In the port city of Penderyn, Silbrey once served as a soldier for the cruel, ambitious guildmaster. Silbrey escaped the city and her life of violence by rushing into marriage and motherhood. Now she returns to Penderyn to atone for her crimes and confront the guildmaster who controlled her.
Silbrey discovers there is more to her past than even she realized, beyond the familiar cobbled streets of the city. What begins as a fairy tale transforms in an epic adventure about love and loss—and a woman with a strange connection to the natural world.
Hopkins (the Wear Chainmail to the Apocalypse series) pens a fantasy unlike any other, not by doing more, but by doing less, offering a meditation on a life, told out of order and without hurry despite the book’s brief length. In a land ravaged by war, Silbrey, a fey child of fish and tree, is taken in from the forest by a lax priest, until she's adopted by the abusive Dahlia, the guildmaster who controls the port city of Penderyn, and becomes her assassin. That is, until she meets Callis, and leaves that life. But can the past truly be left as that?Silbrey's life story is not one of grand and moral heroes, but of adults who failed and are simply trying to get by. Instead of the usual magically overpowered embodiment of evil that has the world in its grip, this fantasy’s villain is a ruthless but ultimately human woman who holds nothing but a city and a child. The fantastical is treated as mundane in Penderyn and, in the end, the evil is not vanquished but instead proves more pernicious, leaving Silbrey to take what she can and go off to live a quiet life. That might sound like a spoiler, but Hopkins jumps back and forth in time, letting the end be known at the beginning, changing this story’s emphasis: rather than a familiar build to final conflict, A Slow Parade in Penderyn ruminates on how a life went awry, in prose distinguished by grace, clarity, and directness.
The short length means that at times Hopkins tells readers about developments rather than dramatize them, and some character motivations aren’t clear. Penderyn is refreshingly progressive, with many queer characters, an open-ish marriage, a lack of adherence to traditional gender roles, none of which is treated as anything out of the ordinary. Overall, this is a welcome, inventive, humane fantasy, set at the scale of a single fascinating life.
Takeaway: Fans of progressive fantasy on a small scale but with small stakes that feel large will relish this.
Great for fans of: Karin Tidbeck’s The Memory Theater, Donna Jo Napoli’s Zel.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A-
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A-
A Slow Parade unfolds in an “open content” fantasy world called Efre Ousel. In the slice-of-life port town of Penderyn, a genuine story of human frailty and regret plays out on a solid bedrock of fantasy worldbuilding.
A Slow Parade is Silbrey’s story. Her past is more mysterious than that of most orphans—her origin is the stuff of fairytales, and she has played many roles and gone by many names to survive to adulthood. Valued enforcer for Penderyn’s ruthless guildmaster, Silbrey longs for sincere human connection and a peaceful life.
When she finds love, Silbrey seeks refuge in the country but learns that, sooner or later, every choice has its consequence. Her new world shattered, Silbrey makes her way through Penderyn to confront her former master.
The novella’s point-of-view is omniscient with a slightly detached storyteller tone especially suited to such a tale. This voice is most pronounced in the prologue, which is pure fairytale. Yet as the adventure unfolds, the book subtly modulates that tone to step back and let the events show us the action.
While always serving the narrative first, the prose is often lyrical and evocative. For example, a description of Silbrey’s place in the natural world as she trains with her unique staff tells us about her fighting style, her personality, and hints at her past. “The secret of her skill went much deeper than any training. Silbrey did not just feel the wood in her palm. She held the whole tree. The whole tree held her. She sensed the deep roots digging into rich soil . . .”
Much of the novella is set in flashback as Silbrey makes her slow parade through town, as locations and people she encounters spark recollections. The resulting tapestry of thoughts, feelings, and experiences is immersive.
Silbrey is a fascinating character, a woman who’s made herself powerful through deadly choices. Above all, she is a survivor. But she has secrets, some unknown even to herself, which influence her wants and needs. The novella successfully weaves its non-linear narrative into a cohesive whole.
The fantasy world, Efre Ousel, is intricate, but the story avoids a sightseeing tour of extraneous information. Hewing to effective storytelling’s essential elements, Slow Parade presents a real person with a real problem overcoming real obstacles to reach a plausible resolution. The world is grounded in a rough realism that might seem incongruent to fantasy but works.
The language throughout is skillful and imaginative. For example, Silbrey breaks into her former master’s house to confront her. “The house was silent. Every echoing step upon the stone floor felt like a public greeting: presenting Silbrey of Penderyn . . .” The fishy smell of Penderyn’s docks is a familiar one to most readers and certainly evocative, but A Slow Parade takes that sense detail a step further to comment on society. “To the nobles, it’s unbearable. To the residents, it’s familiar. But to the fisherman, it’s the smell of a good haul and honest work.”
Delightful woodcut-style illustrations and maps enhance the feeling of having uncovered a book of old lore. This reader was happy to find pronunciation guidance in the introduction and intrigued by the open content concept.
Most of the novella is exposition, which is a reasonable choice given the retrospective narrative style and storyteller tone. However, this reader became more engaged in the story once Silbrey confronts her former master and events begin to be presented primarily in scene.
I’d recommend A Slow Parade in Penderyn for young adult and adult secondary-world fantasy fans who appreciate empowered female characters, meticulous worldbuilding, and the promise of more tales to come. Polyamory and bisexuality are also briefly mentioned. For writers, artists, and game designers, the invitation to come play in the Efre Ousel sandbox will be hard to resist!
A former soldier must confront her past and the despotic plutocrat she once served in this fantasy.
Timon, a priest of the god Taraki in Penderyn, raises a foundling he names Piper. A wild girl, Piper keeps running away to the city and eventually stays there, making a modest living with odd jobs and begging. In the wealthy quarter, Piper jumps a mansion’s fence and is challenged by its owner, Dahlia Tulan. Dahlia is the city’s guildmaster—fabulously wealthy, powerful, and ruthless—and though she intends to kill the trespasser, Piper fights back valiantly. The guildmaster instead adopts the girl, renaming her Silbrey, and has her trained as a cold, brutal enforcer. But Silbrey discovers her heart when she falls in love with Callis, a handsome shepherd in the marketplace. Disguising her violent past from him, Silbrey gets permission from Dahlia to leave the city with him. But there’s a catch: Neither can ever return. Years later, Silbrey doesn’t know how to tell her daughter and husband they mustn’t go to Penderyn market. When they do, disaster strikes, bringing Silbrey back to the city, where she will not only face off against Dahlia, but also deal with her true self. In his series opener, Hopkins writes graceful and sinewy prose that vividly describes action, emotion, and inner life. His thoughtful, captivating worldbuilding is less socially hidebound than that of many fantasy sagas, as with Silbrey’s attraction “to men, to women, and to people who didn’t fit into these crude categories.” An open-content scheme means other writers may use Hopkins’ setting and its rich ground for storytelling. Debut illustrator Decena contributes lovely, intricately crosshatched monochrome pictures that capture the book’s atmosphere.
An accomplished and well-written tale leaving readers eager to keep exploring this intriguing world.
