Untethered Sky

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Here’s what you need to know if you haven’t had the absolute pleasure of reading fiction from Fonda Lee: She can write her damn heart out. And she will rip yours out in the process and you will say, “Thank you, Fonda Lee, you have earned this.” This was my experience (and many readers’ experiences) with the Jade City trilogy, and it was my experience again with her latest, Untethered Sky—a lean, vicious, beautiful and bittersweet story of grief, loss, and rage. Ester has sought purpose ever since a manticore murdered her mother and baby brother. Her path leads her to the Royal Mews and the rocs, the giant birds who are the only things capable of killing a manticore…but the bond between roc and ruhker is as dangerous as it is strong.

zahra was not yet in my life, but she would be. she answered the question in my soul and made me worthwhile. and you were not yet in my life either, but then you came into it. you’re part of the answer and even without your roc, you’re worth more to me than you could ever know. ”Since last year,” I said. And then because the young man seemed friendly, and knew something about falcons, I asked, “Are you a falconer too?” thank you, i whispered, as she disappeared from my straining sight for the last time. for allowing me to hunt with you. for letting me borrow your strength. for lending me your wings. ”

this was a lil novella i read right after coming out of a mini reading slump and it definitely delivered what i expected, but this could have easily been a 4 stars if it was a full length book. fonda lee we were robbed 😤 But the superb strengths of The Green Bone Saga's storytelling are retained here, even if they were delivered in a different and smaller format. The dynamic between Ester and Zahra was engaging to read, and the terrific action scenes you can expect from Lee's writing are evident in the text. The last chapter was a breathtaking hunt sequence filled with emotions and tension. Plus, it was refreshing to see the implementation of popular creatures in Middle-Eastern mythologies like Roc and Manticore. Whether by Fonda Lee or other authors, Roc and Manticore rarely appear in fantasy books, especially when compared to dragons and other famous DnD creatures.Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family. Wild rocs were a rare sight in the south where I grew up. My father was a minor landowner with a small but fertile and well-managed parcel of pastureland upon which we raised goats and grew olive trees. We weren’t wealthy, but we were well off enough to have house servants in addition to field serfs. After I was born, it seemed my mother wasn’t able to have more children. She miscarried several times, each loss causing her tremendous pain and heartache. In some of my earliest memories, she’s lying on cushions, sweaty, pale, and exhausted, her breath sour from throwing up. “You were too big and came out too late,” she moaned. “You ruined something inside me.”

The novella is essentially about how you need a monster to catch a monster, whilst carrying the hefty weight of reality by reminding us that monsters cannot be tamed. When you love a person, you are expected to give them their freedom, but when you love a monster, you keep it caged. I was six years old the first time I saw a roc. At first, I thought it was an especially large buzzard circling overhead, but then it drifted lower in the sky, and I saw the shape and color of it, the sheer size of it. I started running, laughing and shouting, toward the open ground beneath where it balanced on the stiff wind. I wasn’t afraid, just childishly delighted, as if I’d seen a horse the size of a tree, or a dog the size of an ox.

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beautifully immersive writing and natural worldbuilding - fonda lee proved she's just as good at writing traditional adventure fantasy as she is at gritty urban fantasy. Lee follows up her phenomenal Green Bone Saga trilogy with this fantastic stand-alone epic fantasy novella that feels like a classic folktale.... Untethered Sky is an evocative, emotional novella you’ll want to finish in a single sitting because it’s just that good"— BuzzFeed

But while Lee spends time on Ester’s personal tragedy, and her masterful foreshadowing in Ester’s voice bridges each section, tying the past to the future on vibrating threads, much of the book glows with joy. Lee’s description of the rocs and their relationships with their trainers is full of awe and wonder. The irritation many ruhkers feel about the nobility they must occasionally entertain feels reminiscent of the residents of any tourist town, irked when strangers wander into their territory to prevent them from doing their work. But the court of Dartha also has its wonders, and the temple to the Almighty Fire Bringer, Dartha’s god, makes an impression with its beauty and sense of sacredness, despite its short appearance. While I liked Untethered Sky (can Fonda Lee even write anything bad?), I felt it could be so much more. Certainly, if you were expecting something along the lines of The Green Bone saga, you will be somewhat disappointed. Lee] juggles the personal and the epic with deft, admirable skill, weaving a story that is equally sweeping and intimate."—NPR on Jade War A beautifully told story of a young woman, her magnificent, monstrous raptor, and her journey through grief, obsession, courage, and love."—Kate Elliott When you love a person, you are expected to give them their freedom, but when you love a monster, you keep it caged.”Our main character is Ester, whose family was devastated by a manticore when she was very young. She grew up wanting to hunt monsters, and this led her to want to become a ruhker, the people who train and fly rocs (very large birds of prey, though not as large as most myths would have them) which are the only known predator that can kill a manticore. We follow as Ester trains, and is finally given a roc, a juvenile female named Zahra. Sometimes I read a book that feels just so tailored to my personal interests and strange niches that I cannot believe it exists, but this is one of them. I was so hesitant going into this book, so much so that I put it off for months - my friends who have read it haven't really sung its praises, and I didn't love Lee's last novella as much as I was hoping to have - but all my worries were completely unfounded. Growing up, if you asked me what my dream job would be if I didn't have to worry about money, I would've told you I wanted to be a falcon trainer. Why? I honestly could never really explain it, but reading this book made me feel like Fonda Lee put into words how I've always felt about birds of prey - it so accurately captures the emotions of awe, respect, and fear for these magnificent creatures, and because of that, this book felt so special to me. Ester is a fascinating character working through her own past traumas, most notably the brutal killing of her mother and brother by one of the mighty manticores. She set her on her own path, not only to seek her own personal vengeance against the manticore who killed her family (or, at least, a proxy for that manticore), but also seeking her independence and place in the world. Ester has a complex relationship with her father permeated by sexism, mourning, and prejudice and Ester ultimately seeks respect and identity in her new role as the rukher. The combination of rocs and manticores inspired Lee’s descriptions of Dartha. “ Rocs and manticores both originate from Persian mythology, so I wanted the fictional kingdom of Dartha to evoke the monsters’ ‘natural habitat’ of the Middle East,” she described. To keep the worldbuilding tight for the length of the piece, Lee focused much of her real-world research on the art of falconry, on which the role of the ruhkers is based. “I did a substantial amount of research into the sport and culture of falconry,” Lee revealed, “and also into the climate, landscape, plants, and animals of what is now modern-day Iran. I wanted to make all the little details of Ester’s day-to-day life feel real and authentic (within the context of a world with giant birds and man-eating monsters).” But where Lee found elements from history that would have limited her storytelling, she let them fall away. Commoner women would have been unlikely to attain a position as royal falconers in Persia, she confessed, but “I felt quite free not to adhere to that in my fantasy world, where the widespread threat of manticores led to the development of the ruhking profession, and the only creatures that can kill manticores sometimes have strong gender preference (as parrots and other domestic birds often do).” Despite its shortcomings, “Untethered Sky” includes several standout scenes, such as the brutal murder of Ester’s mother and brother at the beginning of the novella. This scene is expertly crafted, evoking intense emotions of grief, fear, and horror. Lee’s decision to include unsettling details adds to the situation’s visceral realism and heightens the impact of the tragedy and the horror a young Ester must have felt. This scene serves as a gripping introduction to the story and expertly establishes Ester’s motivation for becoming a ruhker. It is a testament to Lee’s skill that this scene remains vividly etched in the reader’s mind long after the book is finished.