5/5 stars
Recommended if you like: fantasy, magic, Russian Revolution, disability rep, multiple POVs
This was one of my anticipated reads of the year and it did not disappoint! There’s a good mix of action, magic, and politicking going on throughout the book and I flew through this book. I will say though that I would’ve appreciated a map so I could better understand where everything was situated since I had kind of a hard time figuring it out on my own and there are a lot of places mentioned. This is Russian inspired and I loved that May included the multitude of nicknames that are common in Slavic languages! A lot of the time I see Slavic-inspired fantasies only using one nickname, but in reality the languages use. So. Many. Names. And it was great to see that here.
I was fascinated with the world. The nobility are called alurea and are the ones who have gods (dragons) caged in their bodies. There is some mention of how this works and why only the nobility have it, but this book is kind of sparse on the details, I suspect book 2 will deal with this a little more. Everyone else (i.e., commoners) are called supplicants and not only do they not have gods, but it’s also thought impossible for them to have them. Enter Galina and Sera, who I’ll get into more below. I thought it was interesting to see how alurea vs. supplicant relations played out and by and large found the alureas to be very unsympathetic. They go beyond typical royal, rich person disdain for the common folk and straight into disregard for their lives. They literally don’t care if supplicants die due to their actions, it’s not even something they consider pause worthy.
This also plays out in how the rich-poor divide is structured. The alureas live in opulent palaces and have gorgeous silk gowns while the supplicants live in tenements that threaten to collapse with them inside. Many are forced to go with too little food, and one of the book’s narrators recounts how alurea threw cake onto the ground to watch starving supplicants lick it off the cobblestones. This, of course, makes great breeding ground for revolution, with the rebels being called ‘faithless.’
Sera and Galina were raised by the leader of the revolution, who also happened to be a little into human experimentation. Their mom found a way to bind gods into non-royals and was able to bind one into each sister, thus turning them into very effective, albeit secret, tools of the revolution. The book opens four years after their mother’s death when Sera and Galina decide to return to their home city and take down the empress for good.
Sera stays in the city gathering information and preparing elixirs to strengthen Galina’s god for the final showdown. She’s definitely the strategist of the two and plays it a little closer to the edge than Galina does. Her spy network in the city is small but quite effective, and it was interesting to see how she played certain things to their advantage. I liked the combination of her being book smart and street smart. I feel like we don’t often get characters who are both, so I enjoyed seeing her master the science lab and knife a few alureans. While Sera does decry violence, her past (and the fact that she seems to have literally invented bombs in this world) indicates that it doesn’t always bother her. I think in this case it works out because her plan is better than what the faithless have going, but at the same time I think she should probably acknowledge that violent revolution does work.
Galina is a little softer, though I think she deserves to be considering 1) she lost her family to the empress prior to being adopted by Sera’s mom, and 2) definitely got the worse end of the deal with their mom’s use of her god. Galina’s main job in this book is to spy on the empress and get close enough to her for Sera’s plan to work. She has the unique opportunity to get close to the princess too, and that allows her to see some good in alurean power, though she doesn’t get fooled into thinking the alureans should stay in power. This book involves Galina healing from her past and recovering from everything that happened. I hope in book 2 we get to see her in action more since it seems like politically she’s going to be very involved.
Katya is Sera’s spies in the palace and gets a POV of her own. I found her story to be very compelling and am torn between wanting to see more of her and wanting her to be able to rest. Katya serves as the empress’ handmaiden, the latest in a string of 16, all of whom end up murdered by the empress. Katya’s sister was the handmaiden before her and was killed after a visiting diplomat made the empress angry, and so Katya swore revenge on the empress. Her journey toward being able to throw off the confines of the empress’ control was powerful and satisfying.
Vasilisa is the princess and also gets a POV of her own. She’s a bit of a mystery at first, and as a result we don’t get her POV until we’re well into the book. She used to be very active and was even more popular than her mother, but after her father died she became a recluse and there are rumors she isn’t even alive. The truth of it is that Vasya has a degenerative disease and is simply refusing to harm her body anymore just to make her family look good, particularly since her mother doesn’t want her using mobility aids when in public. She seems to have a better understanding of things than her mother does and while she still lives in the lap of luxury, she utilizes her godpower to try and help supplicants. She’s also scientifically minded and is the one who develops most of the treatments for her condition.
Vitaly is the last POV character and he’s Sera’s love interest and the new leader of the faithless. He and Sera used to be partners in the revolution and would go on missions together to help bring down strategic targets or help provide weapons to other budding revolutions. He has a fairly single-minded focus, which could be annoying at times, but at the same time was kind of understandable considering his past and the fact that Sera wasn’t cluing him in to what she was doing (that being said, did he really believe she was a supplicant?? And why not question why she didn’t want the ‘new’ alurean dead?). While Vitaly does come across as the brooding bad boy type, it’s clear that he adores Sera and would cross any lines for her, including his own. I did appreciate that he truly seems to care for her (and I do like him as a character), but I feel like some brains behind that brawn and violence would be nice.
Overall I greatly enjoyed this book and found the characters to be intriguing. The world is rich and has a lot of depth to it, and I’m curious to see how this most recent revolution will play out. Interestingly too, I think this book could be read as a standalone as well, if you’re looking for a one-off read!
Reading Queen E Reviews 