Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruins of Ymr, John Crowley

This book is kind of nuts. And I really cannot convey that sentiment properly without sharing spoilers in this review. Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr is as unfocused and puzzling a novel as its title suggests. In short: Ka is the realm of the crows, Dar Oakley is an immortal crow, and Ymr is the realm of humans.

With that established, here is a very simplified plot summary of this book: Dar Oakley is a two-thousand year old crow who first gained the power of immortality/reincarnation after a journey to the underworld with his first human friend, a gender fluid (I think?) pagan mystic by the name of Fox Cap. During this journey, he gains his power by stealing a magical talking pebble that Fox Cap wanted so that humans could be immortal. Dar Oakley and his crow crew then spend a lot of time mating and eating human flesh, and they ultimately eat Fox Cap’s corpse before transporting it to the land of the dead. Dar Oakley then dies his first death by being shot by an arrow. Fast forward a few centuries and Dar Oakley is now friends with a monk simply known as Brother. Brother and Dar Oakley end up in hell, where demons and angels battle over each soul they encounter. After ultimately saving Brother’s soul, the two end up on an island of saints, where Brother and the other saints decide to sail to the New World. Dar Oakley befriends a group of terns who help him fly across the ocean, but he ends up getting trapped in a hurricane and dying his second death. Flash forward again and Dar Oakley is now amongst the crows of North America, where he witnesses colonization and smallpox decimate the indigenous humans. At the same time, he realizes that his ex-mate from back in the pagan days is actually also immortal. He agrees to steal another talking pebble for her as an expression of his love. Little does he know that the talking pebble is actually a kidney stone (I think?) passed through the urethra of a member of a race referred to only as Small People. This second talking stone ends up releasing Dar Oakley’s ex from her bonds of immortality. Dar Oakley eventually meets a new lover who eventually dies (as they all do) and he tries to rescue her from crow underworld after bargaining with a grim reaper owl. We are then treated to an interlude about the American Civil War, which culminates in a sub-plot about a crow hunter who kidnaps a young fledgling who Dar Oakley rescues, and in an act of vengeance, Dar Oakley, the hunter, and half the murder of crows all get blown up by dynamite. Again reincarnated, Dar Oakley then tries to help his present-day friend end his own life by walking into the land of the dead to be reunited with his dead wife. The effort fails and Dar Oakley flies away to what remains of the wilderness because he’s had enough of humans and how ugly they’ve made the world, and he wants to find another talking pebble so he can also finally die for real. But before things wrap up he has a trippy conversation with a coyote who claims to have invented death itself and made the first humans and trees out of bird feathers.

Suffice it to say, there is a lot going on in this book, and on its surface a lot of it sounds jarring and even ridiculous. And while I can’t say that this is a bad book, or that John Crowley isn’t a gifted writer who didn’t have interesting themes and ideas to share, I just did not enjoy the overall project. There are moments of greatness. Part Two, in particular, is really strong and the relationships Dar Oakley had with Brother and the terns were great. But this is just one of those books that buckles under the weight of its own ambition and tries to throw too many themes, tones, ideas, and philosophies into a single pot. The conveyor belt of characters, settings, and tones just did not mesh well with the heavy philosophical commentary on death, the afterlife, memory, and even climate change. Overall, I give Crowley a lot of credit for the very creative concept, and he is a genuinely gifted writer. But like Dar Oakley, I am more than ready to move on for good.