A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson
Publisher – Tor
Published – Out Now
Price – £10.99 paperback £2.64 Kindle eBook
Long after the Towers left the world but before the dragons came to Daluça, the emperor brought his delegation of gods and diplomats to Olorum. As the royalty negotiates over trade routes and public services, the divinity seeks arcane assistance among the local gods.
Aqib bgm Sadiqi, fourth-cousin to the royal family and son of the Master of Beasts, has more mortal and pressing concerns. His heart has been captured for the first time by a handsome Daluçan soldier named Lucrio. In defiance of Saintly Canon, gossiping servants, and the furious disapproval of his father and brother, Aqib finds himself swept up in a whirlwind gay romance. But neither Aqib nor Lucrio know whether their love can survive all the hardships the world has to throw at them.
My favourite Doctor once said love is a promise but love is also choices. By committing to this person your relationships with others will change; being in a relationship continually steers your choices and will change you. Stories are often focused on the characters finally falling in love the consequences afterwards are rarely explored. In Kai Ashante Wilson’s glorius and intricate novella A Taste of Honey we follow one man’s possible meeting with the love of his life and then follow what happened instead when events did not follow the way he had hoped. A reminder that all choices have consequences good and bad but love perhaps will always try to win the day.
Aqib is a young minor royal looking after the Emperor’s Menagerie he happens to meet a solider visiting from the overseas Dalucan territory named Lucrio. A simple covernation that reveals a mtual attraction and over ten days they spend time together; fall in love and have to decide what happens next. Aqib lives in a Empire where homosexuality is punishable by death while Lucrio’s world sees this as acceptable. Family and political pressures mean that eventually Aqib sees Lucrio cross the sea never to return and then is put under pressure to marry into royalty for the status of his own family. Over decades we see Aqib meet the Gods; become a loving father and yet know deep down a memory of something he has lost is calling to him.
Now all I’ve told you is the simple plot and there a lot more to enjoy but what impresses me the most in this story is Wilson’s playing with time over days and decades and the key of consequences all delivered at novella length. Wilson alongside that creates an intricate and strange world resolent of the past and future that itself means the story has some surprises in store.
At a character level this a tale that throughout allows to witness those ten days where Aqib falls for Lucrio. In these sections Wilson captures that initial feeling of love and lust when all you want to do is spend time with someone and leave the wider world outside. We see Aqib being bullied by his brother and torn between love and family duty. Aqib is also young, naive and bit of a snob towards his family servants and status. Lucrio is a more rounded, stronger individual who also suspects a different side to Aqib’s family.
Their love affair is then interspersed with what happened to Aqib after he says goodbye. He is married to a wife he loves though it’s a fairly complicated arrangement; has a child he adores and we also his status and that of his family rises. Taking big time jumps I was impressed how Wilson develops a character over time. The Aqib we meet is now a father; understands court politics and yet still very much a second class citizen. He’s also forever shadowed by a sense of loss he can’t quite put a finger on any more denying him full happiness.
This leads to the world that the story takes place in and as in Wilson’s The Sorcerer of the Wildeeeps we get an intriguing mix of ancient fantasy world playing with African and in Lucrio’s case Roman cultures and myths but interspersed with moments of high technology. The latter comes from encounters with the empire’s mysterious gods and their talk of physics and maths which amusingly are felt to be only subjects for women who the only ones capable of exploring it. These sections give the story a sense of mythic depth as if we are witnessing important events that Aqib enables more than drives as the focus tends to be on his ambitious wife Femysade and his daughter Lucretia who has fearsome strength, intellect and kindness. All of which will drive the Empire forwards.
The question throughout for the reader is though has the right choice been made and what will happen next to Aqib as they become in front of us an old man with a life lived. It’s one Wilson kindly answers but not in a way I was expecting which made it all the sweeter.
A Taste of Honey is a gorgeous tale of love in its infancy capturing all that passion and then exploring love as a family; as a father and a touch of bittersweetness as to regrets as to what could have been. Wilson’s writing captures both times and types of live beautifully and makes you understand the world and choices made. Strongly recommended!
