SUMMARY: For decades, men and women have lived separated in two distinct societies and clashed among the ruins of a world covered by snow. The two camps seem irreconcilable: each has its own language, its own vision of History, its own technologies put at the service of the conflict.
Among the women, Aya is a fighter, eager to prove her worth. Ansel is too frail to be a well-integrated “male”. Their paths cross when Aya is taken prisoner by men. What if this meeting came to shake up everything?
Remember: in 2023, we greatly appreciated Pyramid by the same author, who took up a little of the codes of Hunger Games of S. Collins in a terrifying test of survival at the heart of a pyramid full of deadly traps where the stake was nothing less than accessing supreme power for the next seven years.
Syros Editions reiterate – rightly – their confidence in Gaëtan B. Maran which this time plunges us into a post-apocalyptic war of the sexes. The heroes of his story, Aya et Anselevolve in parallel in a fractured world entering a new ice age after the Third World War. Two irreconcilable entities confront each other mercilessly: the “mascus” on one side, the “females” on the other. Between them, dialogue is definitively broken and hatred of the other is skillfully maintained in each camp. The break is clear: men and women no longer have anything to do together.
Gaëtan B. Maran dissects the disastrous mechanics of a war of attrition that has lasted so long that no one remembers (what) started it. In the cocoons of sorority, drowned under the icy desert imposed by Winter, we obviously think of the Day after then, locked in the “phalanxes” that the men pilot, these mobile and overheated metal hells, we think has Mad Max. On both sides, we maintain the memory of distinguished fighters, we commemorate the carnage perpetrated by the other side, we endlessly smear the image of the other, until he is completely dehumanized. Single thinking at the height of its propaganda, in a stunning parallel of indoctrination from birth.
The work of Gaëtan B. Maran is all the more remarkable because he imagined a gender codification, a language specific to the forces present. For example, the women's camp has feminized the neutral “he” (we therefore obtain sentences such as “there is no reason why” or “everything went well”. As for insults, we will have “the female dogs” on one side, “the father's sons” on the other A confusing language to read – particularly when the “troubles” are involved with the inclusive writing – but which considerably enriches it. The inhospitable universe in which the characters gravitate. The rules which govern their existence are uncompromising, intractable and unbearably harsh.
Like the characters no doubt, we lacked empathy in this novel. Between the adversaries, given the context, we expected little or nothing (even if artificial intelligence, ironically, manifests considerably more than “humans”). But we would have liked to feel a little more for them. The names pass by, and the attacks are so sudden and brutal that we are plunged into the same state of catatonic dismay in the face of the piling up bodies. A disturbing narrative bias when we like to lament at leisure about the fate of our favorite characters but which, here, fits perfectly into the author's logic: the war leaves no time for those who remain to cry.
At a time when conflicts are spreading almost everywhere like forest fires during a heatwave, the mirror game ofAya & Ansel highlights the causes of war which always benefit a handful of decision-makers, but which have a lasting and deleterious impact on entire generations. If we are less attached to this latest punchy novel, it remains obvious that we will have to count on Gaëtan B. Maran in the years to come: it has started a very promising chapter for the future of SF made in France.
Once again, we thank the editions Syrosand more particularly Chiarafor allowing us to discover this novel, available in bookstores since October 3.
Credits: ÉDITIONS SYROS
