The Reliquary Ring
Cherith Baldry
Pan Macmillan, 424 pages
Order this book Cherith Baldry’s The Reliquary Ring
is set in an alternate-world Venice (the city is never named, but all the
Venetian landmarks are there) where an 18th-century-style social setting
combines with the products of high technology. These scientific advances
don’t come from the city, however, where the laws of the Holy Church of Christos
hold sway, but from the Empire to the north, whose scientists and craftsmen
have perfected arts unknown elsewhere. Imperial merchants broker strange
and wondrous machines to the people of the city, along with living creations:
genics, genetically engineered humans designed to fill specific purposes
and tasks. Because the genics are created by men, outside the law of God,
the Church doesn’t consider them human; as a result genics have no rights,
and can be used, abused and disposed of with impunity by those who own them.
The humans of the city regard them as abomination, and consider it defilement
to touch them (though there are some, like the corrupt and sadistic Count
Dracone, who take a perverted pleasure in congress with genics).
But genics, artificially created as they are, are still human, with a full
complement of human talent, desire and emotion. There’s Serafina, seamstress
to the nobility, who was found wandering the streets as a child and longs
more than anything to discover why she was made; Gabriel, whose unusually
enlightened human companion has allowed him to explore his sublime talent
for painting; beautiful Hyacinth, created for music, whose owners see only
a clever toy and not the magnificent artist he truly is; and gentle Alessandro,
who has learned to pass as human, and lives each day in fear his deception
will be discovered. All exist in the shadow-world of the genic, essential
to the humans around them and yet despised, daily encountering the ugly realities
of ignorance and prejudice.
Then a fabulous object is discovered: a reliquary ring containing a single
hair of the divine Christos. The ring falls into the hands of evil Count Dracone,
who sees in it a way to achieve his long-held ambition of becoming the city’s
ruler. As his (literally) demonic plot unfolds, the four genics and their
human associates find themselves tangled in its threads, drawn into an unlikely
alliance to oppose him. But they’re struggling for more than just Dracone’s
defeat. A new age is poised to dawn upon the city--an age that could forever
change the genics’ destiny.
Baldry richly evokes her nameless city, its exquisite surface roiled by dark
undercurrents of corruption and cruelty that invest even the most perfect
palaces with the whiff of decay, and even the most upright noblemen with
the taint of vice. Less effective, at least from the perspective of plausible
world building, is the rest of her setting. The city appears to be in the
grip of a long decline, its great arts (such as the techniques of painting
Gabriel has rediscovered) lost, its women often barren or breeding deformed
babies--but the why of this is never really laid out. And though the reader
is granted brief glimpses of the Empire and its high-tech manufacturing facilities,
these don’t do anything to explain the existence of sophisticated genetic
engineering in an 18th century setting (in this I’m reminded of Paul McAuley’s
Pasquale’s Angel, also set in an alternate Venice transformed by unexplained technological advances)
However, plausible world building is not the point here. The genics exist
not for the sake of exploring a science fictional premise, but in order to
illustrate the moral/religious question that lies at the heart of the book:
who is human in the sight of God? The city’s decline stems from the same
source: in their treatment of genics its people have betrayed their own humanity,
and what is human in them suffers as a result. If you can accept the allegorical
nature of all this, you’ll be fine with the vagueness of Baldry’s alternate
world scenario. If not, you may find it tough going.
The book shifts frequently between different points of view, following several
story threads at once. I’m not normally a big fan of this technique, but
Baldry does a deft job of linking the threads--in part through the nasty
presence of Count Dracone, who figures prominently in each of them. Things do fall down a bit toward the
end, where the coherence of the climax is diminished by being
seen through too many different eyes; but it all turns out so satisfactorily
that one hardly minds. The characters are recognizable "types"--the proud but
penniless nobleman, the sensitive artiste, the loyal servant, the steadfast
wife, and of course the fabulously villainous Dracone--but they’re also nicely
drawn individuals, particularly pragmatic and resourceful Serafina, the one
character who doesn’t really fit a stock role. Baldry also offers an affecting
portrait of the injustice of the genics’ servitude, drawing parallels between
their plight and more conventional slavery, especially in the character of
Alessandro, who pays the price of “passing”. As noted above, this is geared
to a religious, not a social, message--but it’s a gentle message and
Baldry doesn’t belabor it (though again, the reader must accept certain basic
assumptions that are important for allegorical rather than logical purposes,
such as that the hair contained in the reliquary ring really is the hair
of Christos).
This is a book that won’t be to everyone’s taste. Even readers not bothered
by the vague world building may find themselves put off by the generous doses
of sentiment, or by the unambiguousness with which each character receives
his or her just deserts at the end, or by the chaste treatment of sexual
themes--perverted Count Dracone and a story thread involving unrequited homosexual
passion notwithstanding. In these and other ways, this is a curiously old-fashioned
novel, reminding me very much of the historical romances (Romance with a
capital “R”, not the Harlequin kind) I read in childhood and adolescence.
I loved those books, and I loved this one.
If you’re up for a grand romantic journey, if you’d like to lose yourself
in a feast of atmosphere and emotion, you just may love it too.
Copyright © 2003 Victoria Strauss
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