The Divided Earth

The opening pages of The Divided Earth provide the backstory to the secret of Napatha, a powerful explosive substance. As well, in these pages, Syona, who lived at the Stone Heart monastery, recalls her plan to safeguard Napatha’s formula. At the end of The Stone Heart, the second book in Faith Erin Hicks’ “Nameless City” trilogy, we know that Syona’s intentions have been thwarted. The monastery has been torched, Syona is now a captive, and Kai and Rat are in hiding (with plans to steal back the secret book). As well, a number of secrets have been left tantalizingly unsolved in The Stone Heart. What is Rat’s real name? What happened to Mura to make her the angry woman-warrior she now is? Where has Kai’s mother been during all this time? Why did Joah renounce his status as a warrior and become a monk of the Stone Heart? And where is the secret book containing the formula for Napatha, “the sacred fire”? One would think that resolution of these complexities would take more than ten days, but that’s the time span for the action of The Divided Earth

Under duress, Syona has translated the secret book for Erzi who now feels guilty about the patricide which brought him to power. As well, he distrusts the other Dao generals, concerned that their loyalty to him will wane if they have access to the Napatha. Mura reassures Erzi that he is choosing the right path, and then leaves to undertake the task of preparing the Napatha. While she is cooking up this weapon of mass destruction, Andren and Joah are in the countryside outside the City, planning to meet up with the Yisun army. Stopping for a rest in the woods, Joah asks Andren a personal question: “You do not seem . . . much like a Dao general.” (p. 25) Just as his son Kai seems temperamentally unsuited to life as a warrior prince, neither is Andren. His wife, Kata, a member of Dao royalty and daughter of the leader of one of the Dao’s largest tribes, chose Andren as her husband instead of one of the generals her father had intended for her. With her came a promotion in rank, and so, Andren went from “being an ordinary soldier to a general. Married to this tall, smart, beautiful woman . . .” (p. 27) Joah’s and Andren’s conversation ends when they encounter some soldiers who decide to take the two men to meet their leader. That leader turns out to be Kata who is travelling to the City. She may be a warrior princess, but she’s a mother, too, and it seems that she misses her son terribly. Kai and Rat have headed for the City in order to break into the palace and retrieve the secret book, but when they arrive, they find their beloved City in ruins. As they stand on one of the remaining rooftops, they see the troops of the Yisun army, ready to do battle, unaware that Erzi will use the Napatha to vanquish them. he smoke resulting from that conflagration is visible for miles; from their vantage point outside the City, Kata and Andren view the dismal skies, her only comment being, “Too late. So now what?” (p. 58) The destruction only strengthens Kai’s resolve to steal the secret book containing the formula. He is his father’s son, with a strong sense of justice; Kai understands that Napatha was intended for constructive purposes, to “tunnel through the mountains and open trade routes to the world. . . Erzi chose how he used the manual. He decided to destroy rather than build.” (Pp. 60-61) In choosing to act like the other Dao emperors, Erzi continued in the role of conqueror, and so, Kai decides that the manual containing the secret formula should be restored to those who have a right to it: the people of the City.

Before staging their break and enter of the palace, Rat goes to visit Syona, confiding their plan and giving her a last hug just in case the plan doesn’t work. Syona does her best to dissuade Rat, to remind her that violence and fighting only lead to more of the same, but Rat is adamant. In the meantime, Kata and Andren meet with the commander of the Yisun army, a rather imperious fellow who is quickly put in place by Joah. That’s where we learn that Joah is the brother of the Yisun army’s commanding general, and in the meeting which follows, that family connection, along with Andren’s negotiating skills cement an alliance. Kai and Rat have a plan to get past the guards and into the palace; with a little help from their friends who are street performers and who distract the outside guards, they are inside the royal apartments in no time. Hiding in a hallway, they overhear a conversation between Erzi and Mura in which they learn that the battle which defeated the first wave of Yisun depleted the entire stock of Napatha. In order to ensure their security, Mura must prepare more and so, Kai and Rat wait, hoping that she’ll leave the manual within easy access.

During his time as a Dao general, Andren mapped many of the City’s underground catacombs, and knows that there’s a passage that leads to the inside of the palace. He and Kata take the inside path, but their expedition hits a rock pile, blocking a planned route. Following a water-filled canal, Kata finds herself outside the ruins of the Stone Heart monastery. She tries to enlist the support of the monks, citing Erzi’s penchant for violence, and while they are sympathetic to her arguments, they are pacifists and cannot fight. Meanwhile, back in the palace library, Mura is copying the formula for Napatha. Kai decides to stage a distraction that will lure Mura away from the book, but she finds him, and that’s when we learn of her plan to give the formula for Napatha to Erzi’s enemies. Why? “The more people who have the Napatha, the better the war will be. I’m helping Erzi become the man he was always meant to be.” (p. 128) She then attacks Kai, and just when it looks as if he will be choked to death, Rat manages to disarm Mura, and the two would-be robbers escape.

Rat is on the run, carrying a book, and, standing atop the palace roof, using another book as a decoy, Kai taunts Erzi, “Did you lose something?” (p. 151) Somehow, things got mixed up, and Rat has the real manual. While Erzi pursues Kai, Rat encounters Mura who surprises her by putting her sword down and telling her story, a story similar to Rat’s. Abandoned in the City by a mother who could not feed her, Mura was taken in by the monks of Stone Heart, but she betrayed them by stealing the manual, believing that she could sell it for money that would allow her to return to her family. The monks turned her out, she became a homeless street kid, and then Erzi found her and gave her a home. He also stoked a fire of resentment, and, as a result, Mura wants Erzi to destroy the City and the Dao empire, with its endless cycle of war. Rat believes that things can be different, but Mura calls her a fool, and lunges for the manual. After ten pages of hand-to-hand combat, the two women meet on the palace rooftop, ready to fight to the death. In the meantime, Kai meets up with Erzi who realizes that the book Kai holds is a decoy and is ready to kill him for the deception. Rat and Mura have an epic combat, but Rat manages to escape, finds Kai, and, in attempting to escape Erzi, the two fall from the palace battlements into a swirling canal.

Meanwhile, Kata and her company have scaled the walls of the palace, and their invasion of the palace has brought them face to face with Mura who is ready to take them prisoner. Suddenly, Syona appears, begging for a peaceful solution, but Mura is unmoved. She tells a soldier, “Do your job. Kill them.” (p. 229) But, this soldier will not kill unarmed people; he drops his sword, and the others follow. Mura turns on Kata, who knocks her out cold, and then asks for and receives, the surrender of the Dao guards.

Kai received some nasty sword cuts from the sword of the General of Blades, and when Rat finds him face down in the water of the canal, things look desperate. But, he revives, they find the manual (soggy, but still readable), and they walk out of the water and take refuge in the ruins around them. The fighting has ended. Joah finds Rat and Kai and takes them to the palace where Kata sees Kai for the first time in years and meets Rat (who introduces herself by her real name, Setu). Erzi has been stripped of any vestiges of his former position; he has been banished to the hinterland where he will live under guard for the rest of his life. As for Mura, without Erzi, she is powerless and will be taken back to live in the Dao territory. Kata and Andren are a powerful couple, but they wield that power for peaceful purposes, and the story ends with Kai and Rat setting off to explore the City as it rebuilds. Three years later, Kai returns to the City now that his father’s plan for a united council of nations has been fulfilled. Syona welcomes him and so does Setu. They’ve changed, grown up a bit and with a hug, Setu welcomes him home.

Perhaps because this is the final installment in the “Divided Earth” trilogy, I found that this really wasn’t a “stand-alone” read and that, in some ways, the storyline wasn’t as strong as it was in The Stone Heart. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up, a number of conflicts to resolve, and to make sense of it all, one really needed to have read the previous two volumes. As with the previous volumes in the series, the art work is a powerful vehicle for moving the narrative along. This book has more fight scenes than did The Stone Heart, and more pages are given over to strong sword-play and powerful hand-to-hand combat. Male readers will love the energy of the battles, and female readers will appreciate the strength of the women in the story. Kata, Kai’s mother and Andren’s wife, is strong and intelligent, not only a woman warrior, but also a woman with heart and great compassion. She’s also witty and sardonic; as Andren pointed out, “she has a great sense of humour” (p. 27).

The Divided Earth is a story with plenty of energy and action. But, it’s also a story of friendship, of resilience in the face of difficulty, of the destructiveness of power when pursued for its own sake, of the value of compromise and negotiation, and of the strength of hope for a peaceful future. The series is aimed at middle school readers in the upper grades, but I believe that older readers will enjoy it and pick up on its more subtle nuances.