Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee transports us to a world vastly different from that of the her previous Green Bone Saga novels. Here, Lee presents a novella about wonder, duty, and love set in the fictional kingdom of Dartha, home to monstrous manticores and the rocs—divine birds of prey which originate from the mythology of the Middle East—that hunt them.
Lee’s descriptions of the world of Dartha are breathtaking. There are “pale green grazing fields in the valley by the creek” and “mist that sometimes rolled down from the blue shadow of the mountains.” Dartha is vast, then, and feels alive despite the shorter word count of a novella compared to a novel. In this vibrant world, rukhers train these rocs to fight man-eating manticores, much as our own falconers train their birds to hunt small animals. As the world of Dartha expands throughout the novella, problems arise for the rukhers in its final third, when manticores in newly conquered parts of the kingdom wreak havoc and need to be defeated. The social status of the rukhers thus changes throughout: they do not exist in a vacuum, but are just one small part of a bigger world—even though their main task, to hunt and kill manticores, doesn’t change.
Indeed, what propels Untethered Sky are the rukhers and their relationships with their rocs and each other. Specifically, Darius, Ester, and Nasmin, three young rukhers at the royal mews, are the central characters in Untethered Sky. The sole point-of-view character is Ester, a rukher given her first fledgling to train. Ester’s own family suffered losses from a manticore attack, and her father never forgave her for surviving when her mother and brother did not—so she insists on becoming a rukher even though she faces an uphill battle, as both a woman and due to the low success rate for apprentice rukhers. Rukhing is dangerous business, and the majority of apprentices die trying or quit. Ester states that “out of every five apprentice ruhkers, two will be killed or crippled, two will leave or be sent away, and only one will ever fly a roc.”
She is not the first woman rukher, but woman rukhers are outnumbered seven to one. Early on, Ester befriends Nasmin, one of the few other women rukhers at the royal mews. However, when Ester and Nasmin are both invited to the royal palace for a celebratory feast after killing a manticore when the prince was visiting the mews, Ester watches as Nasmin and the prince kiss. Nasmin becomes more and more distant from both Ester and even her own roc, despite she and her roc becoming widely celebrated as “Lady Nasmin and Azar, the Red Angel.” Ester and the other rukhers grow to resent Nasmin and her long absences, since they have to take care of Azar at the mews in her absence.
The novella’s other primary character is Darius, a quiet but talented rukher. Ester befriends Darius early on, and they become close: Darius takes her on her first hunt, and the others at the mews begin to suspect that Ester and Darius are romantically involved even though they are not. Darius’s roc is Minu, whose previous rukher had passed away.
The rocs themselves are more elements of nature than tamed creatures, and we are repeatedly told that a roc is not like a dog or any other kind of domesticated animal: “A roc is not a dog that will run for help to save its master, nor even a horse that will return home with an empty saddle.” One example of how a roc is always wild despite appearances is Minu, who kills one rukher after her first passes away. We are repeatedly warned that rocs have wills of their own, and they can and will abandon or kill their rukhers. Still, Zahra, Ester’s fledgling roc, is a majestic creature, and Ester admires her power. When they are hunting, Ester remarks that “we were the sun and the wind, the sky and the earth, life and death, above the world and untouchable.”
Throughout Untethered Sky, Ester is careful not to expect Zahra to behave the same way as a pet and calls her a monster repeatedly in her narration, as if reminding herself that Zahra is not truly hers, even though most of Ester’s identity is tied up in being Zahra’s rukher. Despite being a successful rukher, Ester is less successful when it comes to juggling people. She and Nasmin grow apart after Nasmin goes on tour, and Ester hesitates to act on her feelings for Darius. In fact, her character arc mainly concerns her finding a reason to move forward beyond her need for revenge. For Ester, it takes almost dying to break free of seeing what she has had in front of her the entire time. In this novella, some bonds take a lot to break.
Despite the suspicion she attracts, Nasmin is a good example of this theme of loyalty. As the novella proceeds, she works to educate the wider population about the rocs, their nature, and needs. After she goes on tour, the nobles she so impresses begin to donate more and more lavish gifts to the mews. This eventually leads to the rukher fatality rate going down to near-zero, since they are suddenly able to afford better armor. This new notoriety is double-edged, however: it becomes common knowledge that the best way to fight manticores is to bring in the rukhers. And, because the kingdom of Dartha is expanding eastward, there are more manticores than usual in the eastern section of the kingdom and these have been terrorizing the people.
Newly developed techniques can help the army stop a manticore. However, these techniques require much more manpower compared to sending just one or two rocs to finish the job. The rukhers are ordered to help out alongside the army, even though placing too many rocs together and without enough room is a bad idea, since the creatures are territorial and sometimes fight among themselves. Ultimately, the campaign is deemed mostly a success by the common people, despite the loss of rocs from infighting, since the people of Dartha do not understand the limitations of rocs. The rukhers and the government only feed the public the sanitized version of the whole story that makes them look the best, brushing over preventable losses in favor of saving face.
For all the good Nasmin achieves for the mews, and the lives of apprentices that she saves, then, she fails to convey to the public that rocs are not invincible. But, for the readers of Untethered Sky at least, Ester, Darius, and Nasmin flesh out the legends and propaganda of Dartha—and humanize this novella that is primarily, after all, about mythical birds. In this way, Untethered Sky has an expansive world packed into a smaller package that proves rich secondary worlds aren’t the exclusive domain of doorstopper novels.