Reviewing Aspects by John M. Ford
A Strange House in the Republic of Heaven
How much love can one bear to have for a book which will only ever be half-finished? No matter how long I wait or how wrenchingly I romance the text, this first half is all there is of Aspects, and all there ever will be.
But the rest of it is here in the world, composed of our own incompleteness.
Aspects is the last book by John M. Ford, and it was never completed due to his untimely death some years ago. The partial manuscript was published in 2022. Unfortunately, the introduction was written by someone recently and thoroughly disgraced. I hope Tor will reprint Aspects without that introduction, for those who would no longer feel comfortable buying it otherwise. But if not, I’m happy to read my copy--bought used--aloud to you over Zoom minus the introduction.
But I will cry.
In his review of the book for Black Gate, Rich Horton calls Aspects “a Book of Wisdom” for the clarity and tenderness of its advice for living. I think this is exactly right. The narrative of the book, moving at about the pace by which a tree grows but thusly imbued with an old oak’s power, concerns two members of the nobility in a fantasy realm much akin to early Victorian England. These two people, the Corons Varic and Longlight, are enmeshed in various political dramas, Varic those of the city and the ruling council, and Longlight those of the far country and its bandits. They find each other because of these torments and develop a connection. They go together on a trip to visit Varic’s closest friends in a place called Strange House. Then they go their separate ways. The plot begins to pick up and then it stops, because its author is no longer there to pull it along.
It’s difficult to describe why this on-its-face uneventful and yet quite long novel segment is so utterly effective. How many books would you remember, think back on closely and wonderingly, if you only had their first half? But that’s the skill with which Ford conjures his characters, their world, and their tremendous depth of feeling. The book lingers with such sharp attention on the lives of the characters, the way their natures are revealed not in grandiose statements or flashy acts of heroism but in their conduct moment-to-moment, day-by-day. Some of Ford’s favorite motifs and interests recur in this story--there is a great deal of original poetry, and several lengthy sections during which characters play intricate tabletop games together, including a full-scale LARP.
I imagine that none of this sounds particularly thrilling or moving, so I’ll try further to pin down which aspects of the book make it so compelling, despite everything that seems stand in its way. If I had to cut it down to just one thing, one idea, which shines so bright as to be almost painful, I would point to Strange House. In the context of the book, Strange House is a country manor owned by Varic’s friend Strange, who is an ancient magician. Strange gathers interesting people to himself there and builds bonds between them. Characters note that everyone is their best self while they are at Strange House, that being together, among friends, brings out the best in them, and that when they leave Strange House, they carry a bit more of that goodness out into the world. This is a tremendous gift, particularly for Varic, who struggles with a certain amount of self-loathing and despair inculcated by a harsh and isolated childhood.
For any of us who have had truly kind and caring people in our lives, we can recognize that goodness in Strange and his house. So many people are proposing so many grand schemes for how to live in our times, and most of those schemes are rickety and ill-planned, if not outright obscene and cruel. Strange House proposes something simpler and harder and more likely to do good: make a place in the world or in your heart where people feel safe and comfortable and at ease, and help them grow there. It proposes that putting more good in the world is possible through the cultivation of places where good can thrive in people. It proposes that good is most purely expressed when people can, through the recognition and love of others (and Aspects is rich with its depiction of many different types of love, romantic and otherwise), love themselves.
In the world of Aspects, the majority of the characters follow a single goddess, who has four aspects and four consorts. When they say good-bye to each other, they say “Find the Goddess, in your way.” This is everything we have of Aspects, because it sums it all up. The best thing you can do for everyone around you and for everyone you care for is to help them find whatever is holy to them, in their way. Not in the way you think is right for them. Not in a way someone else told you was right. In their way. The loyalty, love, and support demonstrated by the various visitors of Strange House, the comfort they provide to Varic and Longlight through tremendously painful experiences, are what helps them to survive and, through their political influence, build a better world than the one they’ve received.
So, in this way at least, Aspects doesn’t need an ending, as painful as that is to say, as agonizing as it is to leave Varic and Longlight and their compatriots behind without knowing where John M. Ford was taking them. Aspects is a beginning, not only to a book that won’t be finished, but to the project we all work on, the project to--to borrow another great writer’s phrasing--build the Republic of Heaven where we are.
If you can’t bear to read an unfinished book, then try another brilliant Ford project: I’ve read The Dragon Waiting three or four times now and still find new facets to appreciate. His science fiction is endlessly engaging, whether original or Star Trek-derived. His poetry, which appears in Aspects and elsewhere, remains mind-boggling in concept and execution.
If there is anything more we might hold onto from Aspects, it is the reminder that our time is limited; we ought to spend it on light and play. Writing was John M. Ford’s vocation; whatever is yours, go find and enjoy it.
In your way.
