Waterblack by Alex Pheby: Review by Ian Mond

Waterblack, Alex Pheby (Tor 978-1-250-81729-7, $32.00, 640pp, hc) January 2025.

Toward the end of Waterblack, in the middle of one of several appendices, the omniscient narrator, who has held our hand across three novels, tells us that the “violent intentions” of one of the novel’s key antagonists, intentions that are to “fuel a series of later events,” intentions that “would end in… success… in the matter of killing the proper weftling and securing his corpse,” intentions that you might say are the driving force of the Cities of the Weft trilogy, are “too complicated to outline here.” The chutzpah of Alex Pheby. To tantalise us with the story behind the story, to join the dots between our present and the fantastical deep future of Mordew, Malarkoi and Waterblack, and then to announce that after 1,800 pages of glorious, mind-boggling narrative, there isn’t room in the warp or weft of reality to explain how we got here. This one moment, this cheeky wink to the reader, encapsulates everything astonishing about the Cities of the Weft. In a series that’s all about power, Pheby reminds us that he’s the one in control; he chooses which narrative lever to pull. Maybe Pheby will return to tell us the tale of Sebastian Cope, Clarissa Delacroix, Nathaniel Treeves and Portia Hall, the members of the “Weftling Tontine,” but whether he does or not will be his choice – these are his secrets to reveal.

Well before you get to that single sentence, that offhand remark about “violent intentions,” it’s already apparent that Pheby has no interest in adopting a conventional approach to the final book in a trilogy. Malarkoi ends with the promise of Nathan, with the magical dog Sirius by his side, becoming the Master of Waterblack, “the so-called City of Death,” and forming an army populated from the millions of souls, lives cruelly ended, who inhabit the city. But Waterblack, despite its title, doesn’t start there. After a summary of the previous two novels (thank you, Mr Pheby) and the now traditional Dramatis Personae, including an alphabetical list of the weird shit we’re about to encounter, we’re introduced to a nine-year-old girl named Sharli. The Dramatis Personae has helpfully warned us that this is going to happen; that rather than join Nathan as he enters the City of the Dead, Sharli, a peripheral character in the previous two volumes, is going to take a more central role in the final book of the trilogy. Hilariously, the narrator foreshadows our frustration:

Why, you might ask, is a marginal character from the first two books taking up so much of your time in the third? The answer is that she was a marginal character in the events of the first two books because the story was not being told from her point of view. If it had been told from her point of view, then you would have been more aware that she had a central role in the story….

The narrator’s explanation doesn’t end there; they explain how people at the periphery are, sometimes, the most important individuals in our lives and that, if we weren’t so distracted by the “Masters of [our] city,” we’d recognise this. Of course, says the narrator, “a good book treats the true and correct things with respect, and which ignores incorrectness, even if that incorrectness is convenient to a reader.”

Sharli is a child of the Dummonii, the priesthood that lives at the foot of the Mistress of Malarkoi’s pyramid. Like her pet firebird, which is small in size and has an injured foot, Sharli is viewed by the priests as flawed and, as such, won’t be chosen for sacrifice when she turns ten. However, a chance encounter with the Eighth Atheistic Crusade (who are spying on the Mistress) changes everything. She ends up in Mordew and falls into the orbit of the oily and devious Mr Padge – not that Sharli sees him that way, she’s besotted – where she will ultimately be employed as one of Padge’s assassins. After one of Sharli’s jobs (not saying which one) goes horribly wrong, she is rescued (not saying why) by the Eighth Atheistic Crusade, who take Sharli back to the Assembly, the utopian culture with a Daniel Dennett view of consciousness, a scientific appreciation of the weft, and a hatred for all things Tontine. Under their auspices, Sharli is taught the art of God-killing – her target, Nathan Treeves.

Pheby, or the narrator, eventually follows through on their promise. The section where Nathan, free of the tinderbox, takes on the mantle of Master of Waterblack is Pheby at his most imaginative and peculiar best (oh, my, those cats). And it’s only the beginning of a second half that is bursting with energy, where the tension between the rational and irrational comes to a climactic, pyrotechnic, cinematic head.

For all of Pheby’s playfulness, his subversion of well-established tropes – such as the “Chosen One,” the “Dark Lord,” the “Epic Quest” – The Cities of the Weft trilogy is more than just a de­construction of Tolkien-flavoured fantasy. Like all good literature, it’s a tale about self-realisation, sometimes to the negative (see Sebastian Cope and the Tontine) but mainly to the positive (see Sharli, who comes to terms with who she is, with what she wants, or Nathan, who outgrows his parents, or the dogs Anaximander and Sirius who embrace their unique relationship with reality). Without this, The Cities of the Weft would still be a magnificent and intellectual delight brimming with outlandish notions, but it would lack, for want of a better term, “soul.” I hope this isn’t the last we see of this world – Waterblack’s final appendix ends with a hint that there are more tales in the offering – but if this is it, I won’t be sad or disappointed. Alex Pheby has entertained me; he’s made me laugh, gasp, and hold back tears. What more could I want?

Interested in this title? Your purchase through the links below brings us a small amount of affiliate income and helps us keep doing all the reviews you love to read!

This review and more like it in the February 2025 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.