Book Review: "All the Hidden Paths"

Foz Meadows' new book is a marvelous bit of romantasy, with lots of heartbreak, twisty politics, and steamy sex.

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Warning: Spoilers ahead!

When I read Foz Meadows’ A Strange and Stubborn Endurance about a year ago, I fell immediately in love, not just with the heroes Velasin and Caethari, but also with the entire world they inhabited. There was a lushness to Meadows’ prose that was enchanting and, more than perhaps almost any other author (except perhaps for Freya Marske), I felt they were capable of capturing the erotic power of fantasy in the tradition of Jacqueline Carey. As soon as I put the book down I knew that I wanted to hear more from these characters. 

Fortunately for me, Meadows returns us to the lush world they created, plunging us anew into the heated passions and twisted politics that we grew familiar with in the first book. Even though Velasin and Caethari managed to find some peace after the treachery of the latter’s sister, they both struggle with scars both emotional and physical. Velasin continues to anguish over how much chaos he has brought into Caethari’s life, and Caethari struggles with guilt over the death of his father and his sister and his new-found responsibilities as his grandmother’s heir. When they’re summoned to court to take up new duties, they find themselves thrust once again into the maelstrom of desire and schemes of those who want to destroy them and their love.

As they did with the preceding volume, Meadows excels at giving us fascinating insights into the complex personalities and psychologies of their main characters. Some might find their seemingly endless introspection a bit galling, but for my part it was essential to show just what motivates Velasin and Caethari as individuals and as a couple. The first half of the novel dives deeply into their fraught psychologies, as they struggle both with their own demons and to find a way to connect to one another across the vast chasms that have opened up between them in the aftermath of the previous adventures.  

The novel really starts to pick up once they get to the capital and find themselves ensnared in treacherous court politics. This is where All the Hidden Paths really sings. Fans of the Kushiel books will recall that, beneath all of the seduction and sensuality there is a very densely-layered and ornate political plot, and so it proves here, as well. There are quite a few moving pieces here, but Meadows skillfully keeps the viewer abreast of what’s going on, particularly since Velasin (and his manservant and best friend Markel) are both skilled in the arts of the covert. There are murders and attempted assassinations and, of course, lots and lots of sex.

And let’s talk about those sex scenes, shall we? There’s been endless chatter on Twitter and elsewhere about the necessity of sex scenes in fiction and, if you aren’t convinced that they serve a larger purpose, then read this book and find out how wrong you are. Don’t get me wrong: these scenes are hot, so much so that you sometimes have to put the book down, if you know what I mean. However, there’s more going on here than just titillation. Sex is particularly fraught territory for Velasin, who bears deep psychological scars from his assault at the beginning of A Strange and Stubborn Endurance. When these two men finally embrace and give into their desires it’s more than just a meeting of bodies; it’s a meeting of souls. We, as readers, are led to be both emotionally devastated and turned on by it all.

Eventually, despite all of his misgivings and hand-wringing, Velasin comes to realize and accept that he really does love Caethari and, moreover, he accepts that it’s okay to say this aloud. This has been obvious for quite a while now–I’d argue that it was true even in A Strange and Stubborn Endurance–but it’s important to remember that Velasin is a product of both a deeply homophobic culture and also of a violent sexual assault. It’s thus no wonder that he has trouble connecting with another person and admitting it. Watching him struggle with this is heartbreaking, to be sure, but this makes their ultimate conjugal bliss all the sweeter.

This isn’t to say that Caethari doesn’t also have his own issues, and Meadows deserves credit for making him a fully-developed in his own right. Though his chapters are related in third person (as opposed to Velasin’s first person), we still get a sense that we know this man in all of his many shades. We get some more insight into his past, and we can’t help but weep with him as he reflects on all that he’s lost. Unlike Velasin, however, he knows from the jump that he’s hopelessly in love, and so our emotional investment stems in part at least from agonizing with him as he waits, ever-so-patiently for Velasin (and manages to get himself arrested on suspicion of murder).  

The world that Meadows has created is beautiful and uncanny in equal measure. There’s a lyrical strangeness to it that can take some getting used to, particularly given that Tithenai culture has many different ranks and positions and terms that sometimes ring oddly in the reader’s ear. To me, though, this is one of the great pleasures of the novel and a sign that Meadows is one of the most talented and unique writers working in the fantasy genre today.

I know that some have been a bit ambivalent about the two interludes that we get from the scheming Azrien, a young queer lordling dispatched from Ralia to interrupt the affair between our heroes. Like Velaisin at the beginning of the previous novel, he is someone who seems to have internalized the homophobia of his native country, which means he is quite susceptible to blackmail. Though he is originally pitched as a villain of sorts, he slowly reveals himself to be something more complex. He has many hidden depths, and it’s really quite a joy to watch him develop a (slightly dysfunctional) relationship with the towering and belligerent General Naza.

I found All the Hidden Paths to be a truly splendid and sumptuous and heartbreaking piece of romantasy storytelling. These are characters that you can really care about and for, people with complicated, realistically-depicted emotions and investments. There’s great tragedy and heartbreak in the novel, to be sure, and both Velasin and Caethari have to do quite a lot of soul-searching, but time and again they find that they are one another’s greatest source of strength. Given the troubled world in which we live, in which it becomes ever more dangerous to be a queer person, All the Hidden Paths is like an island in a sea of chaos, offering us shelter, comfort, and love.