Wednesday, February 13, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Mirage by Somaiya Daud




Mirage is an interesting Young Adult Science Fiction novel that is the start of a new trilogy.  What makes it interesting is the book's theme of the evils of colonization from the perspectives of the colonized.  Our heroine is a kidnapped member of a subjugated people, two major side characters are subjugated nobles forced into different lives of subservience and the main antagonist is a person with ties to both the subjugated and conquering peoples. The result is a setting that provides a strong background for exploring the harms and tragedies of colonizing with relevance toward the real world.

The story itself is a bit more hit or miss, with the book having a bunch of interesting characters but taking an awful long time to actually do something with those characters - the main character basically has no agency of her own till halfway through the book and the book seems to end about fifty pages too soon, with things finally having come to a head as the reader probably expected for about half the book.  I'm interested to see where it goes from here, but it's another example of a book being built seemingly for a trilogy without trying to make the first volume satisfying on its own.


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
Years have passed since the planet Andala was conquered by the Vath and the native Andala, and the Vath maintain a strict control on the Andalaan culture throughout most of the planet and its moons.  The repression of any expression of culture that might seem like rebellion is complete.  But on Andala's outer moon of Cadiz, Amani believed she was free of some of that repression as the Vath seemed to overlook some of the Andalaan traditions.

But Amani couldn't have been more wrong, and in the moment of the biggest ceremony of her life, she is kidnapped from her family and brought to the home planet for a horrifying task:  to be the body double of the Vathek heir Maram, who is half-Andalaan in her heritage....but horribly cruel to anyone Andalaan in any respect.  Threatened with torture if she doesn't comply, Amani is forced to learn to imitate Maram's cruel mannerisms and to stand in for the princess in case of assassination.

But Amani soon discovers some happiness in captivity.  In particular, she begins to fall in love with Maram's fiance, an Andalaan noble named Idris, despite the fact that the two can never really be together.  And when the Andalaan resistance reaches out to her for assistance, she sees a path to still assert herself.

But as time goes on, Amani finds herself torn between her inner desires, her hopes for a possible future, and the deadly danger that could be around the corner for both her and her family if her thoughts and actions are ever discovered....
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Told from the first person perspective of its heroine, Amani, Mirage presents a strong window for a reader of the choices faced by those who are colonized by another power.  These "choices" are more often than not forced upon these people, and the little autonomy they have within their own forced spheres are hardly much to speak of, and Mirage shows quite clearly how that is, through Amani and the three other major characters, Idris, Furat, and Maram.

And this works because for the most part these characters are believable and strong.  The horrors Amani faces are clear to the reader, and her actions are entirely believable as she struggles for any form of resistance she can muster, while still fearing the dangers to herself and those she loves of discovery.  It makes her a pretty strong heroine to root for.  Idris isn't quite the greatest as a love interest (more on this in a bit), but his attempts to find a way to live as the captive prince are definitely interesting, and while we don't quite see enough of Furat, her own form of coping and resistance provides another interesting viewpoint.

And then there's Maram herself, ostensibly - to some extent at least - the antagonist, who is rather interesting in how she is torn between worlds.  Unlike many other "torn between worlds" characters in other literature, Maram has mainly chosen the side of the conquerors, and yet still suffers as a result of her mixed blood and feels some regrets - regrets neither side will take seriously.  Usually these mixed characters aren't cruel, but she is, and yet the book makes this a believable choice for her in the setting.

Still, the book has some clear flaws.  I'm not really sure how much I bought the central romance between Amani and Idris - I'm never really quite thrilled where the central romance is between the only character of the opposite gender, and Idris reciprocating seems kind of too easy.  I also wish we saw a bit more of Furat who's intriguing in her own more active though hidden form of resistance, despite her lack of favor.

More importantly, the book has some pacing issues.  This is a book of a type I'm growing rather familiar with - where the protagonist is taken from comfort into a forced occupation and has to find a way to get out, either physically or spiritually, and the result of that inevitably is a protagonist who at first lacks autonomy - which is not something I love to read (that this happens most often with female protagonists is not a coincidence).  But Mirage takes an awful long time to give the protagonist a glimpse of autonomy, which is a bit frustrating.

The book also chooses as its ending point a rather unsatisfying point - the book teases in the prologue an event to come, which the reader would've been expecting without the prologue from the setup, and that event doesn't occur till 90% of the way through.  And as a result, the book barely has time to deal with the implications of that event, and instead hangs on a cliffhanger which is just depressing in its content.  The result is that the book feels unsatisfying, even if it was setup so well and was so interesting in where it was going at one point.  I'll read the sequel to see if that improves, but I just want my first books in a series to be enough to make me happy to have read it, not to simply makeme want more.  And Mirage didn't quite do that. 

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