Wednesday, September 11, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: City of Lies by Sam Hawke




There is a pretty common trope in fiction - and especially SciFi/Fantasy fiction - of stories about main characters who grow up in privilege and are forced through a story/adventure to confront that privilege.  It's a classic of the genre, especially when the protagonist characters are members of royalty, typically living in an isolated castle with little contact whatsoever with the commoners they ostensibly rule.  But as anyone who's paying attention these days may have noticed, privilege is a very real thing even in a world - like ours - in which people don't live in isolated castles, causing a lot of problems as the very real problems of others remain hidden from view to those with the power to change - or prevent change - these problems.

I use this preamble, because this trope is heavy in City of Lies, despite the lack of royalty involved, as the story of a fantasy city-state dealing with both treachery from within and the uprising of the under-privileged lower classes to the great surprise of the main characters.  If you find the amount of ignorant privilege of the lead characters believable - and I lean towards this view though it's pretty close - then City of Lies is a pretty solid, verging on pretty damn god, fantasy story dealing with politics, class-conflict, espionage, poisonings, magic, etc, to go along with a few very interesting lead and minor characters.  If you find the amount of privileged espoused here to be a bit too incredible, then the whole thing doesn't work.  I think it does work - barely - and is worth a read, and while this is the beginning of a longer series/trilogy, City of Lies works as a stand-alone in case you were worried about starting a new series and not wanting to go further.

Note: I read this as an audiobook, and the two readers are excellent.  That said, if I misspell names and concepts below as a result, that's why.

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Jovan and Kalina have always been proud of their home, the City-State of Silastra, and its high culture and peaceful nature.  Their uncle, Eatn, is one of the nobles on the Council that rules the State, and secretly serves as the Chancellor's poison-taster, a role for which Jovan has trained as his apprentice - after Kalina's bad health prevented her from taking the position and forced her to train in espionage instead.  While neither the two of them, nor their closest friend Tain - the chancellor's nephew and heir - have ever been to their family estates, where laborers produce the food and agricultural goods that support the city, the two believe the City to be a shining example for all the world to follow.

But when Jovan and Tain returns early to the City from a trip abroad, these views are quickly shattered by incredible events: first the Chancellor and Etan are killed by an unknown poison and second, just as the funeral for the Chancellor and Eton was being held, an army seemingly made up of the residents of Silastra's estates surrounds and besieges the City.   In the midst of this chaos, Jovan and Kalina struggle to support Tain in his new role as the chancellor as they learn that the peace and comfort of their City they treasured may have merely been a batch of lies they'd been fed in their own privilege, and that the army threatening them all may in fact be in the right for wanting them all dead.  And then of course there's the matter of the poisoner, suggesting that their enemies don't simply lie outside the City, but may be inside it as well, and are fully prepared to strike once more to ensure they get what they want.....no matter who might stand in their way.....
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As I put it above the jump, a big issue one may have with City of Lies is whether or not the privilege and ignorance of the main characters is truly believable or not.  Tain is the heir to the City-State, while Jovan and Kalina are heirs to one of the highest of noble families on the council, and all of them are incredibly smart and intelligent actors in their decision making.* And yet, from their own perspectives, they have such amazing ignorance of how things actually are in the City it's at times dumbfounding: they know nothing about the religion most prevalent among the estates and still sometimes practiced in the City even though no religion has replaced it (just basically atheism); they believe the estates - which are managed by their own families and stewards! - are filled with happy workers who have adequate schooling and education and opportunities (spoiler alert, they have none of these things); they act surprised when city residents who practice the religion of the besieging army begin to hide in fear of reprisal from the besieged citizens, etc.  It is staggering how little they - and even the rest of the council (who are older in age and experience) - seem to know about what's really going on with the people they ostensibly rule and consider fellow citizens, and at times it made me laugh more than anything.  And yet, given the amount of privilege I see shown in our own world these days, especially about areas of my own country (the US) which people have never seen personally, I can still sort of believe it, so I think it does work.  Others may find it hard to swallow though, I suspect.

*Tain is seemingly referenced, especially early on, as if he was an aloof playboy who was more interested in having fun and being idealistic than in his responsibilities as a potential ruler prior to the plot here beginning, but other than his idealism, none of those negative traits actually ever show up really in the book, which is a minor problem that doesn't help explain away his ignorance as much as you'd think.

Getting past that issue though, if you can swallow it, City of Lies mostly works really well thanks to its well done main characters and very solid side characters, to go along with a twisty plot with some excellent turns.  The story alternates between Jovan and Kalina's perspectives, with Tain essentially acting as a third lead character despite never getting the story told from his own point of view.  Both Jovan and Kalina are characters with a lot of depth - with both having strong voices with interesting personality traits and beliefs to go along with some physical and mental weaknesses - for example, Jov suffers from OCD which can be triggered by stress (a bit of a problem given the situation), while Kalina suffers from a physically frail body of some sort that prevents her from handling many physical tasks for any long duration.  Of the two siblings, Kalina is the stronger, as she's incredibly easy to root for, rarely takes actions that made me want to slap my head in idiocy, and is quick on the uptake enough to be a believable heroine.  Jov is also solid....but his inability for most of the book to see his sister as truly capable despite her weakness is INSANELY  annoying and made it harder for me to like him - and he's the book's biggest character, so that's a problem.  And thirdly there's Tain, who's a solid character as the ruler (aside from the aforementioned issue with his prior "playboy" lifestyle) with ideals who is smart, if still a little naive to go along with his good-heartedness.

The book does an excellent job with its setting, outside of the believe-ability of the ignorance above, and with the minor characters, who number quite a large number but generally are all sketched out pretty damn well.  I'm not going to go into them all, since well again they're large in number, to the point where it's easy to forget about a few, something the book itself does a little - there are 12 council members who should have significance, and several disappear for large stretches without any dialogue only to pop up later for short stretches.  But for the most part they're sketched out very well, to the point where some of the twists and turns are a bit predictable a based upon who the characters are, but well, that's the paradox of good writing I guess.  And the book ends on a very satisfying note, so I'm definitely interested to see how things go forward next year.

The plot itself does have some minor issues mind you to go with the above - I predicted a major reveal very early and was proven right, but it gets resolved once finally swung at the reader incredibly quickly and perhaps too easily.  It also relies heavily in the end upon some incredibly fortuitous coincidences which make things seem very contrived. Still, I don't want to be too negative, the only real negative I had with this book was Jovan's annoying babying of Kalina, but other than that I enjoyed City of Lies quite a bit.  Recommended.
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