"The All-Consuming World" (and other others) by Cassandra Khaw (2021)

 **A legendary group of badass female space bandits, scattered across the galaxy after a job gone wrong, is reunited for one last ride.  And gore.  And cyberpunk.  And so much gore.  God, I love Cassandra Khaw**

Ok but for real, I love Cassandra Khaw.  I will read anything they write.  But I will also readily admit that they are . . . not for everyone.  Because what Cassandra Khaw loves more than anything else (and for which they have a true and delightful talent) is a mix of fantastically beautiful prose and visceral gore and horror.  It's kind of amazing.  Here, from "The Salt Grows Heavy":

The girl inhales to screech, one hitching breath. I bury its denouement in the cellar of my throat, mouth locking over her windpipe, her spine. Her vertebrae break with the crisp, dewed noise of an apple’s skin when it is first pierced. She crumples, I follow her down, palm molded to her skull, taking only as much as I need, just a thimble of cider-sweet meat. Her eyes are still open when I lift my head and knuckle her blood from my lips, a rind of frost already beginning to crust on pale irises; the shivelight transmutes the ice into a dowry of diamonds.

I love Cassandra Khaw so much, I don't know if there's anyone who writes viscera better than them.  And often in the first person too, which makes it feel even more real.  Amazing stuff.  But . . .I accept that that's not for everyone.  So if the above passage creeped you out a little too much, that's fine.  Maybe skip Cass Khaw.  I have lots of other recs, I'll see you next week where we'll write up some modern updated fairytales, that'll be fun

For those of you still here though, let's talk about Khaw.  I thought a lot about which of their books to review.  There's the above-mentioned "The Salt Grows Heavy" which is maybe their tightest work.  Novella-length and at its core a rather wonderful love story.  Wrapped around that love story is a story of terrifying monsters in a frost-covered wood, but you know.  That's how Cass Khaw rolls

I know the name. No one in my husband’s kingdom did not. It was rumored that she was the downfall of that distant principality, a tepid marsh without historic importance, its only economy a trade in the hides of small mammals. It was rumored that she had no heart and thus had to steal the king’s own organ, that she was a bone-wight, cruel, a lie accoutred in stolen flesh, that she was hungry, bitter, resentful of her spouse’s sweet son.

It is always interesting to see how often women are described as ravenous when it is the men who, without exception, take without thought of compensation.

My personal favorite work of Khaw's is "Food of the Gods" (actually two novellas combined into one novel-length book).  It stars Rupert Wong, who is basically a Malaysian John Constantine, blue-collar deeply pragmatic conman-sorcerer, and he lives in an "American Gods"-style godpunk world in which all of humanities gods coexist and war over humanity's belief.  Except his day job is as a chef to a family of ghouls, and yes, Khaw absolutely takes truly sadistic pleasure in detailing all the ways he has to prepare meals for his family.  So basically, this book is if "American Gods" were set in Southeast Asia starring a Malaysian John Constantine who at one point has to compete in a cannibalistic "Iron Chef" competition . . . so yeah, it's no surprise that that one's my favorite:

The interstice between seconds tastes like money and is viscous as treacle, with a moist heat that clings tar-like to the lungs so that every breath scrapes and drags. If the dead are condemned to occupancy here, it’s no wonder they’re perpetually depicted as hostile.

But why, then, did I choose to feature "The All-Consuming World" for this post?  (although it does appear that I managed to sneak two other mini-reviews in, oops).  Is it because it's Khaw's first solo novel, and thus deserves recognition on that score?  Maybe, and they certainly knocked it out of the park with the first swing.  Is it because in many ways it's the most Cass Khaw of her works, the Cassandra Khawiest possible?  Maybe, cuz it definitely is.  Is it because I have a crush on Ayane?

Ayane grins, feral, the pretty flensed from her face. In the dim light, she is monstrous, perfect as the last round you didn’t think you had, the muzzle-flash in lieu of the click of an empty chamber.

Maybe.  I have a type.  I'm not apologizing

But yes, this is a classic story.  The job went wrong, and the crew disbanded.  Of course, part of the twist is that the story is mostly told from the perspective of Maya, who was the group's muscle.  She's a cybernetic warrior, every time she dies she's reborn in a new body.  It's a great setup, and it lets Cassandra Khaw send her into battle and describe the blood and gore and even describe her main character's own death ("Maya doesn’t realize she’s screaming until she realizes she is asphyxiating on blood, gargling briny copper like a songbird committing suicide in saltwater.") then reboot and start it again next chapter.  Plus, you know, why write a scifi novel, gloriously post-singularity with humanity zipping from star to star, if you're not gonna throw some fun tech in there?

“How do you feel about peripherals?”

“If you’re talking about rainbow-painted fake nails, the answer’s fuck—”

“I was talking about the possibility of an onboard armament.” Feline satisfaction drips from the speakers, the ceiling seething, unseen mechanisms clicking into position. A low whirring begins and Maya strains a glance in its direction. “There are limitations, of course, weight and available space being the most important variables to consider. However, if you’re willing to augment your upper torso or compromise aesthetics, it is possible to mount extraneous equipment up to whatever new weight limit has been established.”

“What.”

“Would you like a gun arm?”

She thinks about it for a second.

“Fuck yes.”

Of course, Maya is the "least" qualified person to narrate this story, as for most of her career she simply was the muscle.  In fact, you quite early get the sense that everyone else seems to know more than her.  Some of her crewmates and former crewmates seem to be deliberately not telling her things, even.  On a certain level, she knows.  She certainly knows early on that her lover-and-boss Rita is not treating her fairly, and their relationship is one of the uncomfortable centers of the novel:

The two made an agreement during their five-year anniversary of gunning down unfortuantes cooperatively, Maya in the vanguard and Rita at the controls.  Drunk on cheap pálinka,they puzzled out something important. If humanity wants to be the dominant species again, if they want to come out on top, hairy ballsacks swinging, there’s going to need to be a few changes. 

And it starts with learning how to manage pain without intervention. 

Which is what they’ve been doing, why they’ve been slicing Maya up without a single dose of opiate in sight, no analgesic either, nothing that could be misinterpreted as a chemical crutch. Given enough time, Maya should be inoculated against the idea of pain, right? Right. Or, maybe that’s just their cover-up for a sadomasochistic relationship of the highest deviancy. Maybe it’s not even that. Maybe, Rita’s just a monster. 

Maya isn’t sure, but she is sure that it doesn’t matter.

Yet for all that Maya doesn't seem to understand everything, when even the reader picks up on things a lot faster than her, it's still her dogged determination that drives the novel.  She wants to know what happened on that last job, she wants to know why the people she loves unconditionally and uncomplicatedly aren't in her life any more.  And I kept turning the pages as quickly as I could not just because I wanted to know these things, but because I wanted her to know

I loved this book because it works on so many levels.  If you want, you can absolutely just sit back and enjoy the ride.  The cover blurb (from Annallee Newitz, a great author herself) calls it "the angry queer space opera you've been waiting for".  There are sentient planets and rogue AIs and cyberspace monsters and all sorts of fun, and you get a full ship's crew of badass ladies that defeat one monster after another as they dive into the galaxy's core looking for answers

But it's also a novel about love, and sacrifice, and all the ways we find ourselves tied to each other.  Maya's emotional maturation throughout the novel is heartbreaking and pure, and the fact that she often ends a lot of the chapters covered in blood (usually other people's) is just part of the fun

And yes, it's a book about death.  Not everyone in the crew survived that previous disastrous job.  The survivors have to deal with that.  And they are all too well-aware that not all of them are going to survive this one.  Our main character, on the other hand, has died again and again, has been reborn in a new body again and again.  She has some thoughts about death.  She has a lot of thoughts about death:

As a species, humans have done their best to mitigate our own finitude, papering over and around the tenuity of our existence with myths, until we are a palimpsest of lies, a house of cards on an epileptic surface. We anthropomorphize Death; we create apocrypha in which he is conscious, compassionate, capable of reason; of being charmed into procrastinating; of caring, fuck us, do we want him capable of caring; of capitulating to powers that exceed his own. 

We want to be uplifted. We macramé our societies with gods and their pantheons, celestial bureaucracies, playgrounds for the faithful, processes through which we can learn to disdain biological continuity. If we have to die, we demand the phenomenon be evanescent, a rung on the ladder toward better things. 

Because the alternative is unfathomable: that death simply happens, that when we die, we do so alone, without even a cowled skeleton to sagely bid us bon voyage. That we are ephemera. That we are nothing at all. Only stardust.

God damn, but Cassandra Khaw knows how to write.  God damn

I loved this book

Being alive means being aware you’ll inevitably lose people, Death being the laziest but most implacable apex predator yet.