It wasn’t a bad book but just not for me—I couldn’t manage to care about what happened to most of the characters and I’m definitely not a “palace intrigues” sort of person and there was a lot of that.

Interesting story, particularly enjoyed various crafts playing off one another, and our unsympathetic protagonist. The alternate side of the story was really, very good.

DNF. Beautiful cover. Terrible writing. I couldn’t even focus on the plot because of how bad the sentence structuring is. Very distracting and did not make me want to finish whatsoever.

I love this author so I was super excited when I heard they had a fantasy novel out... but I found this one a little dull. It well written and super political but just didn’t grab me unfortunately. And there was no solid conclusion at the end which is a touch annoying.

This book did a lot of things right: I loved the creepy, horror-esque tone of Sigourney's visions and the confusion between what's real and what's imagined. I loved the morally-ambiguous (if not flat-out villainous) main character. I appreciated that the writing didn't pull any punches when depicting colonial slavery, but didn't veer into voyeuristic misery or torture porn. I think the story overall did a great job of exploring questions of complicity and privilege, and making me think about all the shades of grey between "oppressed" and "oppressor".

With that said, those strengths make me all more sad about the ways the book fell short. I always felt like I was being kept at arm's length from the story and its characters. Some of it is because most of the stories we hear are thoughts and memories of other characters, told rather than shown. The bigger problem is that Sigourney just doesn't reflect or grow - there's no sense that anything she learns or experiences in the book changes her in any way. We spend very little time on her emotions or reactions to events because she's so focused on her goal and that's what everything else comes back to. Ultimately it makes her harder and harder to relate to as the story goes on.

Spoiler

The ending, too, was predictable and rushed. I wish we'd seen Sigourney slowly putting the clues together and uncovering the truth over a few chapters, lingering on her realization that she's been completely wrong and now she's in danger... instead we're kept in the dark until the last minute, when we get a classic "villain explains his dastardly plot to the hero" denouement.

I was really excited for this book and it just really fell flat for me. The big mystery was so incredibly obvious and so it was annoying to watch Sigourney make the wrong choices. I really struggled at the beginning of this book with all the islands and how everything related to one another. Part of the issue is all the island names sound so similar because it's literally (Name) Helle. It's not immediately obvious that they're named after the family that runs the island. So I kept reading about all these different Helle's and I was getting everything mixed up. Once we finally meet more characters it's easier to realize, oh that's their last name and they live on that island.

A major issue I had with the book is that it just wasn't interesting. This is completely due to the way the author utilizes Sigourney's power. She has the ability to read people's minds and she can exhort some influence over their actions. When she reads other character's thoughts it just turns into pages and pages of info-dumps. There also was never any good transition between Sigourney's own thoughts and her delving into someone's thoughts and memories. The memories especially threw me off because they would be pages of scenes and no one thinks and recounts memories like that as they're just standing around. Thinking about plans and motivations makes sense but there were a lot of scenes where she just shifted through tons of complete memories. I also felt like the revenge plot amounted to nothing, Sigourney never really does anything to bring about her revenge once she's on the royal island. It's mostly just her reading everyone's thoughts and then doing nothing with the information she learns.

I did like the discussion surrounding Sigourney and how she was an outsider to the Fjern because of the color of her skin and an outsider to her own people because she is free and a member of the ruling class. She grows up in such a unique situation because her family was massacred as a child, there is no one else who can relate to her situation. She's all alone in the world with hatred surrounding her from both sides. I liked how her outsider status leads her to crave love and respect even when she knew there was no way she is going to get it. The Fjern will never like her because they can only ever see her as an islander who should have been a slave. Her own people could have rallied behind her had she not been trying so hard to be like the Fjern and act as they would have acted. Instead, she kept them enslaved and thus earned their hatred.

Characterwise there is no one I ever cared about. Sigourney was too unlikeable and while I can get behind an unlikeable character in some cases this just wasn't one of them. The rest of the characters just weren't developed enough. We only ever learn about characters through Sigourney reading their thoughts and sifting through their memories so I just never felt connected to any of them. The magic was interesting but never explained. People just randomly have powers, called kraft, and the kraft itself is random too. There are people who can speak to the dead and people who can cause pain with a glance and then there are others who's power is simply to sense the power in others.

Wow. Where to begin?

On the off chance you've read Gideon the Ninth, you'll find this very similar, in that you get a group of nobles gathered in an isolated location who fight to the death to see who will inherit the crown. Just replace necromancers with psychics. Otherwise, picture Game of Thrones, but everyone's trapped on the Iron Islands and has limited armies.

Technically this book is fantasy, as it takes place in an imaginary country, and has magic. But really, this book very much reads like historical fiction. The imaginary country is based on the Caribbean, the imaginary conquerors are insert any colonial Europeans (but pictured as Norse in this book) and the magic is more like being psychic than being a witch. This book is very much for historical fiction readers as much as fantasy readers.

The quality of the writing is excellent, the moral greys are deeply examined without getting philosophical, and the setting is breathtaking and unique.

In the Carribbean-esque island chain of Hans Lollik Helle, Sigourney Rose is the sole black member of the upper class, where all other black people suffer ongoing oppression and enslavement by their white masters, the Fjern. Sigourney's ancestors had earned their own freedom through partnering their agricultural expertise with the Fjern, and her mother, a former slave of the Rose family, became the wife of a Fjern man who was enamoured with her beauty. The other Fjern elites never accepted Mrs. Rose and her children, though, especially after her husband died and she assumed control of the family's estates and wealth herself. The elites thus had Sigourney's entire family slaughtered during a garden party, of which a young Sigourney was the sole survivor, having been rescued by an enslaved women who spirited her away to safety and then was killed herself.

Now, years later, having grown up in the grudging care of a Fjern cousin and developed the magical ability to read and influence people's minds, Sigourney means to get her revenge against the elites who killed her family. By scheming her way onto the royal island of Hans Lollik Helle where all the elites are gathered with the king for the duration of the storm season, Sigourney means be convince the king to choose her as his regent, thus making her the Queen of all the islands, slaves, and Fjern elites alike, the latter of whom she the plans to see put to death. But first she has to survive the storm season as various other elites start dying at the hands of an unknown competitor.

This was one of the most frustrating books I've read in a long time. The premise was so cool and true to life, and seemed to promise gripping political manoeuvring as Sigourney worked over the king to choose her despite the colour of her skin, and outsmarted all the Fjern elites also vying for the position. Alas it was not the case on account of the manner in which the story was written, for it read less like a story and more so an essay about a story, as well as the story before the story.

So very little of the “action”, as it were, was shown happening in real time, instead being told by the narrator in large blocks of exposition that contained next to no dialogue. The book being written in first person present tense made this style even more awkward and unappealing since present tense in fact means that events are happening in real time and should naturally be narrated that way. The story also contained huge amounts of backstory that, rather than artfully sprinkled amidst the action, were dumped in awkwardly at the height of scenes. Much of this backstory was employed in lieu of genuine character development where we're permitted to watch a character in action and infer their personality through their behaviour.

This unfortunate habit was fuelled by Sigourney's ability to read minds. I really disliked this magical aspect of the story, for rather than create action with it, the author used it solely as a means to avoid character development. With her gift (called “kraft” in the story, of which there are many different types that the Fjern possess, while all other black islanders that possess it are put to death), Sigourney is able to instantly know everything about everyone within moments of meeting them—their history, their deepest secrets that no one else knows—thus eliminating story tension and promoting this style of telling vs. showing.

Yet she was somehow unable to use her kraft to know which of the elites was the murderer. On the whole, Sigourney's plan didn't make much sense. The elites already despised her and where trying to kill her; why would she expect they'd suddenly start respecting her if she was named regent? Neither did any of the Fjern make much use of their own kraft to advance their pursuit of the regency.

Sigourney as a character is fairly unlikeable, living comfortably in her position of privilege, doing nothing to aid her fellow black islanders who are enslaved (and knowing that she's not doing anything), yet resenting their lack of love for her. Her unlikableness is sort of the point—a character study of how she too is influenced by the racism of the Fjern and her own internalized racism.

However not enough is done with this. Sigourney's inner narrative— not to mention the narrative of the story as a whole—is so incredibly repetitive, a seemingly endless rehash of the same half dozen ideas and images. Yes, Sigourney's whole family was murdered; yes, all the Fjern think she has no business being in a position of power as a black woman; yes, all her slaves despise her and could choose to kill her at any time; yes, her mother tried to help her slaves while Sigourney herself does nothing; yes something weird is up with the king; yes, she spent time up north in the free states getting an education"; yes, the hem of her white dress is floating in the water; yes, her sisters names were Ellinor and Inga; yes the island is called Hans Lollik Helle. Really—I got it all the first time.

It was especially maddening with the character and place names. Almost every instance saw them written as if introducing them to the reader for the first time: “the royal island of Hans Lollik Helle”, “my sister Ellinor”, “my brother Claus”. It made the already exposition-dense text even more awkward. So much exposition/so little dramatization also had the effect of making the world feel really empty. It seemed Sigourney, her accompanying slaves and the 7 or 8 Fjern elites were the only people in the entire group of islands.

The climax of the story was incredible; I’ll give it that. A thrilling plot twist that unfortunately lost most of its impact through being narrated in six straight pages of solid exposition as Sigourney reads it from another character's mind. I would have loved to see the revelation and its implications play out in real time.

I would have loved to see the entire story play out in real time. I kind of want this book to get picked up as a movie in order to see the story told in a more visual way because overall the promise of its premise was ruined by unengaging, expository writing. Two and a half stars rounded to three.