Stolen land fascination: The Absolute Book, by Elizabeth Knox

 I swear, I had no idea that this one was going to be a stolen land narrative when I picked up the book.  The novel was published in 2019, by a Kiwi author, it has been on my stack for a long time, I picked it up randomly as my next read, and there it was.  Given Knox's home in New Zealand, her introduction to the stolen land narrative was likely the Maori, or perhaps aboriginal variation, and while the main character is a Brit (with a Kiwi father), and the narrative actually does delve back into the various aspects of British history that one might call land theft, including the Saxons, Viking invasions and so forth, those are not quite developed into the stolen land narrative that one could fit into the ancient history of the British Isles.  Did the Anglo-Saxons steal the land from the Picts?  Have fun with that.  Instead, I'm going to argue that Knox has the wrong moral perspective on her own story.  I have done this before, including with Sylvia Moreno-Garcia's Gods of Jade and Stone.  I argued that Moreno-Garcia wrote an interestingly and unintentionally pro-colonialist novel, and although I had not yet read Bruce Gilley's The Case for Colonialism, there is something to be said for taking an author's novel and finding moral complexity that the author perhaps did not intend.  Let's do that.

Here's the deal.  The Absolute Book is a somewhat messy novel with the following background mythology.  Actually, the mythology is messy because it is sort of an everything mythology, including the Abrahamic, Norse, Celtic and not much to tie it all together like the Dude's rug.  Regardless, the sidhe (fairies, to you and me, but if you think "Tinkerbell," you don't know the Celtic mythology) come from some other dimension, or something.  They find a planet/dimension/somewhere, but it is already populated/occupied by original-formula demons.  These original-formula demons are incorporeal, and are of the Exorcist type.  If they show up here, they possess you and make you act weird and shitty, to fuck with you and everyone around you.  They may make you do creepy things with crucifixes.  OK, that's the movie, not the book, but you get the point.  So the sidhe get there, kick out the original-formula demons, through some gates that they make, and exile them to Hell.  Then comes The Fall, which is the angels' rebellion, like in Paradise Lost.  The Fallen Angels take over Hell and subjugate the original-formula demons.  The Fallen Angels cannot go through the gate through which the original-formula demons were exiled, but they can force the demons through, so they start doing that to fuck with the sidhe.  The original-formula demons, thus, are kinda getting fucked on both ends.  The sidhe cut a deal, to pay a Tithe to Hell, in the form of souls every 100 years.  Innocent souls, in exchange for which they get to stay in the Sidhe (name of the place, when capitalized), immortal and unmolested.

Basically, the sidhe suck, which fits.  Fairies are not the good guys.  They suck, and in this narrative, they are also guilty of stolen land, stealing from, true, demons, but they still suck.

Of course, demons.

Um...

Moving on.

Some time later, a part-sidhe, part-human, part-Fallen Angel named Shift is born.  His mother casts a bunch of spells on him, and he's very powerful, but also made to look weak and innocuous, as part of the protective spells, and she also makes a book, which is a primer on the language of god.  The god of the deserts, meaning Yahoo-y, not Odin, who also shows up, 'cuz.  The book is your McGuffin.

Flash forward to modern day, and Taryn Cornick is born.  Her sister is murdered, she plays along with a creepy dude who murders the murderer on her behalf, damning her own soul to Hell, and getting her mixed up, which she would have been anyway since the McGuffin was in her family library.  Shift enters her life, she winds up going back and forth to the Sidhe, and they track down the McGuffin so that the sidhe can use it to negotiate with Hell and get rid of the Tithe.

By... giving that very powerful thing to... lemme say this again, demons and the Fallen Angels.

Then, for some reason, we get an epilogue of environmental moralizing where the sidhe do environmental cleanup and make Earth happy-shiny.

Let's get into this.

Unless you are a pure-blooded descendent of the first settlers of the land on which you live-- and you are not-- you are a descendent of people who conquered others and took their land.

You are, so either flog yourself to fuckin' death, or come to terms with that.  Unless you, personally, took the land, my recommendation is the latter since you didn't do the wrong thing, m'kay?  You are 100% responsible for your own actions, and 0% responsible for your ancestors' actions.  That's the math.  See how it all adds up nicely to 100?  Check my work, Picts.

Even the blessed "first nations" had a history, before migrating, of conquering and displacing.  And even after migrating, they still conquered and took land and displaced and all that.

Leftists have a thing, though, about declaring some variations of historical land-theft sacred and holy (or perhaps more accurately, so unforgivable that the blame passes down through history), and others totally ignorable.  For example, let's ignore the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the British Isles because that complicates the picture of who was and was not invaded and colonized, and a "land acknowledgement" is fully sufficient for you because no way in hell will you pay any real cost for stolen land but you really want the moral credit, but there's some other incident which is the worst thing ever and rape to death the descendants of the thieves 'cuz STOLEN LAND!!!

Even though the people who did the stealing are literally all dead.  There's a lot of mythology even about 1948, because it is so easy to lie to those who love a certain narrative, like a stolen land narrative, but even if you accepted it, every person who would have committed the supposed atrocity is dead.  At least, every decision-maker is dead, even if you could find someone who was 20 at the time, involved at a low level, and is now hooked up to a respirator.

But in Knox's story, the sidhe are the land-thieves.  And they're immortal.  Indeed, immortality is precisely why they stole the land, and keep up the Tithe.  Notice two things.  First, this provides a direct response to the moral culpability problem in the stolen land narrative, but second, it tacitly admits that there is such a problem by providing that response.

A sins-of-the-father argument is morally reprehensible to anyone capable of moral reasoning, which obviously excludes the modern left, but once you accept the inadmissibility of a sins-of-the-father argument, how can you make a stolen land narrative morally compelling?  Immortality.  Knox tacitly, and indeed, probably unintentionally rejects conventional stolen land arguments by using the immortality device, which is morally necessary for a stolen land narrative, since otherwise, you must rely on the morally indefensible sins-of-the-father argument.

Yes, it matters if the land thieves are dead, and the displaced or exiled are dead.  It matters because we are literally all displaced and exiled if the "we" includes everyone up and down the generational line.  That's why it can't work that way.  The moral calculus never works that way, unless you are trying with no moral consistency to extract something from someone else while refusing to apply the same standard to yourself.  Will you be held responsible for everything your ancestors did?  Everything your grouping did?  Of course not.

Knox, without realizing it, created a stolen land narrative that works precisely because it is about immortals.  The original-formula demons and the sidhe are immortal, and hence the thieves and the victims are still there, still benefiting or suffering from the same acts.  Not the descendants, but the same entities, year after year, century after century, in the magical aftermath of the land theft, with the additional problem that the original-formula demons get it on both ends from the Fallen Angels too.  Which they wouldn't, had it not been for the sidhe, who suck.

This is a stolen land narrative, but one that actually repudiates stolen land narratives, if read correctly.

Which brings me to the problem of Knox's solution.  Shift hands the McGuffin over to Hell to renegotiate the Tithe.  Which would work, if it were a true McGuffin, like the Maltese Falcon.  It wasn't.  It was a book consisting of a primer on god's language, which is some powerful magic.  Which Shift hands over to... demons, and the Fallen.  Sure, it may take time for them to figure out what havoc to wreak with it, , and how, but all that to avoid the Tithe?

Granted, the Tithe is morally wrong.  That's the sidhe handing innocent souls to Hell for their own immortality.  The sidhe suck.

In the scheme of things, is Shift's deal better?!

How about this instead?  Kill the fucking sidhe.  They have had millennia, and they are handing innocent souls to Hell for their own immortality.  Instead of handing the book over to Hell, use that book to kill the fucking sidhe, who are the real villains.  There is nothing redeemable about them.  This was a bad deal.  Handing that book over to Hell?

No.  The sidhe suck, but giving magic that powerful to Hell?

Are we clear about this?  Demons, and the Fallen Angels who have enslaved them.  Yes, you are told to sympathize with demons.

Demons may have gotten fucked here, and you can judge the sidhe, as I do, but do you really want to hand magic that powerful to demons?

And let's note, if you want to apply a stolen land narrative here, that the supposed victims here are demons.  Don't help the fucking demons.  No good will come of helping the demons.  Pretty much by definition.

Oh, the poor demons!  They're so oppressed!  We must pay reparations and give powerful magic to the demons!

Behold, leftist logic.

How about not.  Just because some group or population got fucked doesn't mean they're the good guys.  They may be-- in this case, literally-- demonic.  In the case of Sylvia Moreno-Garcia's Gods of Jade and Stone, I noted the Aztecs, and the fact that they were really, really evil.  Yeah, Spain, blah-blah, colonialism, but do you actually know anything about the Aztecs?  Like, human sacrifices?  The Aztecs were not good.  Just because you have been told that everything European is always and forever evil (bullshit) does not make the Aztecs good.  And I really wouldn't want their gods around.

In the case of The Absolute Book, Shift gives uberpowerful magic to actual, literal demons.

Yeah, the sidhe and the Fallen fucked them, but they are still... demons.  Also, the Fallen got the book too!  So the demons didn't even get some demon liberation shit!  This was just moronic.

Better solution.  Use the book to fight the sidhe.  Fight the sidhe to stop the Tithe, without helping demons.  Or the Fallen.

Instead, we get an epilogue.  In the background, we must assume that Hell is doing... something with the book, trying to figure out how to exploit it, while we see sidhe start turning Earth into a hippy-environmental restoration project of some kind.  So first, what, are we supposed to forget that Hell has this uberpowerful magic that they just need time to exploit?  I didn't forget that.

Second, what are the sidhe doing?  In reality, they are making Earth to their liking, with what plans for humanity?  They don't give a shit about humanity.  You get a scene of a British spy-- Price-- going to visit Taryn in prison.  Taryn confessed to conspiracy for the murder of her sister's murderer, to clear her conscience, and try to escape damnation.  Price makes some valid points, like what the fuck is going on, who gave the sidhe permission to do anything, massive changes are happing, what's the plan, does humanity get a say?

The sidhe aren't big on free will, so much as using magic to manipulate humanity for their own ends.

In other words, Price is right.

Sorrynotsorry.

I'm fine with endings not being happy endings, but we should acknowledge that this is a) creepy, b) wrong, c) dangerous, and d) that it would have been better to use the book to kill the fucking sidhe rather than handing it over to Hell, while Hell figures out how to exploit the book, and the sidhe work their own unstated agenda which is, as always, indifferent at best to humanity, because the sidhe always sucked.

All because those poor, poor demons!

Just wait until that reparations bill comes due, dumbasses.  You should have just killed the sidhe.

Radim Zenkl, "Up And Down The New Land," from Strings & Wings.