By Jattu Fahnbulleh
Title: Cursebreakers
Publisher: Canis Major Books
Publication Date: September 12th, 2023
Author: Madeleine Nakamura
ISBN (paperback): 9781939096128
I have trouble reading outside of school. And I am not unique in this. A quick Google search on “how to pick up reading again” will bring you tweets, articles, YouTube videos, and more, produced by Millenials and Gen Zers lamenting their previous ability to voraciously burn through 600 page books in a day, desperately trying in vain to reach that elementary or middle school peak again. For my part, I’d given up. Not on reading—of course I still have to read for school, and of course I still enjoy reading. If that “reading” took the form of videogames or fanfiction on my down-time, then so be it. But the idea of pushing myself to read so much of a published work in a day, or even consistently reading a tad bit every day, had become unfeasible to me. That was until I’d gotten approximately 30-50 pages into Madeline Nakamura’s debut novel, Cursebreakers.
Cursebreakers is an adult, queer fantasy novel following our main protagonist, Adrien Desforneaux, an ex-physician turned professor teaching at the Academy Pharmakeia. He battles with the lingering guilt of the event that turned him into an ex-physician, his own bipolar disorder, and, now, the growing forces in and around the Academy, inflicting a magical illness on both students and the increasing military presence on campus alike. Along the way we meet Malise, Adrien’s doctor and best friend; Gennady, a member of the Vigil—this novel’s military force—who seeks out Adrien’s help in figuring out what’s going on; and Casmir, Adrien’s Keeper, or caretaker—and also his unrequited crush. The novel reckons with, if it wasn’t obvious already, mental illness, but also with what it means to go unseen by others.
Just how did Nakamura manage to get this chronically struggling reader to binge her 269 page book within the span of two days? How did she get me to stay up until 3, 4 in the morning, eyes glued to a book, instead of a phone, for the first time in years? If I talked about everything there was to love about the novel, this review would become egregiously long. But what I think hooked me the most was the manner in which the plot unfolded.
As stated earlier, Adrien suffers from bipolar disorder. For those unfamiliar, one of the disorder’s key characteristics is causing those who suffer from it to experience delusions—either delusions of grandeur during manic episodes, or paranoid delusions during depressive episodes. These paranoid delusions often include concerns about grand conspiracies. This novel puts Adrien and, further, us, the readers, in the helpless and endlessly frustrating position of witnessing the truth of the real conspiracy unfolding within the Academy whilst no one actually believes Adrien, all because of his disorder. At first, it is simply that Adrien has no concrete proof to show anyone. But even when he does gain some type of evidence, even as things escalate, there is always something that makes his claims unsubstantiated or unbelievable. His concerns can always be attributed back to his disorder in some way.
There’s something utterly torturous about the way Malise and Casmir react when Adrien first tells them what he’s discovering; one staring at him as if he’d “broken her heart,” and the other “with quiet pity and horror.” You know that, without proof, there is nothing Adrien can do to convince them. I don’t blame Adrien when he all but gives up on trying to actually convince either of them for periods at a time. And this torture isn’t resolved until a little over halfway through the novel.
I think it would be easy to say that Adrien’s bipolar disorder, and how it plays into the ultimate mystery not being uncovered until it is almost too late, is simply a convenient plot-device used to add to the drama of the whole thing—to make the reader turn the page not only to learn more about the mystery, but also to reach that glorious moment when finally, finally, someone would believe him. But that would be to neglect some of the unfortunate, real-world implications of what Adrien’s fight to be believed represents.
I cannot tell you how many stories I’ve heard and read of people—women in particular—who suffered through undiagnosed or misdiagnosed medical complications for years on end before doctors would finally take them seriously, either because they just finally happened to find someone that would actually listen to them, or because their symptoms became so severe that there was no option left but to believe and treat them. Often times their concerns are dismissed as either being due to weight, or anxiety. As a black person living in America who has seen and even experienced, firsthand, what the mental and physical ramifications of going through this can do to a person, and who always has in mind the real possibility that any medical complication I may have could be dismissed because of my skin color and presentation—reading Adrien’s interactions with Malise and Casmir before they came to believe him felt like a loud echoing of these stories and experiences in a way that genuinely made me teary-eyed. Adrien similarly had to wait until things boiled over and out of his control before even those who had his best interests in mind would take him at face value.
Something else that drew me in were the novel’s characters and their relationships—Adrien and Gennady in particular. The novel is told from a first person point of view, which I’ve admittedly grown a bit of a bias against. I’ve come to associate it with a borderline intolerable immaturity—either in the character, or the writing overall. Adrien’s narration is wonderfully real, mature, and compelling. I believe that he is the professor he purports himself to be, one who is intimately familiar with the world and its magic systems in ways that I, as a reader, am not. There was no point in the novel in which I asked myself why he didn’t know something that someone in his position ought to know—and, in fact, there were points where the subjects he discussed overwhelmed me because of my unfamiliarity with the world. I note this because of the tendency, especially in school settings, for some fantasy novels to have characters suddenly become tools for exposition rather than, well, characters.
But besides that, Adrien’s voice is riddled with the kind of self-deprecation that comes with someone suffering not only from a continued guilty conscience, but someone battling with his disorder or any disorder, really—someone who is painfully self-aware and yet still unable to completely control the thoughts and actions their minds lead them into. “You see how I split myself, how I pretend that my lesser nature is another being. Allow me that, so I may live with myself,” he remarks. I am compelled to allow him that.
Then there’s also Gennady, who doesn’t quite know how to be a person. “‘I couldn’t help it,’’’ he remarks after speaking with Prefect Velleia—effectively one of the heads of the military. For the record, he is but a lieutenant. “‘I wanted to do it, so I did. I can’t stop myself sometimes. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea.’” This piece of dialogue almost single-handedly summarizes Gennady’s character. Brash and impulsive, but earnestly trying his best. We never quite learn exactly what it is that’s off with Gennady and the rest of his family. But to me, he does at least accurately represent someone who is the product of a military upbringing like he is— conditioned to be cold and ruthless, off-putting if not outright intimidating. As much as his rash decisions sometimes stressed me out, however, I couldn’t help but to be endeared by him and the way that his and Adrien’s relationship develops throughout the novel. Adrien remarks on how he’s become a student of his, in a sense—their mutual touch-point not only being their shared investment in the conspiracy, but also, more crucially, in the philosophy of a figure Adrien teaches his students about one class session—“goodness is a discipline, a skill that can be honed. Our natures aren’t static; we can improve ourselves through careful, consistent work.” Adrien’s interactions with Gennady, and the way Gennady changes over the novel, always come back to this figure—Alexarchus of Elora. Because if there’s anything that the both of them need to hear, it is that they can get better. And that they can even lean on each other to do so.
Overall, Cursebreakers was a captivating and deeply humanizing novel. I could speak at length about how masterfully the worldbuilding was done, or about Adrien and Casmir’s relationship, or even some of the side characters we meet along the way. But I’ll leave it at this—Madeleine Nakamura made me remember the joy of getting sucked into a novel. She’s made a strong debut, and I’ll be looking forward to what she does next.
The Blue Route 