Crossroads of Canopy

Starred review from October 17, 2016
An ambitious young woman fiercely chases her destiny through an enormous, lush forest in Dyer’s superb, epic, and hypnotic debut, which launches the Titan’s Forest trilogy. In the great Forest, where the trees are “seven hundred people-lengths tall” and a single tree can house an entire city, 13 gods inhabit the upper Canopy, where the brown-skinned elite live luxurious lives in the sun and are protected by a magical barrier that keeps out the poor pale citizens of the lower darker Understory and Floor. In Canopy, Unar pledges herself to Audblayin, the goddess of birth and life. Unar feels in her heart that when the goddess dies, she will be reincarnated as male and therefore will require a female bodyguard, a position Unar is eager to fill. But after rescuing a slave who’s been sentenced to death, Unar must flee to Understory, where she witnesses the consequences of slavery, meets an angry little girl named Frog, learns humility from three supportive brothers, and is ensnared by a dangerous revolutionary, who enlists Unar’s powerful magic in her war to destroy the barrier and unite everyone into the so-called One Forest. Readers will be delighted by Dyer’s polished prose and an exquisite new world of intricate mythology, rituals, and politics. Agent: Evan Gregory, Ethan Ellenberg Literary.

November 15, 2016
In a debut novel, Dyer introduces an unusual fantasy world set in the different levels of a giant forest and plagued by social strife.Canopy is a great city that spreads across the top level of a giant forest. Divided into 13 kingdoms, each devoted to a different god or goddess whose soul is constantly reincarnated into a human body, the world of Canopy holds itself carefully separate from the realms on the forest's lower levels. The city basks in the abundance that comes with plentiful sunlight and shores up its power and wealth with the labor of slaves. Unar, an ambitious and fiercely determined teenager, escapes her parents' plan to sell her into slavery and becomes a Gardener serving in the Garden of the goddess Audblayin. When the goddess dies, Unar finds herself passed over for promotion to a new level of magical power and service. Adrift from what she assumes is her destiny, she sets out to find the new reincarnation of her goddess and stumbles on to uncomfortable realizations about Canopy and her own past. The world of Unar's story is complicated and sometimes difficult to visualize, afflicted with profuse but often haphazard detail. Careful descriptions of clothes and people and the various fantastical quirks of the forest feel like notes for worldbuilding that the story does not quite have the strength and momentum to knit together. Race seems to play an important role in the social hierarchy of Canopy, but the story hesitates to make a strong, or even clear, statement. It is unclear whether the Canopians hold themselves above the pale-skinned residents of the lower levels because of their race or simply because they have the privilege of cultivating tans. An epic fantasy that builds an intriguing setting but never quite comes into focus.

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December 15, 2016
When Unar's parents decide to sell her as a slave, she flees to a Garden ruled by the goddess Audblayin, where Unar learns to use magic. When Audblayin dies, her soul is reincarnated, but the baby's identity won't be apparent until he or she reaches puberty. Although Unar's friends are chosen to serve the new, unknown deity who replaces Audblayin, Unar is denied that prestigious position. Determined to be a bodyguard anyway, Unar trains on her own and searches for the newborn, a journey which takes her into other gods' domains as well as to Understorey, where the people shun deities as well as slavery. There, confronting her past, Unar must decide whether or not to aid a rebellion to overthrow Canopy, her home. Dyer's debut nicely balances lyrical descriptions with faster-paced action sequences. Defined by her ambition, Unar can be vengeful and entitled, but she learns some humility as her worldview becomes more complex. Recommended for readers who appreciate nuanced world building, as both Canopy and Understorey are strange, fleshed-out lands thrown into turmoil.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)