Tag: book review

‘Crown of Starlight’ Review – Welp.

Beatrine ShahzadLeave a comment

I have access to this book because one of my close friends let me borrow her ARC. While many consider their reviews to be external guides to help or spark discussions with other readers, I have primarily considered my reviews to be more internal reflections. I write reviews because I find it interesting to discuss and analyze the contents of a book. This is why I’m publishing this review of Crown of Starlight by Cait Corrain, even though it may never be published. This was originally planned just to go on GoodReads but as of right now the site is not allowing anyone to leave ratings or reviews so…

The entire bookish community has heard of the Cait Corrain scandal. Tldr; An insecure debut author made numerous fake accounts on GoodReads and review-bombed others in her debut year– some even at the same imprint and with the same agent. After a swift but convoluted fiasco of events in which she was proven to be the culprit, Corrain was dropped by her agent and her publisher announced it would no longer be publishing Crown of Starlight or any other book on her deal.

Does that mean the rights get reverted back to her? Will she be able to seek out a new publisher after an appropriate statute of limitations? Will anyone even want to work with her after such a tarnished reputation? Will she self-publish? Can she self-publish? Who knows… who knows… I will be spoiling the book either way.

Before we continue, please consider supporting the affected authors, most of whom are authors of color. I have linked a GoodReads list that compiles all the books to support here.

Crown of Starlight is pitched as a spicy sci-fi reimagining of the tale of Ariadne and Dionysus. Ariadne has grown up in the cold, cruel, empire of Crete, pruned by her oppressive father to be its next ruler. Every year, per a treaty between Crete and the empire of Athens, numerous Athenian warriors must be sacrificed to the monster living in the labyrinth of Crete, the Minotaur, Ariadne’s half-bull and feral half-brother. This year, though, Ariadne is placed in charge of the ceremony to prove her worth, but instead, she views it as a means of escape. And this year, the prince of Crete himself, Theseus, comes to defeat the Minotaur or die for his people. They work together to kill the Minotaur and escape Crete, and shortly after, Theseus takes Ariadne as a prisoner to leverage her against her father.

Then begins the actual romance of the book. Ariadne escapes and runs into Dionysus, the God of Wine, Hedonism, and other things. He has a cult of good times. He takes an instant liking to her, offering her his protection, and eventually proposes a mutually beneficial marriage between them. To be accepted into Olympus, he needs devotees from all major empires, but has none on Crete because Cretains worship the Moirai (not the Gods). But if Ariadne pretends to be devoted to him, then he will be allowed on Olympus again, and if she marries him, she can accompany him there and finally be safe from her father. She agrees, slowly emerging from her self-loathing and sexually repressed shell, falls in love with him, smuts it up, rejects Olympus to prevent a war between Crete and Athens, dies, and then is resurrected to spend near eternity with Dionysus.

You might have read that and went, “Wow, that’s a lot of story, no wonder the book is 560 pages!” WRONG! It’s 560 pages because it is horrifically overwritten. The pacing is another issue, though not as egregious.

First and foremost, the prose style is, what I would describe as, fanfic casual. It’s the sort of tongue in cheek humor that didn’t quite mesh well with the setting. Tumblr talk, the novel.

“Realizing I’m being gaslit by my entire world doesn’t make it easier to deal with, but hey; at least I have some part of my soul.”

“If she was hoping this sob story might have engendered sympathy, she was dead wrong.”

“Alleged– and I cannot stress this enough–ly.”

There are “Yeah, no”s. There are “Ugh”s. There are colloquialisms and fillers. You might have noticed gaslight– a word coined from a 20th century film. One character also uses “flew too close to the sun” as an idiom when Icarus (the boy whose tale birthed the phrase) is a featured character in the book and neither Ariadne nor the reader ever saw “fly too close to the sun” as his fate is unknown.

Just because Gideon the Ninth was able to get away with colloquialisms and sarcasm and humor in its space opera does not mean it will work in every novel. They must be deployed with a skilled hand to create a cohesive atmosphere, but unfortunately, here, the style feels out of place. The prose seems juvenile, though it is an adult novel. Even when more impressive vocabulary words are used, they’re often chucked in as adverbs instead of integrated into the prose. It does not help that everything is overexplained to the reader as if they do not have the critical thinking skills to parse through an adult narrative.

As the reader, every single little thought Ariadne has is spelled out for us. Nothing is left to inference, nothing is presented to be reflected on. Some scenes desperately needed to be cut. And I’m not talking about scenes that are unengaging or boring, I mean nothing is happening other than the fact that she’s thinking. There are three scenes in the book at least where we see her go to sleep. And multiple where she wakes up. Tons of wasted space.

If all of this was cut, the pacing would be alleviated from a huge burden. Ariadne escapes Crete at the 30% mark and she loses her virginity at the 70% mark. Sex is a big part of the book even when the main character is not getting any, but I thought it would be more given how it’s marketed. The second act slog is where she falls in love with Dionysus which sort of… he doesn’t feel like a real man. Okay. I know he’s a God, but that’s another issue.

Everyone is way too honest. In the beginning section, there’s some self-awareness with this. Ariadne admits she shouldn’t be honest, but has little other choice. As the book continues, the “should I be honest” self-awareness erodes and in its place takes a much more boring form of self-awareness. Everyone wears their intentions on their sleeves. Dionysus is extremely honest with Ariadne, not only in a genuine sense when a normal person would probably be guarded, but in a superhuman sense where he’s incredibly aware of his own feelings and can communicate them properly.

Typically what makes books interesting is the gap between what a character feels and what they say, or what a character says and the other person understands. It also allows for a lot of the character and personality to shine through as it displays how different people express and mask their emotions. This makes dialogue and situations feel authentic and realistic. When the disjointed understanding becomes aligned, we find a resolution. That didn’t really happen in this book. We know EVERYTHING Ariadne is thinking, she is very aware of it as well, and her journey of discovery centers unlearning and relearning through logic and love. Which, sure, is something, but it’s also very boring.

It’s not only Ariadne. There are multiple scenes where the reader learns of Hera, Athena, and Ares’ evil schemes because Ariadne overheard them discussing it openly in such perfect detail that she immediately understood what was happening. It’s an annoyingly convenient amount of honesty. Everyone is either open, or they lie when Ariadne already knows the truth. Well, all except one.

Ariadne is betrayed by Theseus and she does not see it coming because she is lightly smitten by him. And boy, the entire thing is a mess, moreso regarding how thematically Corrain used Theseus as a deconstruction of the hero trope.

Ariadne understands her father, Minos, is not a terrible person– he’s someone who will not respect the treaty and will seek vengeance on Athens even after the Minotaur is defeated. Theseus asks her if he will honor his word, and she tells him that Minos will not. But when Theseus makes attempts to safeguard himself and captures her to use her as a bargaining chip, she finds it an unforgivable offense because he flirted with her a little and did not give the Minotaur a clean death. “I convinced myself that… Theseus [was] the righteous hero who would be grateful for my aid and follow my instructions to the letter.”

Theseus’ own words on heroism are, “True heroism, real heroism, is doing whatever you must in order to defeat your enemies, no matter the cost.” Although Ariadne escapes, Theseus keeps up the ruse that he has her prisoner to protect himself, but war begins. Ariadne herself admits that she thought Theseus’ ruse would prevent a war. His faux heroism, then, boils down to how he uses people’s lives as fodder in war to win battles. Or does it?

Ariadne regularly compares Theseus to her father, a cruel and vindictive oppressor, but Theseus’ violence is only ever a reaction to Minos’ violence. At the beginning of the novel, Ariadne is opposed to killing her father because she does not want to continue the cycle of bloodshed, but by the end, she claims it is impossible to reason with an oppressor and so he must die. The only difference between Ariadne and Theseus is that she has direct access to her father to kill him, and Theseus has no tools other than his armadas. The narrative wants us to believe that Theseus is cold and calculating and cowardly, but his actions are understandable. There is no other alternative path presented to Theseus, one where he chooses a selfish way out.

(Personally, in that situation, I would be built different and find a way out that didn’t involve the death of millions of people, but in a book, we need to see that way out. We need to see him make the choice to be needlessly cruel.)

Later, when Ariadne is dead and wandering around the underworld trying to find her way out, she stumbles across Theseus in Tartarus (Grecian superhell) (she got into Elysium btw… Grecian superheaven). He begs for her mercy to free him, but she says no, citing it was his stupidity and ego that led to the death of millions. She then says, “Heroism is bullshit, and heroes don’t exist, because none of us are so important that our ‘heroism’ nullifies the harm we do.”

Yasss girlboss slay except it literally does not apply. It was either let his men die every year painfully at the hands of the Minotaur or go to war with a man who cannot be reasoned with. What, exactly, was the right thing to do? How was he meant to put an end to the violence without harming anyone? Even if he followed Ariadne’s every instruction and let her be instead of capturing her, millions would still die from the ensuing war. Ariadne just hated his guts because his vibes were off and she was personally embarrassed at being played. We’ve all been there girl, but don’t go grandstanding about it.

Now hold on tight because I’m not done with Theseus just yet. In the original myth, Ariadne falls in love with him. Here, he is merely her first crush. This weakens the book. Throughout the narrative, she’s uncomfortable with her sexuality because in her religion, desire is Bad. Even after marriage, she’s expected to lay down in bed like a piece of cardboard and let her husband have her way with her (for whatever reason). There’s a personal aspect to Ariadne’s fear of lust, and that’s the fact that her mother’s affair was a great shame that lead to the birth of the Minotaur. See what happens when you can’t keep it in your pants? You birth half-bull monstrosities.

If Ariadne gave in to her lust toward Theseus early in the book, we would’ve been cooking with gas. Top shelf liquor. First of all, we would have more of a reason to hate Theseus because he would’ve taking advantage of a naive young woman. He would’ve truly plotted a real act of betrayal against a lover. Second of all, for the rest of the book, Ariadne would have a good reason not to trust herself. We would see why she hates herself and how she’s terrified of mirroring her family. She wouldn’t be able to figure out if her feelings for Dionysus are true or just fueled by lust. Everything the narrative tried to craft by having her guarded and cautious would have actually hit because we would’ve seen the consequences of a misfire. It would be so nice if these interactions had some real weight behind them instead of being propped up by paragraphs and paragraphs of explanation.

There’s probably something to be said about how sex and lust operate in this book but I simply do not care. It is not interesting to me. It did nothing for me. Ariadne’s self discovery through sex did not move me. Similarly, how Ariadne hates her family, going as so far as to lump in her younger sister (who does nothing) in with the cruelty of her father and mother, is similarly puzzling but not worth my time.

I’m sure this book had its audience. I know there are readers out there who would’ve found the relationship between Ariadne and Dionysus rapturous and healing. At the end of the day, they are a good pairing and are characterized with enough skill to be well suited for another. There are just enough tropes in the book to attract fans of those tropes without having the book felt like it was written around them, a feat in and of itself. The fake marriage plot was even convincing enough, as was their blossoming attraction. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but it wasn’t done poorly, and it had a place in the cosmos and on bookshelves. That was until Cait Corrain botched it for herself.

The hardbound ARCs for Crown of Starlight are gorgeous. All the art that’s come out for this book, even unreleased WIPs on Twitter, are gorgeous. She had special editions lined up.

I truly hope Corrain never reads this, but this entire situation makes me feel insane. Like I said, the book had its audience, but it also had issues. She was not only insecure enough in her own success to attack others, but confident in her own skill to attack others. INSANE TO ME.

I’m going to be honest. No matter what, writing a book is very difficult. Very challenging indeed. But a book like Crown of Starlight is on the easier end of things. The prose is accessible and mimics modern inflections, and so she was writing prose in the same cadence and style as her own speech. It’s romance driven rather than political so she does not have to deal with fleshing out her world or government structures. (Yell at me if you want but I have drafted like 5 different books at this point and know exactly what makes some more challenging to write than others.)

Style and genre aside, it’s needlessly overwritten, like training wheels on an adult’s bike. I don’t know how she could, in good faith, compare her book against others, especially those with more complex and developed elements than hers. I don’t even know how she put them next to each other and felt something, let alone mustered enough of a feeling, whether that be confidence or insecurity, to take shots.

Not only that, but some of the books she attacked were Young Adult novels. Sorry, how are those books in competition with hers? They’re on completely different shelves and written for different audiences. Yes, adult women often read YA, but YA books are written for teenagers as the primary audience. There’s BDSM in Crown of Starlight. It’s not competing for a teenage audience. This is something else.

This is not a cautionary tale, as most have enough sense not to do something so foolish. But it certainly is an interesting insight into how intense jealousy can be felt and what ugly weapons are forged from it. Personally, I struggle a lot with jealousy, but I also feel like my outlets do not harm others. There’s also something to be said for how she was more likely to see an author of color as a threat than a white contemporary. Whether that was intentional or unintentional, it was racist. I don’t need to tell you this. We all have common sense here. I hope. Sabotaging other people is not good!

As a writer, I’m often afraid that my reviews will come back to bite me. I can be a little snarky. I try not to drag the author into them, but sometimes it is important to try and understand both their skill level and intent in order to interrogate where the book went awry. Sometimes it’s obvious an author’s read one of my reviews. And I’m like. Oops. It’s sort of an awkward position to be in, especially if (God willing) I eventually do get a book deal and I’m eventually colleagues with all these people.

That being said, I want to make a few things clear. I never write reviews out of jealousy or spite. I always back up what I say with textual evidence and personal reasoning. I never attempt to mock or belittle the work. Sometimes things are a little silly or a little frustrating, but I never try to put anyone or anything down. EVERYTHING has its own audience, and even if I’m not one of the people who’d enjoy the book, someone who did could be reading and I don’t want to make them feel bad about their enjoyment. I’m not here to tear down other people. I’m here to talk my shit and, if fate allows, someone could decide if a book will be right for them. Alright? Okay. If I start beef with some future colleagues, that’s their problem I guess. If I write a negative review of your book just don’t read it!!! We can still be besties ❤ Understanding subjectivity and beginning enriching dialogues through criticism is healthy for the continuation of art and if we censor our thoughts then we are losing a part of ourselves. Who better to critically engage with novels than the people who will write the next one?

Alas, if only that was what Cait Corrain used GoodReads for.

‘The Deep Sky’ Review – Where No Man Has Gone Before

Beatrine ShahzadLeave a comment

Thank you Netgalley for an advanced reader copy!

The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei is classified as a sci-fi thriller, but it’s more meditative than that’d imply. Humanity’s crumbling into the sea, and in a last burst of hope, they launch 80 young adults into space to reach a new inhabitable planet. The crew of this journey has been training for the mission since they were 12, rigorously studying and growing up together, and now they inhabit a spaceship ten years from its destination. As the first phase of their mission begins, pregnancy and child rearing after a decade long hibernation, there is an explosion onboard- likely triggered by one of their own. Asuka, resilient but technically inadequate compared to her peers, survives the explosion and must discover who is culpable before they strike again.

I really liked this book. Like. A lot. So let’s just start there. 4.5 stars rounded to a 4.

I’m probably going to bring up a decent bit of science fiction in this review. This is not to say that this book is trying to be like anything else, or that any of what I compare it to is better or worse, but it’s much easier to talk about a genre as varied as science fiction with a basis of bearing and a good point of comparison or connection.

Personally, I’m hesitant to call this a thriller because the plot doesn’t coax any feelings of doom or overwhelming dread. It does get exciting at parts, and you do believe that the crew is in genuine danger, but it’s a who-done-it whose detective genuinely does not believe that her peers want to cause her harm. Obviously, someone on the ship triggered the explosion, and yes people died, but from Asuka’s perspective, she doesn’t really see any of these people capable of harboring violent malice. The risks associated with the mission are on par with most sci-fi with a similar colonization premise, there are limited resources on the ship and no help in space, so if something goes wrong, it could mean certain death.

The direction The Deep Sky took is for the better. Personally, I don’t really need to see a group of women and other marginalized identities take any excuse to expose each other’s flaws and assume the worse. When they do point the finger in the book, it’s out of reluctance, if not desperation.

First quick round of comparisons. Regarding the ship and the crew, it has the same feel as Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. The protagonists of the stories could not be more dissimilar if they tried, but both books have the same sort of close-quarters crew from exceptional backgrounds who are very familiar with each other. The book is told with a split timeline similar to Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. While Project Hail Mary focused its flashbacks on Earth primarily as a means of interactive exposition, The Deep Sky uses it primarily as a way to build character and build a thematic throughline that extends past the ship. Honestly, I really enjoyed the split timeline. The book made excellent use of its format, the scenes Kitasei chooses to revisit are wonderfully actualized, and the split timeline model allows for the emotional beats to hold a hefty amount of weight. (Let’s go mommy issues! Everyone, give it up for mommy issues. Insecurity around close female friendships is second. Let’s go! Hitting all the marks.)

The writing was crisp and clear. The world and settings were well constructed. I quite enjoyed being in Asuka’s head. She’s a little rough around the edges, and frustrating at times, but impossible not to sympathize with or root for. I’m biracial as well, so I’m particularly fond of characters who grapple with similar dual identities. All the side characters are very defined with a good deal of complexity for an ensemble cast. The mystery itself isn’t terribly shocking, but it still manages to subvert expectations in a very satisfying way.

I could stop the review right here and say that it’s a good book and you should read it. Because I do believe that. It’s a well-constructed piece of science fiction, especially good for a debut, both stimulating and entertaining. It comments on the cynical world of today while projecting hope into tomorrow. The characters and conflict are well crafted and stick with the reader. Yes, it’s sci-fi, but the accessible kind that sticks close enough to Earth to feel entirely familiar. I hope this book gets big, and I hope that my words, in some way, accomplish that. I read this in the middle of a bad reading slump and breezed through it, impressed. I’m excited for what Kitasei does next.

But. Now. I want to talk about thematic. I have a lot to say. The Deep Sky has awakened the cogs in my brain, and unfortunately, I’m making that your (the reader’s) problem.

I decided to read this book while simultaneously watching the first 10 Star Trek movies for the first time over the course of a week. That may have done things to my brain. You’ll see in a moment.

Ursula K LeGuin, my queen, says in her forward to arguably one of the most famous sci fi novels, The Left Hand of Darkness, that science fiction is not a prediction of the future, but a reflection on the present. And true to the genre, the world Kitasei creates is nothing more than an exaggerated version of the world we currently live in. The climate crisis is out of control, sparking conflict between major nations. Extremist factions rise out of desperation, eco-terrorists and proto-MAGAS. And in the middle of all of this, some trillionaire decides to send 80 teenagers into space in an effort to save what’s left of humanity.

The question of if we should focus on the issues here first or use those resources to look forward is not new, in science fiction or in the real world. There were protests when the first Apollo Missions went up. Yes, the moon landing filled the world with the wonder of human capability and possibility, but it was funded to stick it to the USSR. It was a display of nationalism, meant to unite some people and scare others. We didn’t shoot for the moon to reach it, but to stick our flag in it first.

The current efforts of Bezos and Musk to develop commercial flights to space and colonize Mars are less of a space race and more a commodification of the space race. Billionaires would not be interested in technological development if they did not think that it was a means of furthering their wealth or retaining it in the face of human disaster. This is my personal interpretation of the situation, but I do believe it wholeheartedly because, by nature, to be a billionaire is to grow and maintain wealth and if any of these people deviated from that goal, they would no longer be billionaires.

The mission in the book is, from time to time, referred to as a vanity project by the trillionaire who funded it, but it’s impossible for me to believe in it beyond that. I want to see it as a signal of hope like the characters in the book, a measure of the tenacity of the human spirit and a projection of their capability, but I’m just too jaded. “Save humanity” is a noble goal, but humanity could either refer to the individual people composing all of human life or the vague concept of humans as a whole. Maybe it’s because I’m one of the people who would be left behind on the floating rock, but I really think we should be focusing on the floating rock.

In Star Trek: First Contact, we learn how space exploration (Starfleet) came to be. Basically, after World War III and devastating nuclear fallout, this one guy invents warp drive only with the intention of becoming rich. But in doing so, he unknowingly signals to alien life that humanity is advanced enough for interstellar travel, and aliens come to Earth and make first contact. After alien contact, the world unites, getting rid of money and their squabbles to focus on the betterment of humanity and developing Starfleet and the Federation to explore the galaxy. Sounds nice. Sounds good. I’m not sure why World War III was required to get there, but alright.

Importantly, Star Trek focuses on the expansion of humanity into space as something that goes hand in hand with world peace. We cannot focus outward without taking care of ourselves first. It refuses to make the choice between Earth and the cosmos. I love thinking and wondering about the possibility of human expansion into space, the possibilities that await us the farther we explore, but it’s impossible to imagine it as some sort of inspiration in the face of human collapse on Earth. I can’t do it.

Jeff Bezos shot Star Trek‘s William Shatner into space. If you don’t know much about Star Trek, Shatner plays Captain James Kirk, the original face of the franchise. He’s still around. As some sort of… publicity (?) stunt, Bezos decided to send him on a Blue Space Shuttle in 2021. You probably didn’t hear much about it, because the voyage didn’t exactly have its desired effect.

In an article Shatner wrote for Variety, he says:

 “I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death.

I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home… It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong.”

Keep in mind this was the guy who was on the show with the relatively hopeful take on things. He wasn’t in First Contact, but the vibes are pretty consistent. He recognized what I feel like all people should: that space is exciting, but our hopes lay in our home. I also implore you to read the article. Despite how you may feel about Shatner’s entries into the Star Trek canon, this Variety article is a truly good piece of writing.

I don’t think that The Deep Sky is any less of a book because I disagree with some of the ideas in it. There are some I do find compelling and enjoyed how the conclusions were reached in the book, like who “deserves” to be on such a mission. If anything, I’m grateful that the novel posed its conflict the way it did so I was able to have this conversation. What’s a conviction if you never have it challenged? If anything, the ideas in the novel are meant to be an open-ended aspiration, a vibe rather than any sort of moral determination. You can see both sides of the coin. This is just my reaction to it. Also, I just kind of wanted to talk about Star Trek. Read the book, so you can join in the conversation too.

‘Fourth Wing’ Review – The Aesthetics of War

Beatrine Shahzad3 Comments

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is backed by the Tiktok Hype Industrial Complex and I’ve got FOMO.

I am going to make one thing quite clear. This is not an unbiased review. I did not go into this book with an open mind. I typically don’t like this vein of fantasy romance, but normally it’s something I’m willing to push aside until the book begins to speak for itself. I had no such intentions for this book, because I made the terrible mistake of reading the author bio before I read the first word of her novel.

“A second-generation army brat, Rebecca loves military heroes and has been blissfully married to hers for more than twenty years.”

A dark cloud descends over my mind. Lightning strikes in the distance. Thunder rumbles underhead.

I am not going to pretend to understand the current politics of being a military wife. I don’t know where they stand on, like, the current war and sending our #troops overseas to drone strike Yemeni villages or whatever. But my guess is that they really don’t care, because if they did, their association with the military would not a badge of honor trampstamped across the backside of their novel. I cannot pretend to know exactly how Rebecca Yarros feels about the current state of US imperialism, the US industrial complex, or US foreign relations, but I can point to that line in her bio and say it makes me deeply uncomfortable. Because, like, what exactly about “military heroes” do you love so much?

A military hero cannot exist without a military villain. They are on opposite sides of the propaganda machine, one cannot exist without the other, and for every military hero you prop up, there’s another person, or rather sort of person, you kick into the dirt. Did you love the movie ‘American Sniper’, Rebecca Yarros? Is that the kind of military hero you love? Because after it came out, there was a rise in anti-Muslim threats.

Yeah, so basically, military brat writes war novel. But even if the book is more anti-war than a Nixon era hippie protest on the steps of the US capitol, I still don’t think military hero worship is cute, or ever will be. I don’t think supporting the US military is cute, or ever will be. I think we should normalize shaming people who support the military. (Veterans are a different conversation, and one that I am not very interested in having right now.)

So. Is the book anti-war? Well. It’s as much pro war as it’s anti war because it’s a whole lot of nothing.

In Fourth Wing, Violet is conscripted into war college to become a dragon rider. It’s dangerous. A lot of people die doing it. Her mom is a hot shot general who basically killed the parents of a bunch of rebel’s kids who are mandatorily conscripted, so a lot of people at the school want her dead. And at this school, you can just do that. You can just kill people. There are some rules sprinkled in here and there, but we basically see a kid get murked during sparring practice and the murderer just shrugs like “oopsies”.

The entire rules surrounding the school and who’s allowed to kill who when and why so many parents are okay with their kids dying and why the war would be okay with their conscripts dying require a lot of suspension of disbelief. And the logic of who wants to kill Violet when also requires suspension of disbelief. At one point someone remarks that after graduating from War University, people will protect Violet to stay in her mother’s good graces. Why doesn’t that protection extend into the school? Surely, if someone kills her daughter, she’d hate them after graduating. Because Yarros needed the plot, and the plot of this book is, “Violet doesn’t want to die.”

It took me about 60% into the novel before I realized nothing was really happening. This book bamboozles you pretty bad. The first chapter is really long and a ton of it is just blatant over the top exposition. Like, the main character literally recites a textbook to the audience. And then the exposition just keeps going. It doesn’t feel like you’re learning about the world in a natural way to progress the story. It feels like you’re being fed exposition through scenes of Violet lusting over another man and trying not to die. And while “trying not to die” sometimes works as a plot, it just didn’t here.

The focus of this book, besides the endless exposition, was clearly the romance. Xaden. Enemies to lovers. Except not really. Yarros never defines them as ideological enemies, only as circumstantial enemies, which aren’t really enemies. Your mom killed my dad. Okay. Same sort of thing happened in West Side Story, but they were on the same page about it. (JOKE).

Oh, but he wants to kill her. Or rather, she thinks he wants to kill her, but he really doesn’t, and the audience knows that, and he tells her that and she just doesn’t believe it. For the first 30% of the book, they don’t even know each other and he most definitely is not trying to kill her. For the next 70%, they are on the same side. They are instantly horny for each other. I guess it could be fun to read in a trashy when-will-they sort of way, but it does not deliver the enemies to lovers intensity you’d expect. I found it dull.

Oh, not to mention that there’s supposed to be a love triangle in this. It’s not really a love triangle, because Yarros was not interested in making the second love interest a desirable option. He’s the classic childhood best friend, and his name is Dain. He’s a squad leader, so logically, within the narrative, he must have some sort of skill or capacity for usefulness in his day-to-day operations. We see none of it. He’s nice to Violet, but overbearing, and not sexy enough. It seems that he has no desire but to abide by the rules and protect Violet. He’s barely a character. It’s trite.

I have mixed feelings on Violet. On one hand, I am a small girlie described as frail and undervalued because of this. I understand that Violet had a chronic illness, so I’m not gonna pretend to relate on that front or comment on that sort of representation, other than the fact that it was incorporated into the novel in a natural way. I appreciated how, in that sense, she didn’t feel like the typical fantasy heroine. Her flaws were well defined and how she overcame them was realistic enough. She’s easy to project onto. Comma. But.

Xaden’s nickname for Violet is Violence. (I found this 2 be CRINGE!) She has this whole arc about coming into her power or whatever, but a biproduct is that she is very dangerous. She can really hurt people. She’s a weapon. This makes her upset, but Xaden is like don’t be ashamed of being a weapon, be proud to be the weapon. Which like. Nice on paper, in an insular sense of “own your strengths”. Bad when you take a couple of steps away from the paper. Terrible when you remember the author is an army wife.

Interlude: I Discuss the Technicalities.

Prose: This is a voicey fantasy. It’s riddled with modern slang and anachronisms, with the narration resembling that of a contemporary romance rather than a fantasy. I don’t particularly like this! It might be your cup of tea! But it isn’t mine! Mostly because it was common on Wattpad when I was 13 and I don’t like reliving those days. I did my time. I have grazed those fields and am now going on to different pastures.

Editing: There were some weird sentences in here. I have a couple of highlights like “‘You know very well the natural pigment seems to gradually abandon it no matter the length.'” One, that’s not good dialogue. Two, badly constructed sentence. Just say gradates. PLEASE. These sorts of mistakes weren’t super common, but when they were present, they did pull me out of the book.

Pacing: This book gave me a little bit of my old Wattpad buzz, but I’m not sure it was its intrinsic quality as a page turner or if it was because I dared myself to finish it in one day (I didn’t). Either way, I do think it’s bloated. Because this book stakes its central conflict on Violet’s survival, once she ends up in a relatively safe position, it loses momentum. There are clear separate acts in the book, but as one ended, it became increasingly difficult to become invested in the next. If her life will always be in danger, what’s the motivation to keep reading? When will it end? Once I hit the 60% mark, boy howdy, I was ready to throw in the towel. Yes, that’s when the romance ramps up, but too bad the romance is uninspired. Like, relies on 20 questions to be endearing type of uninspired.

Dragons: Personalities but no insights. Their backstories were the stuff of legends, not points of connection. I had no idea what their motivations were. They didn’t feel like characters in their own right, merely support for their riders. Yarros tried to dissuade this idea by showing them to be adversarial or blabber something about how they do what they want by their own rules, but it doesn’t really land. The last series I had to read with magic interlinking sex and also dragons was the Farseer trilogy and I think that it was very brave of Rebecca Yarros to stitch together those ideas, but if she was gonna do that, then she should’ve written a book as good as any in that trilogy.

Vibes: People describe this as fun because there’s sarcasm and banter in it. I wouldn’t call it fun, but if that’s what your idea of fun is, go live your life. I’m not your mom. But if you agree with me, then know that this book is not fun.

Interlude: Fin.

I’m going to do my best to sum up my issues with the war sentiments in this book without spoiling anything or going into too much detail. If you want to go in completely blind, tap out now. If you’d be alright with some mild spoilers, proceed with your own caution.

For 80% of the book, you have no clue why these two nations are at war. There’s a throwaway line about how the enemy isn’t content with their resources and is greedy, but we all know that’s not really a reason wars are fought. Yet, that’s all we get. People are dying left and right, we hear about how taxing this war is, but the only ideology behind it is greed, so it doesn’t really feel real.

When we learn about the rebellion, it’s only about the effects of the rebellion. Because of the rebellion, the marked conscripts are orphaned, they hate Violet, they’re ostracized, etc etc. We don’t really know what the rebellion entailed. We don’t know in what way their parents betrayed the kingdom, or if they agreed with that decision. There are no politics, only the effects of said politics, which is why so much of the book seems hollow.

All of this hollowness culminates in some great reveal about the true reason for the war. Call me stupid, but when the book was done I had to go back and name search the countries to try and piece together why it was such a shocking reveal. We were given so little substantial information, the characters believed in so little to begin with, that it couldn’t have been a subversion. There was nothing to subvert. It turns out those dry textbook clippings were supposed to mean something for the story, but it was really hard to keep my eyes from glazing right over them because I had no reason to care about it because the characters didn’t care about it.

Up until the very end, I’d say the last 10%, I would say that this book was borrowing the aesthetics of war as a vehicle for some story about survival. I already hate that. By the end, when we learn the truth, it’s strange. Yarros is attempting to say nothing without having anything of substance to say. The great wool over the main character’s eyes in this book doesn’t say anything about the morality of war or how propaganda operates. If the book was about morality, the main character would have believed in the morality of a cause worth fighting and dying for (she doesn’t). If the book was about propaganda, we would have seen how the government brainwashed her (they don’t push a narrative, only hide things).

I see people bring up the military-industrial complex when it comes to this book, and I must respectfully disagree. I think that people just like… don’t know what that term means. It’s specific. It refers to the way that the private weapons manufacturers, the government, and the military interact with each other to perpetuate war because it is profitable for all of them. If war, then government get to have weapon and Lockheed Martin get to sell weapon. It’s not about how war is profitable because of its spoils or how people perpetuate war out of greed. The military-industrial complex isn’t about how the oil corporations pushed the US into invading Iraq, it’s about how weapons manufacturers push the US into supporting Israel so that they can get paid for the missiles they supply to them. This isn’t a huge deal, just a distinction that I find important, because I talk about imperialistic themes in media a lot and I like being precise.

In Fourth Wing, weapons are brought up in how they relate to the war, but it has nothing to do with the profitability of manufacturing them. Instead, the reason for the war becomes somewhat of a trolly problem. An us or them sort of thing. It can only exist as a hypothetical, and so still, it says nothing.

One thing the book is weirdly consistent with is the necessity of violence. Violet must become a weapon to survive. Violence against a foreign enemy is required in order to have peace. Either we must fight a warring nation to secure ourselves, we must fight with them to secure the both of us, but either way, we must fight.

This, believe it or not, is actually a form of US military propaganda. (I know you are soooo sick of me by now).

The United States Military justifies its far reach into other countries by parading as the global police force of the world. They believe that safety and security can only be achieved under the threat of violence. They perpetuate war by perpetuating the idea that the world needs violence to be secure.

This is part of the reason I found the “Violence” nickname, and the context surrounding it, to be troublesome. It’s why I found the cavalier nature of the slew of deaths to be worrying. It’s robbing war of context, yet still insisting that it is necessary. Death is necessary, but it isn’t something you should worry about unless it’s coming for you. In that case, it is kill or be killed. This is the nature of things.

Except it isn’t. And the book’s insistence that it is frustrated me. I don’t care if she corrects this in a sequel, it’s bad storytelling. Not only is it careless, it is lazy. If people are dying on page, there should be a good reason, or at least the attempt of a real good reason, other than to create stakes. A character becoming a weapon out of necessity is boring. You may disagree with me. That’s fine. But it’s boring. I am so bored.

So yeah, Fourth Wing. Not it. (I know I talk about a lot of things in this review, but by far, its biggest sin is the terrible exposition. So yeah.)

(I wish this was a silly review poking fun of the fact that you needed magic to use a pen or other weird convoluted aspects of the worldbuilding, but depictions of the military and war in media are much too important for me to disregard. Sorry I’m like this. I’ll find something silly soon.)

For more writing on imperialism and military propaganda in media: see my Black Adam review.

‘Untethered Sky’ Review – Drag Before a Great Lift

Beatrine ShahzadLeave a comment

Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee is a neat novella that flies slow and low to the ground. Inspired by Persian and Arab mythology, the central focus of the story are rocs, enormous birds of prey. Or, more specifically, it follows Ester, a young woman who rises from apprentice to full-fledged ruhker, someone who raises and trains a roc. Rocs are trained to hunt for manticore, beasts that kill people indiscriminately and with little reprieve. Somewhat reserved, she is driven by her purpose with little interest in much else, her love for her bird almost as fierce as her hatred of manticores.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC and for supporting SWANA reviewers!

The novella was an enjoyable read. The first half stalled, relying heavily on the spectacle of the world Lee wove together from inspiration. Lee herself is not SWANA. I am. I am often critical of Persian representation from non-Persian authors, a very common occurrence. That being said, there was nothing wrong with the cultural elements in this story. As an Asian author, Lee is probably well aware of how to avoid orientalism in her writing and she took care when describing the food and culture. I am not Zoroastrian myself, so I cannot speak to its accuracy, but nothing jumps out to me there. Unfortunately, it was all just a bit soulless. I had no sense of love for the setting or culture. It’s not a requirement of writing a good story, but it is a requirement of writing a great one.

All the love of this novel was funneled into that bird. The roc. Ester’s roc, Zahra. I like birds. I liked reading about Zahra. Of course, it was not simply Zahra, but what Zahra represented to Ester and how she brought people together. The day-to-day of ruhking could get repetitive at times, causing the book to drag, but for the most part, it was interesting lore. Although the first half is paced slowly, it pays off in the second half. Tension rises, and I started to become afraid for the main characters. The last quarter goes by in a blur and culminates in a satisfying ending that pulls the entire novella together. My nerves frazzled out, I felt truly connected to the characters. It puts everything so far neatly into place. The end elevates the ranking of this novella an entire star.

There isn’t much more to say. Untethered Sky is a solid, quick read. I wish there was a flame beneath it that eagerly encouraged me to place it in the hands of my friends, but all I can say is that you should read it if the premise seems interesting to you. Some passages were raw and jumped out at me, threatening to pull at my heart, but I wish a bit more of the fat was trimmed.

‘The Magician’s Daughter’ Review – Warm and Witty

Beatrine ShahzadLeave a comment

Many thanks to NetGalley and Redhood Books for the arc of The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry. Had fun with this one.

The novel follows Biddy, a sixteen-year-old who washed ashore an isolated and secret magical island as a baby and was raised by the mage who inhabits it. Though she loves her home, she’s grown restless with solitude. When she finally gets the chance to visit the real world, it’s under less-than-ideal circumstances. Her guardian is in danger, magic is in a crisis, and through adventure, she is forced to confront the truth of what she’s been told her entire life.

Right now, “cozy fantasy” is beginning to pick up steam. I’d describe it as fantasy that is more comforting than isn’t, sort of domestic and something that’ll leave you warm. The Magician’s Daughter isn’t precisely a cozy fantasy, but it is very comforting. It’s infused with love and whimsy. As the kids say, the vibes are on point. They make the reader feel as if they’re reading a fun middle-grade fantasy, but for adults. Most witty adult fantasies are adventure/quest novels such as Stardust or The Princess Bride, but The Magician’s Daughter is more limited in scope.

The book plays close to its 19th-century United Kingdom setting, commenting on both its mythologies and historical shifts. The reflections on womanhood and sexism were interesting. Having a heroine who isn’t interested in romance was a good angle for this story, one that allows it to delve more deeply into other commentaries. It touches dark elements and isn’t afraid to confront ugliness, but does so with care and in a way that isn’t offputting. The reader feels safe.

The characters are lovely to be around and the world is easy to slip into. If anything, maybe a lot of the characters are a bit too similar and interpersonal conflict is too easily resolved. If their arguments were more abrasive, the storyline would be more interesting, but then a huge chunk of the appeal would be lost. These characters love each other and this is a story that highlights the good rather than explores the bad.

The prose is lovely and sharp without being too much. Biddy’s monologue has a distinctive voice and the rest of her world is infused with personality. The tone is perfect for the story. In fact, the tone sets the foundation from which all other expectations are built. And so, the tone, the character voice, and the descriptions, all layer beautifully and cohesively in a way that compliments rather than clashes. This work is delicate, but Parry succeeds.

The plot isn’t anything special, but it doesn’t need to be. The magic system, worldbuilding, politics, mythology, and characters are the clear story elements that shine. The plot attempts to string the reader along by offering mysteries to be solved and lies to be revealed, but truly the reason to get to the end is that the reader wants to see all of the characters end up okay and out of danger. In that way, I can appreciate its simplicity. The few attempts to subvert or complicate the plot and story didn’t really pay off.

I really like The Magician’s Daughter, almost to an embarrassing degree. I’d forgotten how much I am enchanted by whimsy-adjacent fantasy. But this was a great reintroduction to that genre, the strange combination of a high-stakes fantasy novel with a low-stakes tone and lovable characters. It was a great palette cleanser after reading Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb, I can tell you that much. If you enjoy witty fantasy, particularly those set in this setting, I’d recommend The Magician’s Daughter.

‘The Stardust Thief’ Review – A Love Letter to Stories

Beatrine ShahzadLeave a comment

For some reason, I can’t name many SWANA-set fantasy books written by SWANA authors- especially in the adult category. I have no doubt that they exist, but they simply do not possess the same word-of-mouth hype that really sells books. I don’t know how this happened. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with the spaces I occupy online, and where I get my book recommendations from, but the kicker is that I make an active effort to seek out these sorts of titles. That’s how I found The Stardust Thief. I am Persian, fantasy is my favorite genre by far, and I am well aware of the genre’s rocky history of stealing Asian aesthetics to pad their worldbuilding with little respect for the culture they’re appropriating from.

So, when I find a book that fits into the category of Own Voices, SWANA-inspired fantasy, I get tentatively excited. Excited, because this could be it, but tentatively so because I do not want to count my chickens before they hatch. My chickens rarely hatch.

The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah certainly is an it-girl.

An Arab-penned tale that takes place in an Arabia-inspired desert, The Stardust Thief follows Loulie al-Nazari, better known to those who do business with her as The Midnight Merchant. She’s garnered a reputation for seeking out and illegally selling magical artifacts in quantities that no one else can. Little do they know that her elusive bodyguard, Qadir, is actually a jinn, his people persecuted in this world, and she’s aided by her own artifact that helps her complete the task. Though deft in her trade, she draws too much attention to herself after saving the life of a sheltered prince, Mazen, and is then forced by the sultan to find an artifact his family has been seeking for generations- a lost oil lamp binding an all-powerful jinn within. She is accompanied by her faithful bodyguard, the sultan’s oldest son, Omar, and his forty thieves, Aisha. And so goes a twisting adventure through the desert, one filled with jinn, magic, secrets, revenge, and redemption.

This book is reminiscent of Wheel of Time in that all the characters were instantly recognizable, defined, and bright. Though this is usually the case for archetypes, the characters in The Stardust Thief are not regulated to a mold. There is nuance to them and layers to peel back, but you do not need to peel back anything to be invested. Much of this is accomplished by their distinctive voices and motivations. Their backstory, what drives them, eventually comes to light but by then it’s a matter of falling further into the story.

The book is narrated through the rotating perspectives of Loulie, Mazen, and Aisha. Undoubtedly the main character, Loulie is a quiet force. Her back and forth with Qadir is great. She’s tenacious and bruised by a difficult past, but not yet hardened to the point of indifference. Aisha is a much more prickly character, your standard Girl With Knives™. Though there’s less focus on her backstory, it was very easy to sympathize with her motivations and her chapters were some of my favorites. Some of that can be attributed to the great work her audiobook narrator does.

On the flip side, I can not take Mazen’s audiobook narrator seriously. The exaggerated voices he puts on for each character yanked me out of the story. This isn’t really a fault of the writing, but an annoyance I must note. When his voices became too absurd, they inspired a physical cringe or giggle. Maybe it’s because the narrator introduced us poorly, but Mazen and I had a rocky start. Though my love for pathetic characters is well documented, I feared he would be a whiner. I was, thankfully, proven otherwise.

Mazen’s point-of-view was like a breath of earnestness throughout the novel, lending a whole new dimension to the narrative. Not only did he wear his feelings on his sleeve, becoming instantly sympathetic, but he was also the storyteller. The Stardust Thief is inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, a story about the power of stories. Many retellings simply recount, and twist where necessary, the individual stories that the collection is composed of, but The Stardust Thief indulges in them. Stories are interwoven into the narrative and shared with an admirable fervor. The novel understands tales as the push and pull between the teller and the listener, the warnings and wonder that they can inspire. All books reflect a love of storytelling, but this one centralizes that adoration. And I felt it. It was almost like I was a child hearing some of these stories for the first time and inspired by the same warm sort of rapt admiration.

Nostalgia? Maybe. When I was a kid, we had a volume of 10 children’s books, each tome a collection of a different sort of story. One was composed of folk and fairytales, arranged by region. I wore out every single fairytale in that book with the desperation that anyone who loves reading knows. There were only three stories in the Middle East section, all from One Thousand and One Nights, and I must’ve read each one at least three times just trying to catch a glimpse of the culture I came from. Ultimately, it was my mother who orally shared with me the story of Scheherazade. So, there’s a lot of raw emotion tied to the source material of this book, and Abdullah was able to tap it. If you grew up with any of the stories from One Thousand and One Nights, there is another layer to appreciate. If you haven’t, there is still inherently so much to enjoy.

That being said, The Stardust Thief is structured like a quest novel. Since it’s a debut, I know the word count was probably constrained to teeter around the 100k mark, but it would’ve fared much better if it was longer. I like quest novels to be longer, so that you can sit with the characters and don’t feel like that CGI ping-pong ball from Forrest Gump being thrown about. There were so many large confrontations and action pieces, it really felt like any one of them could be the climax. Right as we enter the third act, it’s hard to imagine the climax outdoing what came before it. But, it actually delivers. So, the problem then is not the scenes themselves individually, but the breathing room we have between them. With more time between cornerstone scenes, the audience could have better processed what they’ve learned and contextualized its magnitude in the overall narrative better. Because what sets the final confrontation apart from its predecessors is its depth of emotional inspection.

I am wary of dramatic third-act reveals. Most of the ones I have read recently really do not inform the existing story in any meaningful way, but rather fodder an exciting end with shock value. The reveals in The Stardust Thief were revealing. The twists were twisting. Throughout the book, there is a constant slow drip of reveals that constantly shifts the reader’s perspective and introduces new questions. Then, at the final confrontation, the questions are answered. I fear that I cannot share more, but the drama, the intrigue, it was there.

I’m a fan of The Stardust Thief. It was the first adult high fantasy I’d picked up after a peculiarly long drought and it did not disappoint. Although I wished it had been paced better, all other aspects place it as a strong debut. Chelsea Abdullah’s a talented writer and her books will only get better with time. There wasn’t really a romance in this book, but series with the first book to establish characters and the remaining books to explore their relationships are always the best, so I sure will be picking up its sequel!

★★★★

‘Seven Faceless Saints’ Review – Una Delusione

Beatrine ShahzadLeave a comment

Before we get into this review of Seven Faceless Saints by M.K. Lobb, let us take a moment to thank netgalley and Little, Brown for the arc. All quotes have been taken from the advanced reader copy, check with the final published copy.

In war-torn Ombrazia, it’s a death sentence if you’re born without magic. Well, practically speaking. Based off of medieval Italy, the country is carved into guilds and each of the seven crafts has a patron saint. Those descendant from such a saint could be born with some of their ancestor’s magic and are called disciples. Disciples’ ability to craft is highly valued by the economy, so they are favored by society. Everyone else goes off to die in a war fought over trade routes against heretics who seceded for following the disgraced and fallen seventh saint.

Prickily and determined, Roz is a disciple, though she isn’t proud of the role. Righteous in her anger, she does not believe in the saints nor does she the society their worship has constructed. Damian is head of security (a cop), a descendant without a gift, and guilt-ridden after his stint as a soldier at the frontlines. They were in love before he was shipped off, but everything had changed between them by the time he returned. Now, they’re just strangers with history and strangers who have to team up together to solve a series of mysterious murders targeting both the unfavored and the disciples.

I want to make it very clear from the beginning that this is a secular review. I’m not religious. I’m not Christian. I was raised Muslim. The most I know about Christianity is the one week of Vacation Bible Study I led when I was in high school because I needed volunteering credit, the Book of Job analysis I had to do in my high school AP Lit class, and just talking to my Christian friends about their faith. So really, I don’t have a horse in this race.

First and foremost, I had a little bit of fun with the Italian setting. I make fun of Italians mercilessly (mamma mia), but the Italian words thrown in here and there were fun. Developing a guild system as a political basis was also a good idea, but I wish the execution had been better.

The prose is very passive. It almost comes across as detached, which is a hurdle to overcome when connecting to characters. Many actions are overly wordy and simply described. For example, there are a lot of “the blank was a blank thing” (the glow was a somber thing, the sound was a deafening thing) which is cute once or twice but with the frequency I noticed it only aided in the detached style of writing. Also, it’s a personal ick. The only time the writing feels alive and you actually feel connected to the characters is when the main couple is attracted (see: horny) to each other, which means that was the best part of the book, but it also means that literally everything else falls flat.

The main pair’s relationship is extremely emotionally jarring to get through. And not in the good way. There are moments where the characters will switch from anger to humor to regret to horniness within one page with practically no sinew connecting the thoughts. Complexity of emotion is expected, but there has to be some continuous layering or transitions between them, or I’m just going to get whiplash. There are chapters of emotional buildup and when the characters finally standoff, there is an uncalled for casual air to the entire conversation. There are chapters ended on extremely emotionally intense dialogue, and when the POV switches into the same scene, the same character will deliver another line of dialogue on the complete opposite side of the emotional spectrum and I don’t know how they traversed that entire gap. The emotions of the chapters contrasted, but the author refused to elaborate on how the character could say something so charged before changing her tune, only why she changed her tune.

So, we have a roller coaster of unconnected emotions making it difficult to connect to the characters. Especially Roz. I do enjoy the hardened female character, but she came off as entirely one note to me. Personally, I think it’s because the author did not allow her to be wrong about anything. She let her desire for revenge and anger get the better of her from time to time, but it was clear throughout every discussion in the book that we were meant to side with Roz. She had very little to learn or understand about other characters, practically nothing outside of a romantic context. It was a boring viewpoint to be in, and it sapped the intrigue out of what could otherwise be compelling dialogues.

I liked Damian but that’s just because the pathetically obsessed man is one of the archetypes I am most fond of. Call it the Raoul de Chagny print. Men who are complete losers >>>. But the way this man was written frustrated me to no end, because MK Lobb could’ve made his arc great but then just… didn’t.

Disinterested prose and disjointed writing aside, the biggest problem with this book is how the author approaches religion. Seven Faceless Saints desperately wanted to be a commentary on religion, or at least religious systems. It wanted to have Damian have a fall from faith arc. But it could do neither of those things, because the book did not care to introspect on what could inspire people to religion or give them comfort. It did not develop a political system built around the ideals of a religion, even though it said it did. And no dialogue on religion was a true dialogue, because it was always, always cut short. Three times the dialogue is interrupted or written off because… the author did not want to write the other side? I’m at a loss.

If Lobb had chosen to take the saints out of the equation entirely, the worldbuilding would be the same. People with more magic are more useful, so they are favored by society. The disgraced society is fighting its war over trade routes. Lobb calls them heretics, but they’re not fighting for a holy cause, they’re fighting because their kingdom is dying. Why is it called a Second War of Saints? When Roz and Damian initially learn that they do not have powers, their first thought is toward Damian’s inevitable enlistment. It’s extremely pragmatic, extremely practical, and does not revolve around the ideas of any sort of higher power.

Damian’s grappling with his faith is embarrassing to read. One of the first times Roz calls his faith lazy, his internal monologue basically throws in the towel, saying, “He couldn’t do this with her. The saints were his understanding of the world, and he wasn’t interested in hearing anyone tell him otherwise. It was how he’d been raised.” It was such a cartoonish depiction of what an atheist would think a religious person believes, I couldn’t believe it. He might have well looked into the camera and said “I’m brainwashed.” And as he begins to doubt his faith, he does it on the basis that “not all the stories are true” or “if the saints aren’t alive and aren’t hearing my prayers then I’ll look stupid for believing them”. Which… is a choice.

This is all exasperated by the fact that you only ever hear 1.5 religious stories and none of their specific beliefs, so instead of having an actual religion to critique, we’re left with the vague shadow of Christianity or Catholicism since that’s the clear inspiration (see: Italian Saints). One of the stories shared is this world’s version of Genesis. Roz flippantly comments that she does not believe that it is real, that the saints existed but did not carve out the world, and Damian has to antagonize with that possibility. Once again, it is embarrassingly flat. Like a child learning that Santa isn’t real. But while adults know that Santa isn’t real, they still in believe the spirit of Santa, the joy he inspires, and the importance of keeping that alive. Belief and faith, and all these things are not dipoles, they’re a complicated gradient.

While it is certainly true that some Christians believe in Genesis verbatim, many understand that many bible stories exist to be metaphor. If religious stories weren’t open to interpretation, then there wouldn’t be a billion denominations. The bible has been studied and questioned for thousands of years, with scholars dedicating their lives to questioning what it means. Regularly, Roz comments on how people who are religious simply accept things without question and how much it annoys her. It’s incredibly close-minded and ignorant, and I’d almost think that she was set up to be wrong except for the fact that the narrative backs her up. When Damian starts to question his faith (oh no the stories aren’t 100% factually correct), it crumbles near instantly.

There are no central religious morals the citizens seem to follow. There are seven guilds, do any of their interpretation of the stories differ? Are there cultural differences between the guilds due to their different beliefs? If there are differences between the guilds, are some looked down upon by others? Do the different saints stress different morals that people who follow them feel compelled to? The unfavored citizens seem not to follow a guild, but do they still worship the saints? These may seem like extraneous questions, but they’re questions you need to answer if you want to make a commentary on religion. It’s hard to critique how a set of ideals can be corrupted and enforced on people when you don’t have a set of ideals. You can’t have saints without sinners, and Lobb never bothered to write sin. There’s a source of evil, in a classical fantasy sort of way, but there is no belief of mortal sin. And it could’ve made the book so much better.

Damian is defined by his guilt. There is a lot he regrets. Yet, he never prays for forgiveness. There’s a big difference between “if the saints don’t exist, I’ll have dedicated my life to nothing” and “if the saints don’t exist, then who can forgive me for what I’ve done?”. The possible drama. The angst. The yearning. The lack of it drove me insane. It could’ve been so good.

Instead, we just got empty appeals to his patron saint, asking him for guidance and asking what he did wrong to not be blessed with a gift. A plea that rings hollow because we don’t know what his saint’s morals are. How did Damian dedicate his entire life to a code of conduct that his saint set up? Is he mad at himself for being imperfect, for breaking it, or is he mad that he forwent his own sense of right and wrong to follow it and it still resulted in nothing?

Damian’s saint is Strength, but the narrative regularly brings up how he’s too soft, a sense of disappointment from his father. Which, wasn’t lost on me, but we could’ve turned up the volume. Just imagine the drama if his father was a stoic follower of Strength, and believing in following the callous will of Strength before any other saint. Damian, on the other hand, could believe in the important of balance, and feels that all saints have important teachings that they must consider. Or even, maybe Damian’s fall from faith would be the fact that he couldn’t dedicate his life to a cruel saint that made his father cruel. There would be an ideological rift between them, one that we never get to know because we don’t even know what Strength’s code of conduct is. We don’t know what descendants of Strength are supposed to believe. If it was mentioned in the book, it must’ve been a throwaway line. But, I must’ve been sleepwalking through this book then, because shouldn’t the religious beliefs of these people be baked into every other line?

Near the end, the narrative does dip its toes within the actual dangers of belief and religion, but it’s more of a commentary on extremism than it is on any sort of organized system. I’m just… very disappointed. I watched Midnight Mass two weeks before reading this book, and maybe if I hadn’t watched that near-flawless, gripping, commentary on religion, then maybe I’d be kinder. But no, I’ve seen how it’s possible to show the dangers of religion while showing empathy to the people who believe. It also just makes for a better story. Dressing your book in religious imagery does little to actual imbue it with the inherent drama and stakes that actual religious belief bestows. Hell, even Book of Mormon, as flawed and blasphemous and problematic as it is, is a more nuanced take on belief than this is.

The commentary on cops is a little sus in places, but I ultimately think it checks out. I think. There’s so much telling in this novel, I don’t know why the author would feel the need to tell us that there are good people in the police force and that Damian tried to get rid of the bad apples (as if this is something to be applauded), but leave the bits about the system getting rid of good, merciful people (because it’s inconducive to their goals) up to critical interpretation. The worldbuilding as a whole needed to be bolstered to make these kinds of commentaries.

I don’t think I’ll be picking up the sequel. Frankly, I can’t see any continuation of the story that would interest me based on where the characters left off. There is more teased, but I just don’t care about this world and I certainly don’t care about the characters that much. I did quite enjoy the climax of the novel, and found myself gripped by the scene. It is emotionally satisfying, but beyond it could not make me care. The plot itself is whatever, I didn’t find it clever, but it wasn’t a bad mystery. Perfectly serviceable. The pacing didn’t drag, though I did find myself growing annoyed with the mismatch of emotions and lack of worldbuilding after the 40% mark. Before that point, I had high hopes for this book. It had slayage potential. Unfortunately, it did not slay.