Tower of Mud and Straw by Yaroslav Barsukov: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

Tower of Mud and Straw by Yaroslav Barsukov

Tower of Mud and Straw is a short fantasy novel (or a long short story) that tells an interesting and complex story in the limited space it’s given. I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Shea Ashcroft is a disgraced politician who is ordered to the provinces to oversee a construction of a gigantic tower. Feeling sorry for himself, he decides to make sure it’s built fast so that he can return to the queen victorious. But this dream soon crumbles. Dangerous alien technology is being used for building the tower, and he has no choice but to remove it, halting the project. Humans are furious, but aliens rejoice: they tell a story of a similar tower that caused a portal to open and destroy their world. But Shea is a bit wishy-washy person and easy to persuade. A promise of a high position in court makes him return the alien technology to start the construction again—only to discover that the aliens were right. There is a portal forming. Now the choice becomes between destroying the tower and his future, or letting the portal destroy everything.

Alongside the main story there is another of Shea’s sister Lena who has died because of the alien technology, which dictates much of Shea’s decisions. He meets another Lena, an alien woman opposing the tower and they fall in love—or at least he does. His decision to continue building the tower seals Lena’s fate, and Shea is left with the realisation that he has failed two women he has loved. So how to atone?

The ending is fairly self-evident after a certain point; there’s only one way it can go for the tower. Shea’s fate, however, could’ve gone either way. The choice suits a short story better than it would’ve suited a long novel, though I kind of wished there would have been another way out for Shea.

This was an excellent story that could easily have been a longer novel too; the world is rich and the politics that are only hinted at here are complex. The writing style was sparse, a little too sparse at times; it could’ve used some fleshing out in places, especially when it came to describing sequences of events. But that, too, suited the short form just fine. All in all, a great one evening’s read.