I was first drawn to the Tensorate Series by its beautiful cover art. In a style that seems to draw from both traditional East Asian and modern illustration practices, Yuko Shimizu – the artist – offers vivid glimpses of the Pan-Asian fantasy world contained within. The world, called Ea, was crafted by Neon Yang (or JY Yang – what they were published as). The slice of Ea the series focuses on is called the Protectorate, an empire ruled by the Protector, which resembles parts of real-world historical East Asia and Southeast Asia.
When I call this a 'fantasy' series I use that term loosely. Magic, called the Slack, is often used practically like a science, and is clearly inspired by wuxing philosophy (drawing upon the five elements of Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth). There are also hints of an industrial revolution, dinosaurs, mythical beasts, cloning, interesting gender dynamics (which I will discuss later on) and other disparate elements that might seem out of place in a typical fantasy story.
The Ascent to Godhood is the last book in the Tensorate Series. It's the first Tensorate book I've read from cover to cover. It's not the first time I've attempted to read a Tensorate book. I started with book one: The Black Tides of Heaven. I tried to read that book, twice. Each time I just couldn't connect to any of the characters. The fascinating world kept me reading, but I felt like a tourist looking out the bus window while the tour guide prattles on in the background. I wasn't invested in the narrative at all, and while I adored the world it wasn't enough to keep me reading. So I put the book down, and after a year or so, picked up The Ascent to Godhood to give the series another try.
The Ascent to Godhood tells the story of the current Protector, Hekate, and how she ascended to the throne and became the ruthless tyrant that most characters know her as in book one. The narrative is told from the first-person perspective of Lady Han, Hekate's former lover, right-hand, and current leader of the rebel faction known as the Machinists. She drunkenly recounts the Protector's rise to power to an unknown listener at a bar. The story follows Lady Han's beginnings as a peasant in a rural village sold by her parents to a slaver, who in turn sells her to a high-end brothel (the practices of which reminded me of Japanese geishas). It's through her skills as an escort that Lady Han eventually meets Hekate. They fall in love, and Lady Han becomes Hekate's most trusted servant and assassin in the latter's rise to power. The tragic part is that Lady Han never becomes more than that. Despite their affection for each other, Han is always a servant and nothing more.
What I enjoyed most about this book were the things it didn't say. The larger world it hinted at with details about Tensors (Slack-users, I really wish Yang had called them 'Slackers'), the mysterious technology used by the Machinists, and that Hekate might have cloned herself and that – ironically – her own clone-daugher ends up usurping her throne. There's something poetic and tragic about that: The only one able to overthrow the all-powerful, all-knowing tyrant is herself. I also enjoyed the political family drama for the Protector's throne that the latter half of the narrative focuses on.
I feel that what I dislike in The Ascent to Godhood doesn't stem from Yang's skills as a writer or their ability to tell a good story, instead it comes from a disconnect that I feel with their style of storytelling. It just doesn’t appeal to my personal storytelling preferences.
I get the impression that Yang likes to focus on character relationships and narrative form rather than complex plotting or world building. They pretty much say this in the podcast "Fantasy world building with JY Yang''. Part of Yang's inspiration for the Tensorate Series stems from budget period dramas on Channel 8 (a Mandarin language channel in Singapore). Oftentimes these dramas didn't have the money, time, or interest to care about historical accuracy or authenticity, rather props and costumes were used which 'felt' right or followed the rule of cool.
As someone who grew up watching a lot of Channel 8 while at my grandparents' home, I felt echoes of that in The Ascent to Godhood. Verisimilitude, immersion, and a sense of 'realism' was thrown out the window in favour of style and melodramatic impact as characters in a fantasy world started cursing in Hokkien or used contemporary mannerisms. It’s easy to look at this as favouring style over substance, but, in a way, Yang is bucking against the assumption established by Western fantasy authors that English, with smatterings of fantasy lingo, is the language fantasy is written in. It should be ok to assume that Yang’s books have bits of Hokkien to better communicate what these fantasy characters are feeling in a way that English cannot. And I do genuinely respect that.
In the urban centres of power in the Protectorate, children are gender-neutral until they confirm their gender in a coming-of-age ceremony in their early teens. When I first dove into this series I expected this gender-custom to have a deep tie to the world of the Protectorate and its ruling culture, a bit like Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. From what I've read, it doesn't. It just is. Which is fine, just having this custom be rather than coming up with a fantastical reason for it is a statement in itself. A part of me really wanted to see this side of the world expanded upon, just because – other than the magic, monsters, and dinosaurs – it's the most obvious element that distinguishes the Protectorate from our own history. But I don't think this is what Yang wanted to focus on. Gender works this way in this world. Deal with it. That's what I felt was communicated to me, and I'm fine with that.
Except when it doesn't work that way.
There are multiple instances where Hekate misgenders her dead child (calling them "son" even though they died before they could confirm their gender). Perhaps it's a part of Protectorate culture where children who die before they are gendered are then gendered by their parents? Maybe this is explained in the other books, but I feel like a single line mentioning this would have prevented a few contradictions near the story's end. This is especially irritating because her dead child is what caused Hekate to take revenge and rise to the throne in the first place, their murder being the fuel for her ascenion. These gender customs also raise the question of where do non-binary people fit in this world? Are they exiled to the rural parts of the Protectorate where this tradition isn't practised? Do trans people, who either can't afford a ceremony or are part of a neglected lower-class, exist there too? These questions aren't answered in this book, and maybe they are answered in the others, but they were on my mind. In a way, gender-customs in the Protectorate feel like any other pseudo-historical East Asian fantasy culture, except that kids are gender-neutral until they aren't.
Ok, so, Tensorate Series? Probably not for me. Will I read the other books? A strong maybe. Will I revisit The Black Tides of Heaven? A weaker maybe. The reason why I feel so invested in this series even though I know it's not for me is simply because of the fact that JY Yang is a Singaporean speculative fiction author and, as a Singaporean writer, I want to support them. We are rare enough. That, and the world they've crafted is really cool, but they just don't give me enough of it. The setting is always set-dressing in their books, and I hope to be proven wrong in the ones I have yet to read.
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