Soleri Is a Game of Thrones with Intimate Stakes

In Soleri, Michael Johnston’s debut novel and the start of a series, I encountered another author who understand this principle, even as he splashes paint across an epic canvas. In a story of divine-descended kings and empires falling, he never forgets about the the humanity of his heroes, villains, and, yes, gods.
The novel opens at a crucial moment for its characters. Sola, the ancient desert capital of the Soleri empire, has been ruled over by the same family of god-descended emperors for thousands of years, since before calendars or written history. The empire’s constituent parts are restless—the subdued kingdom of Feren has a new king, Dagrun, brought to his throne by rebellion; there are food shortages everywhere, and raiders from the hinterlands are growing ever bolder. Another rebellion is rising in the south, and the realm’s chief general has just been killed by his own son, who is willing to do anything to raise his station. His eyes are set firmly on the office of the Ray, the first steward of the empire and the only living being permitted to see the imperial family and live to tell the tale. The current Ray, Suten Anu, is, after all, an old man with no son, and it’s only a matter of time…
As this game of thrones unfolds, it is the strained, bitter lives of one deeply wounded family that chiefly concern us: the ruling family of the kingdom of Harkana, whose own revolt was put down mercilessly a generation ago. The present king, Arko, is corrupted, consumed by anger and bone-deep guilt for the part he played in the revolt. His ambitious daughter Merit holds court, queen in all but name, while his second daughter Kepi yearns for freedom after her own political marriage as a young girl went horribly wrong. Ren, Arko’s son and heir, has been held captive in the imperial city since he was three years old; he is the traditional “tribute” demanded by the emperor, who imprisons heirs to royal houses in the capital until their parent dies. Harkana’s queen, Sarra, fled 10 years ago to the priesthood, leaving behind a broken marriage and bitter children, and has since risen to become the empire’s chief priest of their sun god, Mithra. She also now harbors deadly secrets that, if revealed, could end life in Sola forever.
All that’s needed to ignite world-altering conflagration is a match thrown on already assembled kindling, and someone who knows just where and when to throw it. When something goes horribly wrong at the annual Festival of the Devouring, an ancient rite symbolizing the power of the Soleri, causing riot and confusion at the center of the empire, it may be the spark that starts a wildfire.

Soleri presents a spectrum of characters and plots that will give a wide variety of readers to latch onto. It’s a classic coming-of-age tale, with a story of an anti-hero’s corruption to match. It’s got grizzled warriors in it for one last job, and villains with chips on their shoulders that might have been laurels on their heads if fate had played out differently. It could even be argued that the story is really about what happens when interagency power struggles within a corrupted executive branch get out of hand. There’s a virtuous rebellion, and a scholarly race-against-time hunt through ancient archives for urgent answers to long-buried secrets. The book flaps will tell you it was inspired by Ancient Egypt and King Lear, and those parallels are all there, but I saw a bit The Hunger Games too, and a dash of good ole’ Lord of the Rings, plus some Mary Renault-style historical fiction—not to mention the bits thrown in there for those of us who can’t flick past National Treasure on cable without stopping to watch the entire thing.
Particularly considering his status as a debut author, Johnston’s writing impresses. There’s a strong rationale behind everything happening to the characters—and even the best-drawn characters can’t always save an author from a weak why. There are a few big fat reveal moments that explain all the important plot points in a way that makes sense within the universe, but Johnston keeps them well-tied to the characters’ lives. His choice to focus on bureaucratic workings and the levers of power gives the story a strong backbone of logic and prevents it from becoming overly involved in its own mythology—an often tempting trap for authors who have spent years on worldbuilding and are rightfully eager to show off all of their toys. I also appreciated the emphasis on characters with complicated backstories, most of them are on their second or third acts in life—life hasn’t worked out for them for one of a thousand reasons, but they’re still trying, and those kinds of people are worthy of a hero’s journey too.
At its heart, this is a book about the values we assign to power structures. We all know that power corrupts, and if not, we have a good decades of morally complex fantasy fiction to remind us of the grey motivations of anti-heroes and the redeeming qualities of monsters. This book feels like it is interested in asking the next question: if power corrupts, what do we still want power for? Why is it worth the cost we know we will pay to get it, no matter how good the king, how true the priest, how brave the soldier?
In a different fantasy novel, a blonde queen of Lannister brutally reminded the cleverest of her ministers, “power is power.” Soleri recognizes that, and moves on to discuss the implied consent resting at the bottom of that statement. The answers those questions are a compelling conversation at this moment in history, or at the very least, a compelling reminder that unquestioned assumptions can be pulled from beneath you, less like a rug and more like the ground itself, vanishing and leaving you falling through the earth into an entirely new reality.
Soleri is available now.