A K Larkwood

This is the kind of book where I can see the issues—slightly slow, wobbly start; the pacing in the mid-section could do with tightening—but I also don't care that much about them very much. Reading The Unspoken Name felt like a ride in a rollercoaster where you're winched along very gradually and slowly and you think eh, this is maybe not going to be that—and then ohhhhhhh shiiiiiit you're flipped over the edge of a very long drop and then the next thing you register is the end of the show more ride and your hair's a mess and you're grinning.

This metaphor has gotten away from me.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: if you dig queer coming-of-age-stories, an Emperor's Hand-esque figure working out their own self-worth, creepy Ancient Gods and their weird-ass death cults, Fun With Tropes, and young women rejecting a world that wants to treat them as disposable, give this a whirl! I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. show less

An enjoyable, if sometimes wobbly, follow-up to The Unspoken Name. Csorwe, Shuthmili, and Tal, together with some new faces, return to try to survive amidst gods, monsters, magic, and the ruins of an ancient snake vampire.

I'd be really curious to know if this was originally planned to be a trilogy rather than a duology. While I'm always glad to see someone shake up the tendency for fantasy books to fall into the trilogy mode, something about the pacing here plus a couple of seemingly show more dropped plot threads made me feel that we were getting a cut-down version of what A.K. Larkwood had intended. I also found the newly introduced teen character to be grating.

That said, this is still the kind of book that words like "rollicking" were invented for, with some gorgeously described fantastical landscapes and set pieces, and lots of characters who are fun to spend time with. I'll be looking forward to seeing what Larkwood does next. show less

Fascinating followup to the first book, which chronicled the adventures and love story of Csorwe and Shuthmili as they escaped the wizard who abused them. But this book starts with Csorwe’s body being taken over by a god—and then jumps fifteen years to find Shuthmili serving the god, hoping against hope to rescue Csorwe. As with the first book, some bad deals are made, some betrayals occur, and both the protagonists and their antagonists are complicated and self-justifying. I enjoyed it.

This book is structured in four separate interlinked stories, and on my first attempt this failed me -- because the start of the second was so different from the previous, with different viewpoint characters, and a time skip, and I struggled to get invested. Particularly, because the first part is so self-contained.

I have lots of scattered thoughts, and they are spoilery, so I'm going to restrict myself to some general comments and leave this as a short review. The world-building is show more fantastic. The multiple worlds, the travel mechanism, the gods, the magic and technology, all deftly sketched and fitted in to the story seamlessly. The characters are amazingly detailed and complex individuals. The main viewpoint character, Csorwe, is morally grey and yet it was entirely understandable how they get from their childhood expectations to their adult self. The plot is intricate, and strongly adheres to the approach I have previously seen attributed to Lois McMaster Bujold of 'if in doubt, make things worse' (said approach attributed to Emily Tesh in the acknowledgements). And the writing is lush.

Having finished it, I'm now reaching for book 2, and very much looking forward to finding out what else happens. I'm presuming that the safe life that several of the characters have gone off to find won't be, or that those characters won't appear in further instalments. And I imagine that there are some worlds-changing events to come, given a) the implications of some events in this book and b) the synopsis of the second.

content warnings for torture, murder, accidental death, earthquake. show less