The Lost Steersman is the third book in Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman series (previous entries of which I reviewed here and here, and the next of which I review here).
This will not be a completely spoiler-free review; so, if that bothers you, I recommend clicking on those Amazon affiliate links, buying the books, reading the books, and then coming back here to see what I have to say about them!
Now, here is a book that gets into some serious linguistic speculation! And somehow, the chunkiest of the currently-published volumes also manages to spend most of its time on a hard left turn away from the main series plot, while diving deep into things (such as the eponymous Lost Steersman, and the nature of demons) which were hinted at as background in the first two books and providing a huge amount of fascinating new worldbuilding detail.
The worldbuilding exploration is instigated by a series of demon attacks on the town of Alemeth--which conveniently gives us, the readers, as well as Rowan, our first insight into what "demons"--which have so far existed firmly "out of frame"--actually are. The subsequent discovery that the formerly-lost Steersman is in fact the only person to have acquired a "magical" talisman that can keep the creatures at bay--and that this is in fact intimately connected with the story of how he became lost to the order and later found again by Rowan--kicks off an adventure well beyond the boundaries of the known world to discover where all of these demons, previously presumed to be nearly extinct, are coming from, and why.
In the end, the story of the lost Steersman and the demons seems to me to bear a great deal of resemblance to Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead (book 2 of the Ender series), which deals with the interactions of humans with the alien Pequeninos on their homeworld Lusitania. To recap (or just spoil it if you haven't gotten around to reading a book from 1986 yet), the Pequeninos' reproductive cycle requires males to die--and thus ritualistically killed, such that they can reproduce, is considered a major honor. One which, of course, they wish to provide to their favorite human friends, without anyone bothering to talk about the situation first, even though there's enough of an established relationship that they totally could have, thus leading to serious misunderstandings. In fact, this isn't actually all that far off from the background inciting incident for the whole Ender series, in which the alien Formics don't realize that individual humans are sentient, and so don't think accidentally killing a few is a big deal.
Now, the Ender series are not bad books; in fact, they are very commercially successful books! But I don't think it should be too controversial to claim that the repeating circumstances in which aliens don't realize that killing humans is "bad, actually" are a little bit... contrived.
The conflict between humans and demons in The Lost Steersman is, on the other hand, much more reasonably motivated, with causes firmly rooted (at least in part) in human history--conquest of territory, and driving back of invaders. Initially, humans do not realize that demons are, in fact, people--and, most likely, demons don't realize that humans are people either. That's not too far off from the situation between Formics and humans in the Enderverse... except that "first contact" in the Steerswomen's world is between low-tech, nomadic peoples who have no means of communicating with each other, which makes the mistake far more reasonable than when you first encounter an alien in a friggin' starship. And, well, even if humans had figured out that demons are people much earlier on... let's be honest, they would've committed committed genocide anyway to take over their land. The humans of the Steerswomen's world are, after all, in the process of terraforming it and destroying all native life to make way for human habitation (as revealed in the last book), even if the current major players don't remember that that's what their cultural traditions are for.
Key to the misunderstanding is that demons do not communicate vocally, but rather visually--through sculpture. So when the lost Steersman is shipwrecked on their shores, losing evidence of their much more advanced maritime technology, the native demons see only unusual invasive animals to be driven away or eaten--and the humans see only monstrous animals trying to kill and eat them, and quite reasonably retaliate! Eventually, Rowan is able to deduce that the "magical talisman" that allowed the lost Steersman to survive and make his way back to human civilization--eventually bringing vengeful demons in pursuit--is (of course!) not magical at all, but merely a physical word in the demons' language, which they recognize and respond to.
Unfortunately for other humans, this word is impossible to replicate, because demon words are not sculpted from environmental materials; rather, they are produced by demons' biology. In particular, they are an exaptation of females' ability to excrete material for forming egg cases--which means that only female demons are actually capable of direct speech! Males can understand, and can collect discarded utterances and re-arrange them to communicate, but only in secret, as (at least in the particular demon society to which we are introduced), they are immediately executed if caught trying to speak. And this is in fact depicted as a complete language, not just a finite code, with females capable of gluing together individual word-objects into larger 3D sculptural discourses--although there does seem to be some innate, instinctual component to it, based on demons' consistent reactions to the talisman that keeps our human protagonists safe among them.
Sadly, the demon language is not actually deciphered to any significant extent, and I am skeptical that it has actually been worked out as a proper conlang due to the alien boldness of the premise. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating and bold premise, and I would love to see someone try to create something that would fit the descriptions in the book!
We also see a bit more exploration of sign language, which featured in book one, as a result of Rowan attempting to decode and replicate (as well as a human with only two arms can) the demons' paralinguistic postural body language (which is the only method of spontaneous communication available to males). If the demons can be made to understand the concept of sign language, I would love to see this used as a bridge for communication between demons and humans in future stories.
Stay tuned for my thoughts on the next entry in this series; and in the meantime, if you liked this post, please consider making a small donation!
Sign language as a bridge is a good idea. And thank you for explaining the 'demons' language; somehow when reading the novel I stayed confused much longer than our hero did.
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