The Sins on Their Bones by Laura Samotin is the latest addition to an expanding genre of fantasy that draws on the history of the Russian Empire. Recently, Jewish authors have shown that what English speakers consider “Eastern European” folklore includes not only Christian and pre-Christian Slavic mythologies, but also the Jewish folklore of the Pale of Settlement. Some of these authors include Leigh Bardugo (the Grisha series), Ava Reid (The Wolf and the Woodsman), Aden Polydoros (Bone Weaver) and Allison Epstein (Let the Dead Bury the Dead). They all write dark fantasy in which Jewish and non-Jewish characters contend with both supernatural forces and the forces of history.
Fans of these works will be at home with Samotin’s debut. The story begins in the aftermath of a crisis both personal and political: Tzar Dimitry’s husband, Alexey, has used dark magic to achieve immortality and take over the throne, plunging the country into chaos and civil war. Though Dimitry is shown as a progressive monarch, his reign has been marred by his own naivete and the more astute Alexey’s desire for total control. After their breakup, Dimitry struggles to find the wherewithal he needs to take responsibility, while the outwardly ruthless Alexey is plagued by the knowledge that the love he gave up is irreplaceable.
This is a world in which the Ashkenazi and Slavic cultures of the Russian Empire have been collapsed into one fantasy culture (the capital city is called Rav-Mikhailburg, rather than St. Petersburg; the vocabulary is a mix of Russian and Hebrew; and Alexey gains power through a Rasputin-esque corruption of kabbalistic mysticism). But the real purpose of the setting is to provide a heightened aesthetic backdrop for the tormented romance between two men with fundamentally incompatible goals. Politics and the supernatural act as dark metaphors for the dynamics of domestic violence, as if Dimitry and Alexey are actors on stage and the civil war is a struggle between their wrestling shadows, cast giant on the wall. As one character observes, “Loving someone and possessing them are so alike, and yet worlds apart.”
As a debut, The Sins on Their Bones has a couple of elements that a more experienced writer might have tightened up — characters’ motivations are sometimes stated explicitly where they could be left implicit. However, this will hardly be a distraction for readers who want to soak in hundreds of pages of dark, romantic angst.
Sacha Lamb is the author of National Jewish Book Award finalist When the Angels Left the Old Country. Their next novel, The Forbidden Book, is coming this fall from Levine Querido. Sacha can be found on Instagram at sachalamb.author.
