The Bruising of Qilwa

[psocoptera]

The Bruising of Qilwa, Naseem Jamnia, 2022 novel or possibly novella, I've seen it categorized as both. Second-world medical fantasy in a Persian-inspired world where a healer tries to understand a mysterious disease. There were a bunch of interesting elements here, but I also found it hard to follow in spots, and the pacing a little jerky. I could tell that Jamnia had tried really hard to translate their speculative immunology magic back into generic "ordinary" language - now that I think about it it's possible that there are no medical/body terms derived from Latin in here, which would be a neat trick if true, a sort of low-key "uncleftish beholding". On the other hand, there were parts that ended up reading kind of like "upgoer 5" writing, where I could tell that there was a familiar and interesting concept there right on the other side of this frustrating obscuring language. I've occasionally tried playing some language games like that in my own writing, on a much smaller scale, and I think they can be more fun for the writer than the reader. I was hoping that the author's notes might have Jamnia's modern-language elevator pitch for the story ( "a B cell pyramid scheme", say) but no luck. But it's still interesting. I would only recommend it to people who have a pretty high tolerance for sometimes gory medical/body descriptions, but I'll be curious to see their next book, so, call that a mixed rec?