Constable Elke Veraart and her cyber-dog Meisje are peace keepers, patrolling the Babylon Eye. It’s a good job, but there must be more to life than chasing smugglers and settling domestic disputes. Then three children ask Elke to find their mother, who’s been missing for more than a year. The search attracts the wrong kind of attention. Elke and her young friends are in desperate danger.Unable to … danger.
Unable to resist the powers that have been unleashed against her, Elke is swept out of the Babylon Eye and into another world. While she struggles to regain her freedom, the children are unprotected. They must face, all alone, a new danger that stalks the corridors of the Babylon Eye.
“The Strange” is the third and final book in the Linked Worlds series.
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The Strange is the third in South African writer Masha du Toit’s Linked Words series. Although I strongly recommend reading the first two in the series simply because they are great reading, The Strange stands on its own. I might add that, arguably, The Strange is the best in the series.
We catch up with Constable Elke Vereert and Meisje, her magnificent gardag, a cybernetically-enhanced dog, who are back on the job. They are tasked with keeping order in the Babylon Eye, a huge, complex portal between The Real, where humans live (aka Earth), and The Strange, a series of worlds inhabited by numerous nonhuman life forms. This time, though, Elke is accompanied by three children she befriended in The Real where they stopped the smuggling of forbidden biologicals from the Strange into the Real. The children have followed Elke to the Babylon Eye in search for their missing mother. In addition, Elke has been promoted and is expected to train new arrival Tomas and his gardag, Danger, to take on Elke’s constable role in the Eye.
This sets the stage for a complex but never confusing story. Elke, her friend Kiran, and one of the three children, Noor, seek out Noor’s mother only to be abducted, sold into slavery, and transported into one of worlds of the Strange. Elke is on her own because she left behind Meisje, along with Danger, to care for an ill Tomas and the other two children, Isabeau and Ndlele.
Du Toit’s writing is noteworthy for the following:
Setting: Her imagination at creating a new Strange world, Casera, is rich and detailed. Everything, from the color of the sky to the plants growing up a wall in the slave quarters to the wonderful human-like sea creatures that provide a metaphorical underground railroad via sea for escaped slaves, is highly innovative and described most cinematically.
Plot: Although the story is a little slow in the beginning, as we might expect as we follow Elke and Meisje on their rounds, the suspense ramps up quickly when the three are taken through a portal into the Strange and sold into slavery. The ones left in the Eye have to fend for themselves and to make sure that a terrorist criminal doesn’t perpetrate a devastating attack on the Babylon Eye.
Characters: Here we get to know in depth individuals we’ve known from earlier Linked Worlds stories, including Elke, as well as new characters like Kiran and the three children’s mother Thandeka. We come to understand their motivations, their fears, and their dreams. At times, the point of view in the story shifts from one character to another, even including the gardag Meisje. It is to Du Toit’s credit as a writer that she is able to make those shifts not only comprehensible but meaningful.
Message: There’s a subtle underlying message in The Strange about how we all, Strange and Real, have a persistent tendency to want to classify and dismiss “the other” as “less” and therefore worthy of abusive treatment and exploitation. Although Strange characters as well as Real characters are guilty of this willingness to dismiss others, the clear message is that this dismissal of “the other” applies everywhere today and is to be resisted. In my case, we’re seeing this dismissal of “the other” and a willingness to engage in inhumane treatment on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Favorite Passage. Elke and Meisje are reunited. “Elke staggered back as a white whirlwind exploded into her arms. ‘Meisje!’ She went down on her knees, trying to contain the dancing, whirling, whining gardag.” No, you can’t resist a story with a good dog.
It’s no surprise that The Strange has been short-listed for a 2019 Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African. Highly recommended.