A Skinful of Shadows, by Frances Hardinge

[sophia_sol]

By all reasonable assessments I should not have found this the least stressful book by Frances Hardinge I've read so far. It is set during the British Civil War and involves murder and ghosts and murder-by-ghosts and a girl with an extended family who intend to do really nasty things to her. I couldn't even finish reading Hardinge's book A Face Like Glass because it was too stressful. And yet! This one was fine. I didn't have to go anxiously googling for spoilers even once.

(I think this is evidence that I find death way less scary than being caught in social situations where it's not clear what's going on and what to do....)

Anyway! A Skinful of Shadows is a very Hardinge book, as all books by Hardinge tend to be, and it is as always excellent.

But oh dang reading this book so soon after A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine was so interesting because there's something integral to the premise of each that has remarkable parallels but with which the authors do very different things!

The differences and similarities between being part of an imago-line and being a host for ghosts is SO INTERESTING.

In A Memory Called Empire, in the culture of the main character, it is considered normal to have a tiny machine implanted in your brain that records you and your life, and after your death you may get implanted into a new person's head, and the two of you learn to work together as the new person makes use of your skills and insights and experience, and eventually the two of you become basically like one merged person. And then that person has also been recorded and after death is implanted in a new person, so the person A/person B hybrid person can contribute skills and insights and experiences to the new new person, and so on. The recordy thing that contains the past people is called an imago. Being part of the inheritance of these recordings is being part of an imago-line. It is considered good and right to do this, and in no way a threat to someone's identity or sense of self.

In A Skinful of Shadows, certain people (including our young heroine Makepeace) are able to house the ghost of a dead person in themselves. And the various people in a body, including both the original owner and any ghost passengers, can mentally talk to one another, and any inhabitant can control the body. Just like with an imago. But the examples of ghost-hosting that Makepeace personally sees played out through most of the book are horrible and involve the ghosts.....basically taking over the body such that the host is no longer themself. Which an imago could be used for as well in certain circumstances but never does because that's so antithetical to the use of imagos.

So something that's very similar happens in each case, but based on both the cultural contexts and the intentions of the person being added to the existing person's body, the results are totally different. And reading the two books back to back meant that while reading A Skinful of Shadows I was SIMULTANEOUSLY like "this book is corrupting the wonderful things imagos can be" AND "oh dang, imagos are wayyyy creepier than they felt like back when I was reading A Memory Called Empire."

But then the relationship between Makepeace and the bear ghost she carries eventually DOES become like the imago relationships, where the two are no longer separable from each other, and the imago's skills and experiences and instincts become truly a part of the person. And I had so many feelings! I mean, I loved Bear, and I loved how protective Bear and Makepeace are from very early on, but then by the end they've truly learned how to work together and Makepeace has learned how to trust him and their relationship is BEAUTIFUL and I love it very much. And I love how this is honestly one of the most integral relationships portrayed in the entire book, and it is a relationship between a human and the ghost of a bear. Like, a regular bear, not a special magical talking bear or anything. A bear. A VERY GOOD bear. It was amazing.

Anyway other things happened too and I also liked Makepeace's relationships with James, and Helen, and Morgan, and her mother. But the stuff about the parallels with A Memory Called Empire was apparently what I wanted to talk about the most. Whoops!

Comments

[soupytwist]

Oh how interesting! I loved Memory Called Empire, it was brilliant, but it's been long enough since I read Skinful of Shadows that I hadn't put them together at all. It really is a very similar story come at from a horror/YA perspective and an adult SF perspective.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, I don't think I'd have noticed either, if I hadn't read them in such brief succession! But you've got it exactly right, that it's the same thing told from a different genre perspective.

[thedarlingone]

Hm, I haven't read either book but this kind of reminds me of conversations I've had with brin_bellway about the ways multiple personalities (by whatever means) tend to be treated in fiction. Especially in TV sources where maintaining the status quo is more important, it's extremely common for "this body has multiple consciousnesses" to turn into "onoes this body is Dying because a body can only maintain one consciousness / conflict between two consciousnesses in the same body is Unnatural / one of the consciousnesses has turned Evil and taken over and is trying to kill the others and become the only consciousness even though that will kill the body and the remaining consciousness too!" ...that last one is really common and really specific.

I don't know that I have much to contribute to this conversation, but that was a thought. The imago thing where having multiple consciousnesses working harmoniously inside the same head is a beneficial thing, my impression is that it's very rare to find that in fiction, and that the "evil ghosts taking over" is more common. But I get that impression mostly from conversations with Brin and occasionally from the sort of cultural gestalt that causes me not to mention my boys in meatspace much.

[sophia_sol]

Huh, I guess I don't read much of a certain variety of fiction, because although I'd heard that these kinds of negative tropes were a thing I don't recall having run into them myself. I guess it's unusual that both the books on the subject I've read recently end with the main character happily and successfully sharing her head with others!

[genarti]

Oh, fascinating! I have read and LOVED LOVED LOVED A Skinful of Shadows, but haven't read A Memory Called Empire yet (though it's definitely high on my list after all the gushing I've been seeing from trustworthy sources.) I don't know that I'd call it one of the less stressful Hardinges, personally, although it's probably not top of the list either. (I'm trying to think what is. A Face Like Glass is definitely high on the list, though I think it's less because I find social situations stressful and more because I find it stressful to watch someone else not pick up on the rules and be unable to nudge them along or give hints or swoop into the conversation or ANYTHING because uh they're a fictional character, and some parts of The Lie Tree too, for all that that's one of my very favorites.) Anyway, what a cool and fascinating back-to-back read! I'll definitely be thinking of this whenever I do read A Memory Called Empire.

[sophia_sol]

I mean, I find social situations stressful because I worry I AM the one being watched not pick up on the unspoken rules, so like, same feeling from the other side, I guess!

Glad you enjoyed my thoughts, and I'd be interested to hear what you think of A Memory Called Empire when/if you do get to it :)

[genarti]

I don't mean to imply that I'm always picking up on all unspoken rules, for the record! Or that I've never been stressed about it. But it's pretty situational whether I feel stressed or only embarrassed afterwards or just put my chin up stubbornly and go WELL THEY WEREN'T CLEAR SO I DON'T SEE WHY I SHOULD BE BOTHERED, whereas in fiction watching characters flounder hits my secondhand embarrassment squick hard, a lot of the time. But I do love Frances Hardinge and all her books, emphatically including A Face Like Glass and all the themes it choses to juggle, so.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, legit! I love Frances Hardinge too and I wish I could have finished A Face Like Glass. Maybe I'll come back to it once I've gotten through her other books.

[cahn]

That is so interesting!! Also it throws into sharper relief how that *spoiler* thing that *spoiler* wants to do in Empire is sooooo creepy (which obviously it is and Mahit thinks it is in the context of the book, but it's almost like it is so obviously creepy to Mahit that it doesn't really need much exploration -- so it's interesting that it is explored more here!)

[sophia_sol]

Yes! YES exactly, about the spoiler thing you refer to!

[skygiants]

The idea of composite-entities and senses of self and how that contributes to personhood is so fascinating to me - I have not yet read Memory of Empire, but there's something very similar in Deep Space Nine, with the alien creature that bonds with a series of hosts in turn and brings their memories with it, that I hadn't thought to associate with Skinful of Shadows until now.

I ALSO LOVE THE BEAR. And the fact that Frances Hardinge threw in a cross-dressing soldier at the very end, as a present, just for me.

[sophia_sol]

Oh huh, yeah, I hadn't thought about the Dax symbiont in this context (possibly because I only really know of Dax from fanfic focused on other characters....) but I can see how it's a related idea as well!

I loved the crossdressing soldier too, but that was almost too last minute for me, like, I couldn't properly appreciate her because the book was immediately over! Someone needs to write fanfic involving her some more.