Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley
I would like to thank Hanna from Solaris for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Publisher – Solaris
Published - Out Now
Price - £14.99 hardback £5.99 Kindle eBook
This is a place where we can be alone, together.
Skyward Inn, within the high walls of the Western Protectorate, is a place of safety, where people come together to tell stories of the time before the war with Qita. But safety from what?
Qita surrendered without complaint when Earth invaded; Innkeepers Jem and Isley, veterans from either side, have regrets but few scars. Their peace is disturbed when a visitor known to Isley comes to the Inn asking for help, bringing reminders of an unnerving past and triggering an uncertain future.
Did humanity really win the war?
As I bet many of you, we cannot wait to catch up with friends and loved ones in person very soon. I also know very soon after that there will be a moment when someone invites me to something with lots of people and I’ll politely decline because I want to stay home and read a book. I think people seem to have a natural desire both to be part of some group and also stay an individual doing their own thing. Is this something unique to humanity? Is it the right thing for people? This was just one theme explored in the beguiling Skyward Inn by Aliya Whitely which gives the reader plenty of food for thought without taking any particular stances yet is a great piece of science fiction.
In the future Earth reached the stars found an interstellar space that takes us to another planet where we met the Qita who wisely surrendered without engaging in a fight. Slowly teams turn the humanoid Qita to understanding our culture and taking our lead. Jem was one of those who walked an alien planet nailing propaganda to persuade Qita towards human life but made regular contact with Isley a Qita and eventually the two come back to Earth to Jem’s part of what was once the South West of England and now known as the Western Protectorate. There they run the Skyward Inn with Isley delighting the locals with a local powerful Qita brew that makes you understand your memories. Life in the Protectorate that tries to recapture the old ways of life in farming is hard and Jem has family ties here including an estranged son Fosse now straining at the idea of staying in the Protectorate himself, but Isley has an unexpected visitor from the stars and a strange group of newcomers have come to claim a farm. Change is coming once again to all and the past and future is up for review.
Reading Skyward In was a bit like looking into a giant pool of water. You get to see your own thoughts reflected back at you and also become aware that there is a huge amount of depth going on in the story. Every major character has reached a decision point in their lives about being part of or leaving something and deciding in that decision what it turns the individual into. Jem our human narrator is someone who has left the Earth space teams for simpler life running s bar back home, but it is clear she doesn’t exactly feel the Western Protectorate is home and indeed even her own family seem ambivalent on her return. Isley it appears is felt to be a little unusual for a Qita in deciding to leave the home world but refuses to discuss too much about Qita life with Jem despite their friendship. In between the two is Fosse at that tricky stage knowing he can stay in the small village life or start to explore the more advance countries outside the protectorate and even space. These personal choices are delivered really subtly a conversation between a parent and their child about the absent father is done in small bullet points leaving much for the reader to fill in the gaps or walking through the crystal-clear memories the Brew creates that give an older character perspective as to why they did the things they do. Fosse can be both a confused child, a very angry young man and yet capable of kindness. This isn’t a story of heroes and villains but people and what made them do things at certain points and as a reader I wasn’t putting people into one category or the other for long.
At a larger level we see the concept of people joining, leaving, and being compelled to join other groups. The Western Protectorate has split from the wider earth govt and in it’s right to elf determination now struggles with basic things like medication and technology – trade is bartering, and they are now desperate to get more people to emigrate inwards. At one stage there is a discussion about a Qita found in the Protectorate and a character puts a ‘human’ face on an immigrant rather than saying it’s alien invaders from abroad – moving the concept of outsiders from an amorphous blob to someone they can see as a person. Yet we also see a brutal attack on another Qita by people who clearly don’t want their little land invaded.
It’s hard for me to not read something about Brexit in that approach but this isn’t a novel looking at any one instance in particular but instead exploring how people can suddenly decide they’ve had enough and put the shutters around them. Yet at the same time we don’t see these people condemning what is effectively the colonisation of the Qita that seems to be a good thing from a human perspective – their surrender to humanity preventing a wider war and growing earth’s power. The novel reminds us that it is fascinating how people who both want their own autonomy to seem fine with some sense of empire for themselves provided they are in charge. My sense from the story was the concept of choice – people should be allowed to decide for the reasons they believe but then be allowed to change them as things change for the good or worse and those people then need to live with the consequences of those decisions – broken families, lost loves, or severe loss in living standards.; which may change people’s ideas on being part of something greater.
The final element of the story though moves the tale into something both more dreamlike and also treads the borders of horror. Memories are played not just of the past but also future events – time feels more fluid as we see where the choices made now start to lead. At the same time, we hear Earth is starting to have areas in quarantine due to some strange infection and a graveyard is troubling a widow who keeps returning at night. Here Whiteley adds a very eerie organic element top the tale that we see links all these ideas together and shows something has been rumbling on in the background of the story and now arrives in a dramatic finale neatly underlining all the prior themes.
You will not come away with clear answers from Skyward Inn. As with other Whiteley tales we get an explanation of what we have been reading but the sense of a larger tale and themes that won’t get fully resolved and is left to the reader to decide what happens next. This is the type of tale where I as the reader long after reading I am still working out my own reactions to the decisions made and which I felt were right or wrong. Skyward Inn is beguiling, thoughtful, and sometimes disturbing. Most of all I sense this small pub and its occupants in the future will always haunt me. Highly recommended
