God's In His Heaven, and Nothing's Right With the World - A Review of The House of Shattered Wings

The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Paris is often described as “The City of Light” and “The City of Romance” - sobriquets that are understandable, given the way travel agencies and whichever department is in charge of French tourism have chosen to market the city. Both images persist and are perpetuated in film, both French and American, though the former have been known to sniff disdainfully at portrayals of the city created by the latter.

And yet, while it is true that Paris illuminated at night is a gorgeous sight to behold, and that romance is seemingly woven into the city’s lifeblood, it is sometimes easy to forget that Paris is also shadowed in blood and death. Paris has been crippled several times before by diseases like the plague and cholera: the extensive catacombs beneath the city’s streets contain but a fraction of all those who have died from them. Paris also has an intimate history of violence: from the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre through to the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the two World Wars, all the way to the most recent Daesh bombings. When one wanders the city wearing La Vie en rose-tinted glasses, it is easy to forget that the softly-shining cobbles once ran thick with blood, that the glittering Seine was once filled with the bodies of the pestilential dead.

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