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“Unspeakable” was probably my best-known Jokka story… in fact, probably my best known story from the time when I was moving through traditional publishing circles. It won the Strange Horizons’s Readers’ Choice award for the year and was included in the Best of anthology; the illustration likewise won a Readers’ Choice award; it was a finalist for the Spectrum award and… probably some other things I’ve forgotten.
Tañel’s story looks like a love story, but it’s really about being who you are when society tells you that what you are is wrong.
I asked Jim McCance to come back for this one, since I think of him by now as the voice of the male Jokka. His Pathen in “Stone Moon, Silk Scarves” was convincingly sardonic—until he found something too important to him to maintain his facade. Keshul from “Fire in the Void” a believable charlatan—until he found something too important to him to maintain his.
His Tañel is terribly believable. I think my heart started bleeding about ten minutes into it. You think that’s hyperbole, but I listened to the first fifteen minutes in my parked car outside a coffee shop, and the further it went, the more I curled up on my seat until I was hugging my knees and staring at the dashboard with all my hair on my arms on end…
…I still wonder what the people in the coffee shop thought of the crazy woman in the car looking like someone had hit her with a brick.
But anyway. I loved this audiobook for giving me a chance to see into an actor’s mind—there was significant discussion about some of the performance choices, all brought to me by McCance, and I found the process fascinating—and for how much the voices of the others in the story grew on me. By the end I loved Nashada’s voice (and was amused at what McCance gave back in response to my “think of him as the kind of affable party-guy who likes to drink with friends in a sports bar”)… and Ekkuli… in that last scene, I want to cuddle Ekkuli and take it home. Which… was kind of the point!
This is the only one of the Jokka stories I’ve released so far that has an unadulterated happy ending. And it’s a standalone in the universe; you don’t have to have read anything else to get it. It’s also one of the most lauded of the Jokka stories, so if you want to start with someone lots of people liked, this one is it. And it’s only $6.95…!
As always, if it pleases you, leave a star rating, a like or a review. Sales of this audiobook (and my others, listed here) provide royalties to both me and the narrator, so you’re feeding two mouths with one purchase, or supporting two artists by recommending it to others. Thank you all for that…!
So, yes. Being who you are, and being afraid that will get you condemned—or worse—and what one man does in response, and how he is saved. Go for it. :)
