Thursday, July 4, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Fray by Rowenna Miller




Fray is the second book in Rowenna Miller's "The Unraveled Kingdom" trilogy, after last year's "Torn" (Which I reviewed here).  Torn was an odd book - it presented interesting issues about how race issues could be dangerously overlooked in a class conflict, only to punt on those issues for a standard fantasy with a romance plot between a noble and a common girl.  Even odder, the end result essentially seemed to argue that workers should trust the upper classes to provide incremental changes, with worker uprising only leading to harmful results - which did not seem to fit what the author was intending.  The book was solidly written despite this, so I was willing to give the sequel a try to fix the message, and to see where the characters went from there.

And Fray is better in this regard, telling a story that doesn't punt on the issues it raises (as much), with some well done and interesting characters, solid and interesting magic, and some definite surprises along the way.  It's very much a second novel in a trilogy - ending with a major cliffhanger for next year's conclusion - but it works in this regard as a middle episode should: expanding the world in natural ways, continuing to develop the characters, and posing new questions.  I'll be back for book 3, to see if the series can pull off a satisfying conclusion here.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
Since the workers' revolt, Sophie Balstrade has tried to get on with her life as a simple charm-casting seamstress.  Of course, since she's now the fiance of Crown Prince Theodor, and is trying to help him get passed a Reform Bill to help the common people gain a greater role in their own governance, that isn't exactly working well.  And meanwhile, with her brother now in exile for his part in the revolt, Sophie finds herself having difficulty weaving her charms into her work, with curse magic seeming to interfere...to her dismay.

But the trouble in Galitha has only just begun, as the opposition to the Reform Bill is fierce, led by nobles afraid of giving up any power whatsoever....and Theodor's father the King shows no indication he will do anything to stop such nobles, or that he even would support his son in this.  Yet the common people are only holding back from a greater revolt by the hopes of the Bill, and Sophie and Theodor may soon find themselves trying to avert a civil war if things don't go appropriately.  And while Sophie and Theodor helped stop the last foreign influence in Galithan politics with the revolt, a civil war will only invite further meddling, meddling that could destroy any hope she has for the country whatsoever....
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Fray continues its story from the first person perspective of its heroine, Sophie Balstrade, who has since the last book lost any claim to anonymity as a simple seamstress she might've once preferred.  The result of this perspective is that events of major significance are clearly going on off-page for the 2nd half of the book, but we don't get to see them and only get to find out about them as Sophie does.  Which isn't to say the reader won't suspect what's actually going on, because I certainly did, but the story sticks solely to what Sophie knows and never goes elsewhere.

And really, this works.  I'm not going to say Sophie is my favorite protagonist character ever, but she's a fairly solid heroine, good intentioned and reasonably strong-willed, caught between many sides in multiple conflicts she never conceived herself as being a part of.  Her relationship with Theodor works rather well, and her discovery of more of how her magic - her charmcasting - works is really nicely done, with the magic taking some interesting forms.  She's also thankfully not crazy naive, as another character in her place could be, and her occasional act of taking charge from others works rather well.

The rest of the cast - the side characters - and the setting all work really well to complement this plot.  The book to me seems pretty influenced at this point by the French Revolution, and this book introduces more characters from outside countries, all of whom have their own interests and concerns over the possibility of a worker revolt changing the balance of power inside Galitha.  And each of these characters is very believable, whether they be old or new, and form extra dimensions to the conflict that's brewing throughout.  A good chunk of this book is spent with these foreign powers, and it's a testament to how well they're written that the story never drags despite the most interesting action taking place elsewhere while this is all going on.

The result is a plot which is a lot more on message with what I think the author was going for - we see quite clearly here the limitations of incrementalism and changes from above, which again oddly seemed to be the preferred method espoused for change by the first book.  We again seem to have lost the idea raised by the first book of the dangers faced by minorities present during a class conflict, minorities who can be blamed for their results and consequences, but what's left is still very solid, and helps guide the plot in interesting directions.  Is it the most unpredictable of plots?  No, but it's satisfying and works decently, up through the very cliffhangery ending.

Really the biggest negative about this book is that the villains are so blatantly obvious it hurts, with one character being so obviously working against the heroes from the beginning and they take so damned long to see it it's obnoxious.  The result is that while I think the book's plot is very solid and satisfying, a great deal of the cliffhanger is the result of events happening that the reader will probably be expecting by the book's 33% mark.  Still, the introduction of additional elements of the setting near the end are a surprising and effective turn, which helps keep this from being one of the more annoying cliffhangers.

I'll be back for the third book in this series, apparently being titled "Rule" (but without a release date on Amazon yet), to see if Miller can pull off a satisfying conclusion to her themes and plots.  Here's hoping as this book is a lot more encouraging than its predecessor.
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