I really like when magic isn’t normally part of a world and the characters have to come to terms with extraordinary events just as readers do. One thing that I did really like, though, is the way that magic is introduced in the novel. I was even a little disappointed that we spent so little time with Raule when I found her much more interesting that Gwynn once the two reach the city of Ashamoil, we become deeply embroiled in the goings-on of Gwynn and his employer, with occasional glimpses at what Raule is doing.
In many ways, this novel felt less like a narrative and more like a series of very striking moments Bishop’s language was frequently visceral and vivid, but I had trouble seeing how things really fit together over time. Beth eventually leaves the city, and shortly thereafter, Gwynn and Raule both decide to do the same, though separately. As Raule and Gwynn see each other more and more rarely, Gwynn begins an affair with a young artist named Beth, and at this point, the novel starts getting weird Gwynn’s work situation becomes increasingly unstable as his girlfriend’s mental state appears to be deteriorating as well (at one point he goes to her house to find her with a bunch of strangers sewing together different parts of dead animals to create chimeric creatures). Gwynn takes work as a hired gun for a slave trader, to Raule’s disgust. There Raule is shunned from the school of doctors despite her extensive knowledge of field medicine and instead takes a post in a religious hospital in one of the poorest districts of the city. The Plot: After years of fighting a military dictator, former compatriots Raule and Gwynn leave the desert for the exotic city of Ashamoil. At the same time, The Etched City is a novel that I can’t get out of my head and that I have trouble explaining to others when I try. I had read a couple of her short stories, most notably “The Art of Dying” from the Vandermeer’s The New Weird anthology, so I was somewhat prepared for Bishop’s world of gunslingers and duelists, artists and prostitutes. Bishop’s first novel, The Etched City, appeared in 2003 and is her only novel to date.
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