Wednesday, March 21, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Impostor Syndrome (Arcadia Project) by Mishell Baker




  Impostor Syndrome is the final book in Mishell Baker's "Arcadia Project" trilogy, after 2016's "Borderline" and 2017's "Phantom Pains."  Those first two books are very different, sharing a setting but almost being completely different in subgenre (Borderline reads like a procedural in an urban fantasy setting, whereas Phantom Pains reads closer to traditional urban fantasy) and Impostor Syndrome goes even farther in this regard, reading incredibly differently than its predecessors.  This is not a bad thing - Impostor Syndrome is TREMENDOUS and is currently my favorite book I've read in 2018 - but if you had mixed feelings about the prior books in the series, Impostor Syndrome is still worth picking up as it is very different.

  This is going to be an incredibly hard review for me to write, because Imposter Syndrome is one of those truly great books that you finish and find yourself flabbergasted at, needing a reread to process what happened (I've reread large parts of the book as well as all of Borderline before writing this review).  But I'm going to do my best.

  For those new to the series, the "Arcadia Project" features a world in which Fae exist in a parallel world and can cross over to the human world via various gates between the worlds.  Fae are interested in the human world because each Fae has an "echo" in a human in our world, and when they come together the Fae's mind becomes more stable and that human becomes incredibly inspired as a result.   A worldwide organization known as the Arcadia Project tries to manage Human/Fae interactions.  For plausible deniability, the project recruits people with mental illnesses - such as Schizophrenia or, in the case of our heroine, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  Our heroine, Millie Roper is recruited into the organization in book 1, and in the process of the first two books, discovers that things are not quite what they seem, throwing both the Arcadia Project and the Fae world of Arcadia into chaos - forcing the emotionally unstable Millie to try and take charge. 

Note: You will be hopelessly lost if you try reading Imposter Syndrome before its predecessors.  So pick up Borderline (a fine but unspectacular book) and Phantom Pains (which is fantastic as well) before starting this one.  

 Spoilers for books 1 and 2 are unavoidable to some extent after the jump.

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------
After Phantom Pains, the Arcadia Project is essentially in a Civil War - New Orleans (led by Alvin) and L.A. (run by our heroes) have seceded from the control of the UK Head Office run by Dame Belinda.  The other offices around the world have stayed nominally loyal to Belinda, due to her continued power and her cracking down on the reasons for the secession, leaving L.A. and New Orleans desperately alone.  Meanwhile, only one of the four Fae Monarchs of Arcadia are supporting L.A., as the monarchs settle into a conflict that could devastate the Fae lands.

And then Belinda strikes first in the war, framing Millie's partner and senior agent Tijuan for murder.  Needing to change the balance of power in order to clear him, Millie comes up with a plan for a series of dangerous heists - first in our world, and then in the heart of the Seelie kingdom in Arcadia itself.

But the team is not exactly in the best of shapes to pull off such heists.  Even with the help of another Fae spirit named Caveat and the continued support of Alvin, in order to pull this off they'll be required to rely upon the emotionally burdened and damaged Carol - still with a crush on Millie - her former "familiar" Elliott, and a new addition from New York who also suffers from BPD.  Not exactly the best team for pulling off a sophisticated plan that could require quick improvisation when things don't go according to plan.

And then there's Millie herself, now being forced to take the role of leadership on the team, who feels personally responsible for Tijuan's imprisonment, and whose allegiance is sought by all four Fae monarchs, more than one of which wants to go on a genocidal rampage of revenge.  Her BPD hasn't gone away, and the demands laid upon her could push her over the edge.  Is she really cut out to be a hero?  Or just to mess everything up - including herself?
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As I mentioned before the jump, Impostor Syndrome is kind of a different sub-genre than the prior two novels - for most of the book, it functions as a Heist Novel in a fantasy world where the "thieves" are dealing with issues relating to various mental illnesses.  And then, the final six chapters take a different tact entirely, re-characterizing everything that came before into a more personal story, Millie's story.  In most books, a last minute swerve that arguably negates much of what came before is at best annoying and at worst highly disrespectful of the reader.  But Baker makes this not only work but feel perfect for the conclusion of the story and the trilogy as a whole.

This works simply because Millie is an incredible character, the likes of which I have rarely if ever read of before.  Her struggles with her mental illness, with her own insecurities (and of course those are related to her BPD as well), with her feelings toward others such as Carol, Claybriar, and even the guy she's been hooking up with, form the emotional core of the novel.  The rest of the cast is written well - Carol's actions now that she's forced to not hide her emotions are often heartbreaking, the two new characters (a spirit and another woman with BPD), Claybriar and his conflict about his new role as King, etc etc. - but this story is centered on Millie in a way I did not expect from the prior two novels and Baker makes it work.  It cannot be easy to write a character with major mental illness - even as an author with personal experience - and she does so in a way that makes her a truly real understandable character, even to someone such as myself without any experiences of such.

The plot itself is excellent - it goes at an excellent pace, and the writing pulls off a surprising writing style switch for a few critical chapters (no spoilers) which again works very well.  And the book manages to feel like a culmination of all of the events that came before (hence why I went back to the prior books after my first completion of this one, to see where things started).  The heists are excellently done - both in planning how they would work in this magical fae world and in how they're "executed" (given the participants involved, it should be no surprise that the heists do NOT go as planned but they are spectacular).  There's a romance between two characters that also works really well, to the extent that these damaged characters are able to have any type of romance.

And then there's the ending sequence, basically the final 6 chapters.  As mentioned above, it's such a change in tone from the rush of the prior chapters but it hit all of my heartstrings so incredibly strongly (particularly the climax, which is chapters 44-47).  The ending itself doesn't wrap everything up and is at best bittersweet and yet it basically felt like the only possible ending for these characters - they're a mess, and the ending reflects that.

If there are flaws in this novel, they reflect similarly to that of Phantom Pains - that the book wraps up incredibly quickly after the climax, almost too quickly, and that one character - Alvin - again doesn't feel like the same character from the previous books (he's more solidly one of the team here, whereas he was a well meaning if slightly stubborn outsider to start the last book).  And yet, I barely care about these flaws at all.  In the end, they basically don't matter.

This is a book about a woman suffering from mental illness that makes it hard for her to control herself, who cares too much about her friends and about trying to do right, and being put into a situation where her actions will literally change the world, and of her trying to come out of it with not only her friends, but herself in one sane piece.  It, like Millie in the story, is a triumph.
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