The Deep

[sawyl]

John Crowley's first novel, The Deep is a strange of SF masquerading as a feudal fantasy. Set on a small disc world where the reigns of power constantly shift back and forth between two political blocs, Red and Black, and where a group of anonymous assassins, the Just, seek to bring down both parties in the name of the Folk.

The book opens with the arrival of the Visitor, a sexless amnesiac, just as the Red have deposed King Little Black forcing the Queen to flee and driving Protector Black Harrah into the arms of the Just. When the new king, Red Senlin, and his lieutenant Old Redhand give chase, they fall to Young Harrah, passing power to Red Senlin's Son and Redhand, the eldest of Old Redhand's three sons. Injured during a skirmish, Redhand's life is saved by the Visitor's superhuman strength and, in thanks, he takes the strange creature on as his Secretary.

Having claimed the throne for himself, King Red Senlin's Son immediately rehabilitates his lover, Young Harrah, and establishes a frivolous program of dramas and vanity projects leaving Redhand to control the City. After a brief retrenchment, during which Redhand is constantly shadowed by the Secretary, events are advanced by King Red Senlin's Son's manoeuvres to replace Redhand with Young Harrah and by the Just's selection of a new assassination target.

Despite the book's brevity, Crowley creates a dense, complex world through whose long & obscure history come the clues that indicate that the world is actually a created thing and the book is actually science fiction rather than fantasy. The Red and Black power groupings, as the roulette reference suggests, are completely arbitrary with almost nothing to distinguish them. The memberships of the groups shift over generations, with members of the Folk raising themselves up through the hierarchy, constantly aware as they do so that as they rise, so to do their chances of being assassinated by the Guns of the Just.

As may be apparent form the summary, names play an important part in the book, often indicating where their allegiances lie. Different generations share the same names — Old Redhand and his sons Redhand, Learned Redhand, and Youngest Redhand — while some, like Red Senlin's Son have no name apart from their family relationship. The Visitor, meanwhile, remains nameless with his — Crowley always uses the masculine pronoun — identity shifting as his role changes becoming the Secretary and, later, the Recorder. The Just, meanwhile, have their own system of nomenclature; one that involves renaming their own name with a name of its own, a non de guerre, which marks out the part of themselves that belongs to the struggle:

Her name was Nyamé, and the name of her name was Nod. Her Gun's name was Suddenly. She carried Suddenly in a pouch of oiled goatskin at her side, the kind watermen carry their belongings in, for she was a waterman's daughter: that is, Nyamé was. Nod was Just. Suddenly had said so.

Although the book ends with some of the Visitor's questions answered, some of things are only hinted at or left completely open. And if there are signs that the Red/Black conflict may be entering a period of stability under King Sennred, there are indications that a new doctrine might be rising among the just to replace it — as with real history, the world seems set to continue on much as it always has done, regardless of the presence of the Visitor as the reader's representative.

Well worth reading.