥檛 a subtitle, but still brings an important message: 鈥楥rimea will return home鈥�. Another important part is the note before the text 鈥� where usually goes a note that This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author鈥檚 imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. here we have the opposite - All the names are not accidental. Each of the people who bore them had an impact on the history of Crimea., which reminded me of 鈥檚 note before 鈥�
The novel never uses words 鈥楥rimea鈥� or 鈥楥rimean鈥�. Instead, it tells the story of Desht (Desht-i-Kipchak is Persian for "field of the Kipchaks" and is the ancient name for the steppe stretching from the north of Crimea to the Middle Volga region. It is believed that the Kipchaks became the ethnic basis for the Crimean Tatars, Nogais, Kazakhs and other peoples), which was formerly known as Cimmeric (from the Ancient Greek Kimmerioi. The famous is from there). It was a fertile verdant peninsula, but some time ago a war come to these lands and a mysterious accident called Flashes/Outbreaks separated them with a dome from the rest of the world and turned the land into a desert, with strange mutagen 鈥榮uer鈥� (from 鈥榯uzsuer鈥� 鈥� salt of earth) affecting all living within a sphere that covers the peninsula. It brings not only mutations (fantasy, not SF style, like a second mouth or bodies that clued in together; or turning into a bird) but erasing memories and preventing people from ever leaving 鈥� w/o suer they soon die painfully.
Desht is formally controlled by Big (Older) Brothers from the country of Two-God (not too subtle allusion two Russia with its two-headed eagle). They mostly live on a former submarine 鈥榯he Mother of Winds鈥�, which now levitates high in the sky, clear from paths of suer storms. However, afraid of mutations they rarely travel down to the lands of 鈥榮alted鈥� 鈥� mutated population of Cimmerians. The salted degraded to semi-barbarity with superstitions and human sacrifices. Also, the is self-titled Army of Monsters, who fight Big Brothers rule with guerilla actions.
Here readers meet three main characters, from whose point of view the rest of the story is told. First (by order of appearance) is Talavir 鈥� a Big Brother, a soldier, who lost his memories and was in coma for the last thirteen years. The head of the station, Gaven Belokun (a mixup of B茅la Kun, communist leader and head of the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 and Yuri Gaven, a Latvian, Bolshevik, Chekist, dictator of the Red Crimea in 1921-1924, deputy of Bela Kun) is obsessed with the myth of the Golden Cradle, a powerful artifact of the gods that is supposed to have caused the Outbreaks. Who controls the Cradle controls the Cimmeric. He sends Talavir on a mission to investigate the death of another Big Brother and find the trail of the mythical artifact.
Second is a 13-year-old boy Bekyr. He lives in Desht since his birth and while formally he has no mutations, he is unable to leave the village where he lives with his mother, a local medic 鈥� headaches up to falling unconscious stop him. His best friend is Niyazi, half-boy and half-fox. His storyline is possibly the strongest and his character the most fleshed out.
Finally, there is Ma, Bekyr鈥檚 mother, who has a shadowy past and ran pregnant from Big Brothers to hide in Desht. Because suer erases memories, even she is unsure of her own past.
Parallel to the main line there are excourses to Crimea's past, from Greek colonies, legends about Amazons to the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 by the Soviets. These stories, while based on our world (or its semi-mythological history in the case of the ancient鈥� like 鈥檚 History) and deeply interwoven with the mythology of the story. They are strong pieces, even if often bloody and cruel.
The novel has great potential but has not always lived up to it. Say, there is a perfectly unnecessary love story or the fact that almost all characters, who really affected the story are non-locals (which some reviewers reminded of a white savior trope). The best part is about Bekyr and his friends.
Ukrainian fantasy? Please double it! Definitely, this book is in my collection! It was hard to read for me at the beginning because of the many new words (great news that we have a vocabulary at the end of the book). But then everything went so fast and so easy! Good story. Really happy that Ukraine has such a talented writer like Svitlana. Hope to read other novels about Crimea by Svitlana. Good luck!