Alex Brown Reviews A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert
A Necessary Chaos, Brent Lambert (Neon Hemlock Press 978-1-95208-646-5, $13.99. 156pp, tp) October 2023. Cover by Cathy Kwan.
Switching gears, let’s dive into novella A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert. In a world where technology and magic collide live two gay Black men, Althus and Vade. Every so often, the boyfriends are able to carve time out of their busy work schedules to meet, usually at some touristy party place, for a wild few nights of sex, seduction, and play. Then it’s back to the real world and their day jobs. That’s what they tell each other, anyway. In truth, both are spies spying on each other. Vade works for the corporate government as a Whisper, an elite assassin, while Althus is a high-ranking rebel fighter. Vade believes in bringing order to a chaotic world, while Althus believes freedom isn’t really freedom if it comes with imperialist strings attached. An act of brutal, magic-fueled violence sets the lovers against each other, but the terrible secrets of their bosses will either break their bond permanently or pull them back together. With wild technology, interdimensional monsters, and trippy action scenes, Lambert asks the reader what the price of freedom is and who must pay it.
Out of all the wonderful things about A Necessary Chaos, there were two elements I couldn’t get enough of. The first were the characters. Everyone, from the protagonists to the secondary characters, felt real to me. Every character had depth and dimension, as if they existed even when they weren’t on the page. The romance between Althus and Vade crackled with heat and tension. Lambert makes it nearly impossible not to care about what happens to them. As much as I enjoy the brevity of novellas, this is one of those times where I honestly wish A Necessary Chaos was longer so I could spend more time with Althus, Vade, Kermola, and Sajime.
The second thing I loved was how this novella defies genre categorization. Technically it’s science fantasy, but it’s also action adventure, epic fantasy, dystopian science fiction, romance, and a little bit of supernatural horror. It’s all over the place in the best possible way. It’s a wild, sexy ride that has familiar elements but is also unlike anything else.
Some people expect novellas to be light on plot and worldbuilding simply because of their shorter page length. Lambert tosses that assumption out the window. The world here is vast and densely populated, not with a large cast but with a deep history and a crunchy reality. It feels like he could tell an endless series of stories in this world and not run out of ideas or characters; it’s that well fleshed out. And frankly, it’s so refreshing to have two Black queer characters get to play in a sandbox like this. There’s no racial violence or generational trauma tied to slavery and Jim Crow. There are no allegories for slavery or overcoming racialized oppression. It’s just two guys as passionate for each other as they are for the things they believe about their political organizations, mixed with raucous action and swoony romance.
Both Brent Lambert’s A Necessary Chaos and Suzan Palumbo’s Skin Thief: Stories demonstrate not only the power of small presses but the necessity of them as well. Neon Hemlock consistently publishes incredible queer speculative fiction from authors who may not be able to easily break through the gates of the bigger publishing houses. It offers a platform to voices I’m desperate to hear and stories I long to read. I’ve read most of their titles at this point, and there’s not a mediocre one in the bunch.
A lot of that incredibleness is thanks to writer and editor dave ring, who is the managing editor and publisher at Neon Hemlock (not to mention the co-editor of the extremely excellent queer speculative fiction magazine Baffling). Publisher’s Weekly once declared Neon Hemlock the “apex of queer speculative fiction publishing,” and they weren’t exaggerating. It and dave are doing the Lord’s work. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Alex Brown is a librarian, author, historian, and Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, young adult fiction, librarianship, and Black history.
This review and more like it in the December and January 2023 issue of Locus.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.
©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.
