The trend in post-apocalyptic fiction is usually for brutality and dog-eat-dog, for cruelty and nihilism. Rarely do you find quiet, practical, damn near domestic stories about life in the communities that have grown up in the aftermath of apocalypse, ones that have rebuilt themselves along sustainable lines, and maintained semi-decent medicine and the ability to manufacture contraceptives. Communities with social consciences and systems in place to keep them functional.
Carrie Vaughn’s Bannerless (2017, winner of the Philip K. Dick Award) and The Wild Dead (2018) are set in the towns of the Coast Road, communities that share an ethos and a style of co-operative government along the coast of what used to be California. People in Coast Road communities are organised into households, and households earn the right to bear and raise children by proving they can take care of them. Careful management of quotas of farming and production ensures that no one grows rich—but no one goes too hungry, either, and the communities look after their members and each other.
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Bannerless
Enid of Haven is an investigator, one of the people who mediate disputes, settle problems too large for local committees, and look into things like hoarding, exceeding quota, and unsanctioned pregnancies (because the presence of another unexpected mouth to feed puts strain on the whole community, and too many of those make the communities less able to be viable). In Bannerless, she’s only recently been promoted to full investigator status, and interpersonal crime is fairly rare, so it’s a surprise when she and her work partner, Tomas, are asked to examine a suspicious death in a nearby village called Pasadan. The dead man was a loner in a community of close-knit households, isolated by preference. His death looks like murder, and in investigating it, Enid finds herself digging into the cracks and faultlines in the community, exposing things that they’d rather keep hidden, and discovering that at least one household in Pasadan has been keeping secrets for a significant period of time.
Bannerless intersperses the narrative of adult Enid with a more youthful Enid, growing up, and then in her late adolescence as she leaves home for the first time to walk the Coast Road with a musician and drifter called Dak—the first person she ever had romantic feelings for. Younger Enid is an acute observer, responsible, deeply compassionate, and interested in everything: one can see her trajectory as someone who solves human problems set even before she knows it herself.
The novel brings all its pieces together in a satisfying, quiet, and very human narrative.
The Wild Dead is a sequel to Bannerless. Enid, now with a young investigator on his very first case—Teeg—is called upon to visit the furthest northern edge of Coast Road territory, to mediate a dispute over an old building in the community known as the Estuary. It should be simple, but before Enid can render her decision and return home to where the other members of her household are expecting their first child, the body of a young woman—killed by violence—is found on the edges of nearby marshland.
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The Wild Dead
The dead woman isn’t from any of the Coast Road settlements, but rather from one of the communities of nomads and “wild folk” who live outside its rules and boundaries. Enid must stay to see justice done, but many people in the Estuary don’t see an outsider as any of their business, or her death as any of their problem. And Enid’s new partner, Teeg, is headstrong and opinionated, prone to leaping to conclusions and not inclined to look past the first, easy answer. Enid’s search for truth will lead her up into the camps of the wild folk and to uncover old, unhealed faultlines in the community before she can arrive at anything like justice, and before she can bring herself to go home.
These are gorgeous books. Told from Enid’s perspective, written in spare and compelling prose, they are quiet, introspective murder mysteries, deeply invested in ethics and in kindness. Kindness, in fact, lies at their heart—and the push-pull of the best, and the worst, impulses of humanity as they go about their daily life. Enid represents some of the best, in her quiet, staid, determined, unshowy fashion, and the depth of her character is what makes these novels truly shine.
Carrie Vaughn may still be best known for her Kitty the Werewolf series, but Bannerless and The Wild Dead show that her talents are versatile. I really enjoyed these novels. I would very much like to read more of them.
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 is nominated for a Hugo Award in Best Related Work. Find her at her blog, where she’s been known to talk about even more books thanks to her Patreon supporters. Or find her at her Twitter. She supports the work of the Irish Refugee Council, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, and the Abortion Rights Campaign.
I love a good post-apocalyptic story, so I will have to look this up!
If you enjoy the non-brutal kind, you should try Michaela Roessner’s Vanishing Point. It’s my favorite–multiple communities of people managing survival a generation after the event that ended their civilization, and dealing with the people who feel differently. Among other things. :)
Leigh Richards’ Califia’s Daughters is also good, but is wide open for a sequel that doesn’t seem to have happened…
Adds to list; shakes head at length of list: buys anyhow
@@@@@ Quill – Thanks for the book suggestion, I will check out Vanishing Point.
I’ve been eyeing Bannerless, sitting on the shelf of the library I work at, for a while now. After reading this review of the two books, now I can’t wait to read them.
Bourke’s description of the novel’s subtleties and the depth of exploration into what regular, domestic life would become when a community is recovering from the end of life as was known before. How do people mentally and spiritually cope when the “community,” they form with each other becomes mobile “safe places,” that replaces what we used to think existed in rooted spaces. The idea of place becomes divorced from location and transforms into units that are without locals. Yet, once people try to rebuild the tangible, rooted communities of yore, they become vulnerable to inside and outside threats.
I obviously need to read both of Vaughn’s books, so I can see how she explores these ideas. Bourke, you made these two books sound fascinating, thanks!
I was incredibly excited when I found out that she was making these a series. I forget the title of the short story she penned prior to this that was in the same universe (involving a group family whose head was from a bannerless birth and her family wanting to grow – while dealing with a biased overseer) but I remember wanting more. These books have been so rich and uplifting – exactly what I want to read in a post-apocalyptic story. My favorite part of the genre is reading how people rebuild and the positive changes they enact afterwards, and these have been exactly what I’ve wanted!
And, as importantly, not waste resources in an unsustainable manner.
#4 prequel would be “Where would you be now” https://www.tor.com/2018/02/07/where-would-you-be-now-carrie-vaughn/
@5 thank you! I could not recall the title, though the short story was so hauntingly beautiful that it stayed with me until I was able to read these wonderful novels! :D
Edit: Actually… that wasn’t the story I was referring to. The one I was thinking of actually had “banner” in the title and involved a group of people with a ship who earned one, and I think predates “Where…”
Edit 2: It was actually the story “Amaryllis” and can be found in Lightspeed here. There was also the short story “bannerless” in the “The End Has Come,” which has a preview of it here.
There’s often little drama to be had in the day-to-day stuggles of life. Therefore the drama has to come from some other source. Most post-apocalyptic stories tend to opt for fast-moving threats (relatively – zombies are known more for shambling). What I like about these books are how it looks at different threats. No less catastrophic than faster moving threats, but ones that take small bites out their society until it’s not able to support its own weight and collapses. Vaughn creates the drama from human sources, but each of the issues Enid has to resolve (not just the central murder mysteries, but smaller crimes as well) is rooted in their society. It’s not a transplanted Agatha Christy plot, but the drama is woven into the fabric of the setting.
Simply put, both books (and the two short stories) are really well written. :)
I especially like how the bannerless household head in the Amaryllis short story is afraid of rocking the boat (pun intended) and it takes the self-righteous, headstrong teenager to set events in motion to ensure justice is done.