Tuesday, December 11, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Brilliant Death by Amy Rose Capetta




The Brilliant Death is a young adult fantasy novel - presumably the first in a series - by Amy Rose Capetta.  More interestingly (although this is naturally becoming more common) it features as its protagonists two genderfluid protagonists with a major plot point being the romance between them as they each discover the truths about themselves and who they are.  This is a story where our heroine pretends to be a boy in order to get what he wants - only unlike in traditional stories, she isn't really pretending to be anybody she isn't and the transformation is real.

And it's such a delight really.  I tore through The Brilliant Death and had to stop myself from finishing it in one day as I wanted to read more and more about its characters discovering the wonders of themselves and of the magic of their world...in between being in the middle of a plot between a ruler of the country against the five mafia-esque families who rule the individual territories.  This isn't just a romance and journey of self-discovery, it's also a story filled with magic, mafia, and plots and it works really really well.

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Teodora di Sangro is the second daughter of the di Sangro family, one of the five families that traditionally governed the land of Vinalia.  She grew up loving the Family above all things and believing Family was everything.  But Teo has always kept a secret from her father and her family: she is a Strega, a person with magical power - in her case, the ability to transform people and things into inanimate objects.  And while others have thought her weird, she has secretly been using that magic to transform her father's enemies into inanimate objects.

But things change when a magic letter from the Capo - the man who claims to rule above the five families - causes her Father to collapse and demands the family's heir come to the capital.  With one brother too cruel to unleash on the world and the other wanting nothing to do with rule, Teo is forced to go herself and pretend to be a boy in hopes of finding an antidote for her father's condition.  But in order to pull off the ruse, Teo will need to gain a handle on her magic and be able to use it to transform herself into a boy.

Her only hope is the strange person who calls themselves Cielo, a strega who can change their form to anything they like, and who goes between boy and girl and any other type of person at will and with ease.  Cielo agrees to try to teach her, but they have no interest in the di Sangro family....because Cielo's own mother is missing and Cielo wishes to find out what happened to her and the other stregas have been disappearing mysteriously throughout the country.

But as Cielo and Teodora attempt to find out what they need about what's happening in this country, they begin to learn truths that will change them forever - truths about the world and about each other.  And the two will soon learn that those truths include the feelings they each feel for the other as well, which could lead to their discovery and their own deaths.
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This book follows Teo's point of view throughout, as she's introduced to the realities of what she can do, who she is, and the world around her.  I loved Teo so damn much.  She's brilliant - clearly having learned from her father (basically a mafia don) the skills needed to run a Family (with a capital F) - strong willed and determined to achieve her goals, while still very much a teenager who is still learning the truths about the world and herself - whether that be how the geopolitical situation really is under the Capo, how her magic truly works and how she can control it, or about the truth behind her own gender and sexuality.  As I noted before the jump, Teo's transformation into a boy isn't merely a physical change - while she perhaps more identifies as a girl (hence my using "she/her" pronouns since it's what she would use), that doesn't really encompass her whole gender identity either.  And the book makes her discovery of this, and the extent of this, a major part of the story and it works really well.  And then of course there's her romance with Cielo, which is done rather beautifully and naturally.

Speaking of Cielo, they're also a fascinating character as our second protagonist.  Unlike Teo, they've always known that they're not tied to a particular gender and their whimsical nature at the start of the book marks a clear contrast to Teo.  But Cielo is not just some whimsical sidekick for Teo, they've got their own wants and needs and their opposition to how Teo's mafia-trained mind works - thinking of dispatching her enemies first and foremost - works quite well.  And again how they begin to care for Teo and how that affects their actions as they learn the truth about their own past works just so damn well.  If you couldn't tell by how I'm gushing with vague words in the above two paragraphs, I really really want to read more of this pair.

As for the plot of this book, it works pretty well.  Capetta has drawn up a pretty well done fantasy world, of which we are clearly only seeing a piece here, with magic and mafia and dangerous leaders that all feel like they belong together.  The plot provides a great excuse to show us more of this world and to intrigue the reader into wanting to know what happens next, without the typical moments of the characters having to make stupid decisions in order to drive plot conflicts (a non-use of a trope I really appreciate).  The book ends on a cliffhanger but the result is very satisfying - it resolves Teo's own personal journey and realization of who she wants to be, even if the overall political conflicts remain very wide open for the future, and that's really what this book is about in the end. 

If there is any fault in The Brilliant Death it's that the book's 3rd & 4th acts, where Teo and Cielo are at Court, moves probably too quickly.  In particular, Teo's actions rely upon a comradeship/friendship with the other heirs of the Five Families that she clearly has never earned, and while the result is in some ways a result of that, it seemed a little odd how she was willing to take that chance without having spent a longer time at Court with these other boys.  It just felt like maybe there was like 1-2 chapters missing of relationship building there.  But it's such a minor fault in this book that I can't really complain too much about it.

Anyhow, this is one of my favorite YA books of the year for sure and comes highly recommended.
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