Tuesday, May 29, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Defiant Heir by Melissa Caruso




The Defiant Heir is the second in a trilogy of fantasy books that began with last year's The Tethered Mage.  I'd liked The Tethered Mage (Review HERE) but was a little disappointed by the fact that the book didn't follow through on some ideas it planted early on in the book - the issues of freedom of people with great, often uncontrollable magical power - in favor of a more standard fantasy conspiracy plot.  I picked up The Defiant Heir from my eLibrary with the hope that the book would pick up those threads in this second book, and to my excitement, this book does indeed do so.

The result is an excellent fantasy story that's a lot more interesting than its predecessor and makes me really interested in the trilogy's finale (which I believe will be out next year).  The Book expands the world by taking us into the land of the trilogy's overarching villain, the evil Ruven, and his people the Witch Lords of Vaskandar - a land, unlike our heroine's home Empire, where mages rule, and the individual Witch Lords have tremendous power over all of their domains.  It also introduces a bunch of more interesting secondary characters, leaves some interesting sequel hooks for the finale, and further develops our leads from book 1.

Note: As if it wasn't obvious from the above, this is absolutely not a stand-alone book - while the prior book didn't end on a cliffhanger really, you really SHOULD read that book first or you'll probably be a bit lost.  

More after the Jump:

----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Now that the last crisis is over, Amalia Cornaro and her falcon (and Balefire-Wielding Mage), Zaira, are "enjoying" a bit of peace.  Amalia has taken the opportunity given by her newfound political influence to introduce a law into the council to allow mages their freedom in the Serene Empire, though it will take a hard effort to get the votes for it to pass.  Meanwhile, Zaira and Amalia train in the Mews to see if she can learn to have greater control over her powerful Balefire.  All seems well for the moment....until a falconer, seemingly on leave shows up dead in the river.

The culprit seems obvious - the Witch Lords of Vaskandar, the land where the evil Skinwitch Ruven is from, are considering a full on invasion of the Serene Empire.  When 3 of the 17 Witch Lords invaded years ago, the devastation was tremendous - and the Witch Lords plan to meet at a Conclave to discuss an invasion of all seventeen of them at once...something for which the Empire might not survive.  If only the Empire could find a way to influence the Conclave....

But at a party thrown by her mother, Amalia meets Kathe, the Crow Lord, a Witch Lord who runs the domain of Let and he offers to formally Court her to to throw their mutual enemies.  But can Amalia really trust him?  What exactly does Kathe really want?  And then there's the matter of Amalia's true love, the falconer captain Marcello, who she doesn't want to hurt.

But Amalia will not get much time to regret her decision.  Not only is the council coming soon, but at least one of the Witch-Lords seems to have a special agenda regarding Amalia....and then Zaira's love, her fellow falcon Terika, is kidnapped by the Witch Lords as well.  If Amalia can't convince Kathe to take her to the conclave, war might be the least of the Empire's problems.  And even then, what chance does Amalia have at a conclave with rules she doesn't understand to persuade seventeen of the most powerful mages in the world?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above plot summary is woefully insufficient - the Amazon plot summary basically doesn't go into the general plot at all, which honestly works better since there's so many things I had to leave out.  And yet this isn't an overly complicated book, as everything naturally follows from one part to the next, and I never felt lost at any point.  This is not to say the book is predictable either - certainly elements I predicted, while others I didn't, yet I never felt cheated by the story.

There are three things that really made me love this story.  The first is the character development of Amalia and Zaira, particularly Amalia.  Amalia starts the first book as a bit of a Naive girl, despite being the sole daughter and heir of a woman who is not only one of the most powerful people in the world, but one who is known as a master schemer.  It was a bit annoying.  This Amalia has grown a lot, and while she might still be a tiny bit naive in a few ways, and makes a lot more sense as a character - trying to do the right thing, a bit shy but trying not to show it, trying to learn to scheme for the greater good without turning into her mother....she's genuinely likable and interesting, and a bit more unique of a main character as a result.

Zaira also makes a bit more logical sense this time - the book kind of walks back her decisions at the end of The Tethered Mage at the start (where she there seemed begrudgingly willing to commit herself to staying at the Mews, here she's still very looking forward to finding another option if possible) - but aside from that, her decisions all make sense given her background.  She - a cocky, outgoing, bitter and feisty girl who refuses to hope for the future - makes a perfect complement to Amalia, and her romance with Terika is excellent, for what little we see of it.

The second thing that made me love this story was the introduction of the Witch Lords, especially the new love interest - the Crow Lord, Kathe.  The bad boy whose motives are unclear is kind of a pretty typical love interest in a love triangle situation - to go with Marcello's clear good guy - but he's just so much more interesting than Marcello, and the book balances well the question of whether he's trustworthy or not to the point where he never feels annoyingly cryptic but there's still some doubt until the end as to what he really wants.  Marcello is still annoyingly one note for the main love interest, but Kathe is definitely more interesting.  And the rest of the Witch-Lords are very interesting as a counterpart to the political movers seen in the prior book, as incredibly powerful, immortal, mages with desires that range from human to inhuman.  Even obviously evil antagonist Ruven is more interesting in this book, as is his secondary antagonist the Lady of Thorns.

Finally, as I talked about before the jump, I loved that in this book actually deals with the question of mage freedom in this world.  The Tethered Mage introduced the idea that in the Serene Empire, Mages of sufficient power to be marked are forced by law to live in The Mews and be tied by a control word and device to a non-mage, a Falconer.  Zaira's hatred of the system made Amalia in that book have to recognize that taking mages' freedoms was well - obviously problematic, but past the first half of the plot, the first book didn't do anything with that idea.  The introduction of Vaskandar changes that in this book (although Amalia's attempt to pass a law to change this issue in the Empire also helps) - a land ruled by mages, where people with the mage mark are treated as having special status and are in control to an extent.  But the people in Vaskandar aren't truly free either....as the longer they stay within a witch-lord's domain, the more they become tied to that domain, and to the Witch-Lord themselves.  So this book questions whether or not anyone in this world is truly free and whether mages are better off in the Mews or in Vaskandar....a question for which there are no simple answers.  I look forward to this question being explored further in the trilogy's final book next year.

There are other things I like about this book but it is not perfect.  Our main character has a bit of a deus ex machina power that enables things to go a bit easier than they should, although that might become more of a factor in the third book.  Marcello as previously mentioned is still incredibly bland as a love interest and every part of the book suggests that Amalia is supposed to wind up with him as opposed to Kathe at the end of the trilogy, which feels disappointing given his lack of actual personality or well his inability to do anything in the plot (no seriously).

Still, I really really liked The Defiant Heir, and definitely recommend this series so far, after my lukewarm endorsement of The Tethered Mage.  Well worth a read for solid fantasy adventure, with a bit of darkness (but not too much) with some interesting ideas.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)