SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Torn by Rowenna Miller

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Torn by Rowenna Miller https://t.co/VyotTd5ZCL Short Review: 6 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) May 15, 2018

Short Review (cont): A fantasy story about a woman who can create charms/curses via stitches in fabric who gets caught up in a conflict between workers & the nobility, Torn hits all the usual beats but not much more & after a promising start has a weirdly backwards message (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) May 15, 2018

Torn is a tricky book to review, because the end result is very much not what the book seems to be going for in the beginning - where the book seems to be making a story based upon class conflict and those caught in between (women and people of color).  Instead, Torn is a book that feels kind of like a throwback to an older kind of fantasy novel - complete with common woman heroine and noble prince love interest amongst civic unrest.  I was really hoping that Torn would've been more of the former type of story than the latter, but it's bad form to review a book based upon the story you were hoping to read instead of the book that the author intended for it to be.

As for the book that Torn actually is? It's perfectly solid, well paced and thought out, but kind otherwise unremarkable.  And by planting the seeds of that other book early on, it does kind of send a weird message in how the story plays out which I doubt the author intended (though of course I could still be wrong).

More after the jump:


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Sophie is a dressmaker in the land of Galitha's capital city (Galitha City).  She had her brother Kristos both are of Pellian descent and are not native to the land, but Sophie has no connection to her Pellian heritage.  No connection except one: Sophie is a charmcaster, and a particularly strong one, who is able to imbue her stitches with charms for good luck or protection.  This skill has gotten her the attention of some of the lesser nobles of Galitha, and she hopes to reach a higher class of clientele so that she can better support herself and her brother, Kristos.  And when a high level noble woman invites her to a gathering of nobles for her work and she meets a prince 3rd in the line of succession for the throne, it seems like she's finally achieving that goal...and more.

But unrest is rising amongst the lower classes - the workers and common people - of Galitha, and Kristos is right up in the middle of the unrest, formulating what have started as peaceful protests until the nobles' soldiers intervene.  Sophie is ambivalent about the cause - she feels that it ignores the issues of women's rights and cause harm on the Pellian citizens caught in the crossfire - and simply wants Kristos to be safe, helping only to protect him from harm.

And so when a foreigner ostensibly helping with the revolting workers kidnaps Kristos, Sophie is willing to do nearly anything to save him.  But when the foreigner requests that Sophie turn to the darkside of her magic - creating Curses - and using it on clothing intended for the Royal Family, can Sophie really do it?   And if so, at what cost?
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Sophie is a really interesting character (mostly) as our narrator in this world.  She's driven to using her gifts in a way to benefit her family and her conflict works decently well.  And the magic she wields in this book is particularly interesting and well thought out, especially as she experiments on working on it further.  Meanwhile her brother Kristos also serves as a decently interesting character (again, mostly, for reasons I'll go into later) with his drive toward protest and possibly more making very real sense to a reader in today's modern era.

That said, both characters, and the other characters, have issues.  Kristos is seemingly a brilliant orator/writer well versed in economics, but he's comically dumb about things happening around him at times.  Meanwhile, Sophie is similarly lacking in common sense to a point.  And the nobles Sophie meets are comically goodhearted honestly, though the love interest works decently well. 

Again as I said before the jump, the ground-laying for the world done in the beginning of this book results in a weird message.  Sophie thinks about the workers' movement early in the book about how it disregards the rights of women - who have no rights to property upon marriage in this world - and the safety of minorities such as the Pellians who are blamed for the unrest.  These are interesting real world issues!  But the book essentially ignores these issues and while it shows bad actors on both sides of this class struggle, the bad actors on the workers' side are named individuals while the bad on the nobles' side are unnamed, so the book essentially makes the workers the bad guys in sum.  Meanwhile the Pellians turn out to be pretty well involved in the revolt - despite Sophie's initial thoughts - making that concern minimized.  The result is a weird message seemingly in favor of the ruling/wealthy class against workers, suggesting change should come from them instead, which again I cannot imagine was intended.

The result is a book with an interesting setup and some interesting characters who never truly transcend into greatness and a weirdly generic plot given the more interesting setup.  This is apparently the first book of a trilogy/series, but it essentially serves as stand-alone, though as you might tell from this review, I won't be going further.  It isn't necessarily a bad book, despite what you might think from the tone of this review - it's well paced, flows well, and functional, but it's nothing special either.