Bannerless

I've never read Carrie Vaughn before, but I met her at Denver Pop Culture Con this year, and she liked my costume. We took pictures. I'm really happy that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. In a world where dystopian fiction is at peak saturation, this was a totally different kind of story. It's really more of a small town murder mystery set against a dystopian backdrop. The telling of Enid's story in alternating flashback and present day scenes really worked, and kept the action quietly building. I really love quiet genre fiction, and that's exactly where this fit. I also like that in any other dystopian story Enid would undoubtedly be the villain, and I kept expecting her to uncover something dark about her society, but the end left me feeling hopeful and very convinced in the power of birth control. You maybe have to suspend your disbelief a bit to believe that society essentially chooses to live medievally except for solar cars and the world's greatest birth control ever invented, but you know what, I'll roll with it.

What would happen if Cli-fi and Solarpunk had a baby, which was then raised by Police Procedural?

That's the best way I can describe Bannerless. I was looking for something about a climate apocalypse that wasn't too depressing, and miraculously this presented itself. It's soon enough after The Fall to have compelling pathos, but long enough after to be optimistic. And the driving force of the story is a murder mystery pursued by the protagonist, a woman who fulfills the role of a federal agent in the new world.

That world is a weird blend of pre-industrial society and carefully curated digital-age know-how. Bards can make a living hoofing it from town to town, but Investigators can use a solar car to get to a crime scene. Villages are filled with the sounds of working looms and clucking chickens, while scientists carefully preserve the ability to make rudimentary antibiotics and antiseptics.

Oh, and birth control implants. Central to this story is the cultural practice of obligatory birth control, with households (extended families, not just couples anymore) able to earn a “banner” signifying their right to bear a child. Everyone is highly conscious of human interdependence and wary of imposing too much resource strain.

(I'm not sure I entirely buy that this would be a useful survival strategy, but hey, all bets are off when technology mostly lines up with Jane Austen while mores and knowledge are post 2010s, right?)

I found Enid a compelling character - I got invested in her relationships, her devotion to her job, and even her coming-of-age backstory (not usually my thing). The mystery pulled me along nicely while allowing glimpses of the world to add up to a coherent picture of the post-Fall world.

A subtle and clever dystopian novel that reminded me a little of Station Eleven. I love Enid, she is a wonderfully strong and interesting lead, who uses her brains and wit to solve a murder in a small, close knit community after the “Fall” of civilisation. I accidentally read the sequal first, but part one is better.

I first fell in love with Carrie Vaughn's work with the Kitty Norville series - a werewolf named Kitty who ran a late-night radio show. Kitty and the Midnight Hour. (Both the name of her show and the first book.) So when I discovered she'd starting writing a dystopia that revolved heavily around reproductive rights, I was SO ON BOARD. Bannerless and The Wild Dead are the first two books of the Bannerless saga. And they're GREAT. They're technically murder mysteries set in a dystopian society; Enid, our main character, is an investigator, the closest thing this society has to police.

The dystopia part of the society involves epidemics and natural disasters nearly eradicating humanity; with so few people left and less of the earth habitable, they've regressed to a mostly agrarian society. Farmers, weavers, hunters. To keep the population from exploding past the land's ability to feed it, birth rates are strictly controlled. As civilization was falling, people realized birth rates were going to be massively important, and the birth control implant, and the technology to make it, was one thing they managed to save. They also have solar-powered cars, lights, and flashlights, though they're uncommon enough to be notable.

I find it a little improbable that they still have the tech to make the implants; they say that before the supplies from “before the Fall” ran out, the medics figured out how to make the hormone from “what they had on hand” - but - I feel like a more interesting plot point would be that they're running out of implants, and how the society would have to deal with that changing. But that is not the case, at least not in the first two books.

Regardless of how improbable the birth control issue is, the rest of the plot is pretty good. There's a good mix of salvaged goods and subsistence farming; of new houses built in low-tech ways and the occasional ruins from Before the Fall. They have some books and records of what it was like, and Enid often wishes she had the tools that forensic investigators had, Before. Fingerprints, and DNA, though she doesn't call it DNA. They don't have cameras, she has to sketch crime scenes and take notes.

I really enjoyed both books; Carrie Vaughn's writing style is wonderful to read. The first book rambles a little bit, but while some of it doesn't seem necessary for the first book, it's important for the second. I'll definitely be following this series.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

3.0 out of 5 stars

Many years after The Fall, small enclaves have built rudimentary societies that are mostly stripped of modern technologies. Small committees control the population and flow of resources by awarding banners to households that are given permission to procreate.

Author Carrie Vaughn has built an intriguing dystopian/post-apocalyptic world that leans away from the doom and gloom that one would expect in such a novel. Even with an unsolved murder as a central plot point, there is minimal violence and conflict. The plot is fairly low key, the writing is solid, but the mystery and eventual resolution are somewhat unsatisfying. I'm not sure if I'll pick up the next book in the series, but I did have a decent time with this one.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

Interesting premise just not a good read.

Pros: good worldbuilding, interesting characters

Cons: middling mystery, little action

Decades ago the world fell apart in a slow apocalypse. Now, those that remain live in small communities, husbanding their resources. When things go wrong that the communities can't solve, they call in Investigators.

Enid and Thomas are Investigators from Haven. There's been a suspicious death that might be murder. The case turns up other infractions and a man from Enid's past.

I thought the worldbuilding was well done. As the book goes on you learn more about how people survived the slow falling apart of civilization and how they rebuilt using a new social order. I really liked the ruins and what happened there, showing that not everyone ended up living the same way.

Enid was interesting in that she liked questioning things and learning about the world but used what she found to justify their way of life instead of wondering if things could be better if done differently. This makes her a decent Investigator but I found myself not liking some of her conclusions about the world. Her underlying anger is problematic for investigations but makes her a more interesting character.

The case is mostly straight forward and while there are a few twists the resolution is what I suspected early on. There's little to no action and I found myself getting bored towards the end.