Eliana's Song Group Read - October - Fires of the Faithful by Naomi Kritzer

For sixteen-year-old Eliana, life at her conservatory of music is a pleasant interlude between youth and adulthood, with the hope of a prestigious Imperial Court appointment at the end. But beyond the conservatory walls is a land blighted by war and inexplicable famine and dominated by a fearsome religious order known as the Fedeli, who are systematically stamping out all traces of the land’s old beliefs. Soon not even the conservatory walls can hold out reality. When one classmate faces dire consequences for clinging to the forbidden ways and another is kidnapped by the Circle--the mysterious and powerful mages who rule the land--Eliana can take no more. Especially not after she learns one of the Circle’s most closely guarded secrets. Now, determined to escape the Circle’s power, burning with rage at the Fedeli, and drawn herself to the beliefs of the Old Way, Eliana embarks on a treacherous journey to spread the truth. And what she finds shakes her to her core: a past destroyed, a future in doubt, and a desperate people in need of a leader--no matter how young or inexperienced...

(I've slightly rephrased the blurb to remove a spoiler.) Fires of the Faithful, the first in the Eliana's Song duology, is a story about music and rebellion, and an oppressive religion whose reign might be tied to the natural disasters blighting the land, and how violinist Eliana and her friends at the Conservatory get involved with events in various ways.

There's also an understated lesbian romance subplot (that ends with the lovers alive and together, though they're apart for a lot of the story), which is pretty rare even today in the genre. Religion is also a fairly central theme throughout- here the conflict is between an oppressive duotheistic religion that worships a Lord and Lady and an oppressed religion that shares a lot in common with Christianity (though its God is female, there is a messiah named Gesu)- I feel like this choice was probably a reaction to the numerous stories about oppressed witches in fantasy lands around the time the book was released (eg The Witches of Eileanan and The Pillars of the World off the top of my head). This could be something of an uncomfortable "discrimiflip," but from what I remember things aren't black and white- our protagonist Eliana remains somewhat uncertain of whether she's religious at all throughout, and it's pointed out that if the Old Way regains dominance, some things may in fact change for the worse culturally.

I think there are a lot of interesting themes in this duology that might be worth discussing!

I loved these books when I read them a year or two back. I hope I have time to fit in a reread this month.

I haven't started my re-read yet, but while browsing around I saw that Kritzer had put out an ebook collection of stories, Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories, that includes a few stories in this setting.

One of the stories is "Magelight," which was later expanded into this duology. It starts with Mira coming to the conservatory with a secret, and being wary of magelight, and the basic concept of magery draining the land and causing famine is there, but there is no religious aspect to the Circle at all, and no Old Way- in fact, Mira and Eliana are the only two Conservatory students we actually see. A Circle mage comes to take Mira away, and we find out her avoidance of magery is because she fears she can't stop herself from practicing it, but she lets herself be taken away so they won't break Eliana's hands, then it cuts to many years later and ends with the revolutionary general Eliana asking for Mira's life to be spared, and taking her away. There's a suggestion of a relationship between Eliana and Mira, but it could just as easily be close friendship as romantic. It's very interesting seeing the contrast!

The other two stories are extras that seem to be more canonical, one about a character from the duology (Eliana's teacher Domenico) and another about a mage that finds a baby (I don't remember either of them appearing in the duology but I could be wrong).

>2 Sakerfalcon: When I first read these books, I found Fires of the Faithful and started reading it, but then read that it had a cliffhanger ending so stopped and I put off reading the rest until I found Turning the Storm, which was quite a while later. I'm looking forward to being able to read both all the way through!

Thanks for the heads-up about the story collection. That will be added to my kindle very soon!

I don't have my copy of Fires of the Faithful with me at college, but I really liked it when I read it a year or so ago. I'm interested to see what everyone else thinks!

I'm about to start part 4 of the book. It's certainly holding up well on a reread. I very much like Eliana who is competent and talented yet never becomes a Mary Sue. Her narrative voice is engaging with a good balance between her internal thoughts and emotions and external events. The first part set at the conservatory is rich in interesting female characters - I can't remember if any of them other than Mira reappear at any point. Characterisation continues to be strong as the story moves on and Eliana encounters new faces. I really like the relatively small scale of the books - the setting is national rather than world-wide, keeping the plot tight, but the stakes are still high. At the moment the baddies are pretty eeeeviiillll but I seem to remember things become more nuanced later on.

Ooof, I'm really sorry, I completely forgot to start November's thread for Turning the Storm! Please consider this a thread to discuss both books, as they are really one continuous story anyways :)