By Blood, by Salt

By Blood, By Salt is a gently paced fantasy intrigue. Azetla is an outsider in the Maurow Army, a member of a despised ethnic-religious minority called “jackals” whose monotheistic and purity oriented god is deeply at odds with the lust and blood-sacrifice of the official deities of the Empire. His quiet compromise and career is interrupted by one of those regular cycles of elite unrest that are a feature of empire. Ambitious lower nobles, passed-over military officers, and tribal leaders on the wrong side of client kingdoms plan to replace the emperor with his brother in a coup, and Azetla’s Black Wren battalion is caught up in their schemes.

The first step is to find and capture an elusive Sahr Devil, a half-legendary being that has been depopulating the southern reaches. The emperor can use a devil to prove his power. His weaker brother can use it to prove he exists. The Sahr kills two score of Azetla’s comrades and the commander, before allowing itself to be captured. It’s a being of profound sudden violence, a skilled linguistic mimic and translator, who knows how to use carefully doled out truths as a bridle. And for all that it’s a murderous devil, it looks like an ordinary woman.

Azetla knows that he’s being played, but his own survival rests on this devil, along with his schemes and those of the others. Everyone has an agenda, and there’s cooperation where they intersect, and the knowledge that the differences are even more profound. Azetla is an interesting narrator, gaining respect under a Maurowian Empire that is cosmopolitan towards everyone except his people, who are designated scapegoats. The Emperor’s brother, James, is an even better point of view. He knows he’s weak, just a pawn in others’ schemes, and fully aware of his limitations does his best. Normally these types of novels have such hypercompetence that an active fuckup as a point-of-view is pretty cool.

The pacing is a little languid, a long journey across the great deserts of the south, meditations on trust and identity, but the vibes are impeccable. Odom has five-years’ experience as an Arabic Linguist with the Marines, and the shades of her experiences provide a bronze ring of authenticity to this novel that puts it past most keyboard warrior nonsense.