Monday, June 17, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Unbound Empire by Melissa Caruso




The Unbound Empire is the concluding book in Melissa Caruso's "Swords and Fire" trilogy, which began with 2017's "The Tethered Mage" (Reviewed Here) and continued with last year's "The Defiant Heir" (Reviewed Here).  Despite the extremely generic series title, I've really enjoyed this series, particularly the second book, which featured a really great central protagonist, as well as several other excellent characters in the midst of a story which features really well done themes of freedom vs safety and the dangers of power and the choices it presents.  So I was really interested to see how this third book would cap-off the story.

The result is a decently strong finale, but one which still takes a step back from The Defiant Heir.  Our lead characters, particularly our main duo, remain excellent, and the story does feature a generally satisfying resolution to the conflict caused by the series' main villain.  But like the trilogy's first book, the story kind of brushes off interesting questions and political drama in favor of a more fantasy adventure story after the opening third, which is a little disappointing.  Overall though, I'm glad I read the trilogy, so I'm not going to complain too much.

More after the Jump, minor Spoiler Warning for the first two books - not too much is spoiled, but some are inevitable below:


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Amalia Cornaro has been busy since she and Zaira returned from their successful mission to Vaskandar, working to ensure the passage of her law to end the forceful conscription of mages in the Serene Empire into the military as Falcons.  She's been keeping up, to the extent possible, her long-distance courtship with the Crow Lord Kathe, despite still feeling perhaps greater affection for her friend and ally, Captain Marcello.  And even still, she remains on edge, knowing the evil Witch Lord Ruven still intends to strike at the Serene Empire at any moment, and with his potion capable of temporary controlling minds, stopping him seems nearly impossible.  And then of course Ruven might have some special interest in Amalia as well, which she refuses to let herself forget.

But when Ruven finally strikes, he does so in a way far more surprising than Amalia and Zaira could have anticipated, disrupting the Empire's capabilities drastically....and attacking Amalia's heart directly.  Amalia and Zaira will be forced once again to travel into Vaskandar in order to deal with Ruven once and for all, and in the process may need to finally unleash Zaira's deadly seemingly uncontrollable fire....even against people being controlled by Ruven against their own wills.  But even with the help of Kathe, can Amalia and Zaira really find a way to defeat an Immortal whose powers seem only vast and growing and can actually outlast Zaira's fire?  And can Amalia, still haunted by her choice to sacrifice her cousin in the process of stopping Ruven the last time, find a way to act to truly stop Ruven once and for all that doesn't cost Amalia everything she truly is herself?
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There have been really two central themes underpinning this trilogy of real interest.  The first has been the idea of freedom for those mage-marked, with magical power: with those in the Empire forced by law to go into the military and be "Jessed", with their power strictly controlled by another (as in Amalia and Zaira), while those in Vaskandar have greater freedom on the outside, but by their very presence in the domain of a Witch Lord they become under the control of that same Witch Lord if the Witch Lord really wants to exercise that control.  That theme is a little less prominent here, with Amalia's side of the issue being pretty staked out in the first two books, so there's less of an ethical debate about it, but Amalia's compromising so as to try and help earn greater rights for Falcons and others mage-marked is still pretty interesting early on here.

The second theme is more significant at this point in the series: how far should one go for the purpose of the greater good?  For Amalia and Zaira, this question is no longer academic: Amalia having cost her cousin his life in the prior book and Zaira being even more likely than before to have her own balefire unleashed on entire armies of unwilling conscripts in the name of security.  Amalia's mother, La Contessa, has seemingly been willing to put almost anything aside in the name of the Empire (although that may be less true than Amalia once thought), but Amalia is not ready to make that same choice.  The result is an internal conflict for both of our main duo that helps keep them incredibly interesting characters, which is only helped by their great wit and dialogue at times, and strong chemistry with the rest of the cast.

That rest of the cast is pretty excellent.  Practically every important character from the past two books return here, even in minor roles, and a few ones are excellent as well.  Amalia's mother, La Contessa, continues to be a fascinating character as she tries to be a mentor and mother to Amalia - as I said in the last book's review, it seemed at first like the series was setting up a conflict between the cold calculating mother and Amalia, but instead the books went a different direction, and La Contessa's such a deeper character whose relationship with Amalia I love so much.  Kathe also continues to be an excellent supporting character and love interest; he's lost much of his air of mystery (to be fair, it's kind of hard to continue to be mysterious for two books in a row, especially after the cards played last book), but his mix of strangeness, caring, and sometimes very different morals makes him an excellent counterpart to both Amalia and the villain, Ruven.  And heck, even the character I've found the least interesting in the series, the other love interest Marcello, gets a much different role to play here, and it works a lot better (although he's still so much more boring as a potential love interest).

The weakness of this book unfortunately is a return of part of the first book's problems: the book has multiple interesting ideas, between the epic fantasy conflict between Ruven and Amalia as well as the political situation at home in the Serene Empire Amalia has to navigate to do good, that it just doesn't quite know how to synthesize into a perfect package.  Whereas The Defiant Heir kind of managed to combine the two, this book essentially segues entirely from the political plot to the epic fantasy plot around 40% through, with the political plot being resolved fairly easily as a result, and it feels kind of unearned and disappointing.  Still, I enjoyed this book far more than the first book even so, since the characters are better, and the plot is still really well done for an epic fantasy adventure, with dialogue and plot twists that are excellent.  I don't want to complain too much.

In short, this trilogy is definitely worth your time, and I'm glad to have decided to stick with the trilogy after tepid opinions of book 1.  I'll look forward to future books from Caruso, in different worlds or this one.
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