SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Song of Blood and Stone by L Penelope

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Song of Blood and Stone by L. Penelope https://t.co/5yZFboID0t Short Review: 6 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) November 22, 2018

Short Review (cont): This fantasy romance featuring a woman with magical powers from a foreign country falling in love with a soldier as the magical fascist nation heads toward invasion has some good ideas but feels rather bare-bones in execution. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) November 22, 2018

Song of Blood and Stone is a book, the first in a series, that was originally a self published book a few years back, before a re-release this year by an actual publisher (there was a self-published sequel as well, but I'm not sure if that's also being rereleased).  The first in a fantasy romance series, it features a world in which a country filled with magic and a country that has gotten by solely with technology, each divided by a magical barrier that has been the only thing preventing all out wars that have broken out in the past.

But more specifically, this is a fantasy romance, featuring, as these stories tend to do, two people from very different backgrounds, whose duties find themselves on opposite sides, falling in love.  Or at least that's the tagline of this book.  To me unfortunately, the conflict between love and duty felt like no conflict at all given how stark the characters' choices were, and the story's lack of descriptions at times made the book feel a little more bare-boned than I'd like.  A very functional fantasy romance here, but not quite much more than that.


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Jasminda is a young orphan woman with ties to both of Elsira and Lagrimar, the two rival nations separated by a magical barrier, the Mantle.  The nation of Elsira is a nation without magic, which has grown strong through the use of technology, while the nation of Lagrimar is known for the fact that its people sometimes possess the magical power of Earthsong.  However, the mysterious ruler of Lagrimar, the True Father, is known for stripping his people of their Earthsong to up his own power and seeks to breach the Mantle in order to conquer Elsira as well.  It is through one of these breaches, that Jasminda's father came across the Mantle into Lagrimar to meet her mother, and through this heritage that Jasminda obtained her weak ability to use Earthsong.

Since her parents left, Jasminda has been left alone in her small house on the outskirts of her village, where she lives alone, away from the Elsiran people who fear and resent her for her Lagrimar heritage.  But when an Elsiran spy named Jack shows up on her door with Lagrimar's soldiers on his tail, she finds herself on a journey to discover the truth behind the two countries' different states of being.  And even more, she finds herself falling in love with Jack, who seems to have high connections with the Elsiran military.

And Jack also finds himself falling in love with Jasminda, even as duty calls on him to do more and more for his country, a country beset by Lagrimar refugees fleeing the True Father.  For the Mantle is about to come down and war is once again on the horizon, and Jack and Jasminda will soon be forced to choose between their love for each other and their duties to do the best for their peoples...in the face of the coming destruction.
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Obviously, the themes of Song of Blood and Stone are pretty resonant with today's world.  We have a pair of warring countries, one ruled by a cruel tyrant that has driven refugees into the other country, which is suffering from the lack of resources.  A populace in the more liberal country (still ruled by a monarchy and a council of nobles mind you) that is becoming fearful of the refugees and blames them for their own misfortunes.  And the story attempts to tell a love story naturally between two people on the opposite side of this divide, and that makes a pretty good conflict to some extent.

Only to some extent however.  Part of the problem with this attempt at a conflict is that while Jack is pressed into allowing his countrymen to take (racist) actions towards the Lagrimaran people which would go against Jasminda, he also knows that such actions are wrong the whole way and thus it's quite clear which way he'll go and what he'll try to do.  So the story doesn't really become a conflict between love and duty for him, as to his own heart his own duty wouldn't let him do what his advisers want anyhow.

Which is not to say that Jack and Jasminda are bad characters really.  They're quite fine, both driven by their intentions to do good if they can and held back by their own insecurities, not to mention their feelings for each other.  The book has its typical moments of bumps in their relationship but never lets any dumb misunderstandings stand between them for too long (a big pet peeve of mine), and the two tend to feel fairly true to their own characters throughout.  I kind of wish Jasminda was either full blood Lagrimaran instead of half and half since the book tends to treat her as such instead of dealing with her dual-heritage causing a conflict within her (for an example of that latter bit, see Kate Elliot's Court of Fives trilogy) which feels like a missed opportunity, but otherwise they're rather well done characters.

That said, while the main duo are well done, the worldbuilding in this book kind of feels bare bones at best.  Readers of this blog might realize this is a weird complaint from me, since I'm not the type of person who loves reading excessive descriptions of settings and wants to get into characters more than the looks of the world in general, but this book goes from place to place in its first half really really quickly, and it kind of feels like there's nothing in this world other than the small parts the characters visit (the map at the beginning of the story is similarly bare).  The plot itself is somewhat predictable, with flashbacks that will feel very predictable to the reader right from the start and which never go anywhere surprising or revelatory.  The ending promises an interesting tease for the sequel though, and the book's way to dealing with the final confrontation did surprise me a little, so that was nice.

All in all, Song of Blood and Stone is an okay fantasy romance that has takes some modern relevance to today's world, and the sex scenes are nicely done, but other than that fails to really distinguish itself despite some promise.  I may or may not check out the sequel, we'll see.