Steeplejack

Steeplejack by A.J. Hartley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"We say we are all equal in Bar-Selehm, but you know as well as I do that that is not even close to being true. You cannot simply take people's land, property, freedom from them and then, a couple of hundred years later, when you have built up your industries and your schools and your armies, pronounce them equals. And even when you pretend it is true, you do not change the hearts of men, and a great deal of small horrors have to be ignored, hidden, if they myth of equality is to be sustained."

Steeplejack is set in a fantasy version of Victorian-era South Africa, complete with all of the racism you'd imagine such a setting would contain. Ang, the main character, is a teenage girl from the slums on the edge of Bar-Selehm. She's an unwanted third daughter, but she's found a living working as the only female steeplejack in the Seventh Street gang - so basically she climbs chimneys and fixes/cleans them. The story follows her as she discovers her new apprentice has been murdered as part of an elaborate plot Ang is driven to find the source of.

Steeplejack being published in 2016 (and my reading it after the 2016 US presidential election) feels very timely. I chose the above quote to help sum up the book because this fantasy is really about a very real problem: historic tensions between people based on the color of their skin. There are protests in the city and attempts to incite international incidents. And at the heart of everything is a struggle among the elite for power and money.

Ang's personal struggles are dramatic, but relateable. She's still grieving for her father two years after his death. She wants to get along with her sisters, both distant from her for very different reasons. She feels guilty for removing herself from her own culture, but disagrees with the heart of their rules. She's self-sufficient, but insecure. She's invested in helping those too weak to be able to help themselves, but she questions the effect on her own life.

Hartley's writing style is mostly gripping. I am seriously jealous of his ability to sketch out side characters in a few sentences to the point where I feel like they are complete people I can see and hear. I understand their motivations without their being flat characters. He has an excellent sense of pacing and I found myself eagerly flipping to the next chapter to find out what happened next. But there was a lot of info dumping in the beginning of the book relating the history of the city that I felt he could have easily conveyed as the facts became especially relevant. I also had some difficulty understanding Ang's motivations at times - for a seventeen year old girl, she's unusually responsible and ... patriotic? I'm not sure what the word would be, but she often does things in defiance of her own survival to preserve the city.

My biggest disappointment (view spoiler)[ (and this is a silly thing, I will admit) is that I thought Ang and Dahria had AMAZING chemistry and when Ang announced they were going to solve a murder together, my mind immediately flashed on how amazing a slow burn relationship between them could be. Alas, no such luck. It seems instead that Ang is interested in Dahria's brother, her employer Willinghouse. That's fine. I liked the whole Mnenga storyline, and I liked that romance was not a major part of the story in any way. I can see being interested in a future relationship angle with Willinghouse, so I'm not TOO disappointed. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, I was pleased with my decision to read this. It had none of the usual YA tropes I dislike, and the diversity it portrayed was compelling. I'm eager for the sequel!

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