Thursday, September 26, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Isle of Blood and Stone by Makiia Lucier




Isle of Blood and Stone is a YA fantasy by author Makiia Lucier, and the first of a duology of books - the second of which just came out in August.  It's a stand-alone novel mind you, featuring a solid interesting fantasy world, with a pair of excellent main characters, who struggle to discover a truth long hidden, whose revelation they know will almost certainly only bring pain.  It's a pretty solid setup, and I'm certainly interested in reading the second half of this duology later this year.

Unfortunately, the execution falters a bit along the way, especially by the book's end, where the book wraps things up insanely quickly in a way that is hardly very satisfying.  The book includes some fantastical elements that generally go nowhere and its romantic subplot isn't particularly enthralling, even if it's fine.  Essentially what we have here is the skeleton of a perfectly good young adult fantasy, but not the execution needed to take this beyond fine.

More specifics after the jump:

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
18 Years ago, a mysterious tragedy struck the kingdom of St. John del Mar: two of the three princes from the kingdom went missing along with their teacher, Royal Navigator and explorer Antoni, and all who accompanied them.  Upon investigation, it became known that the neighboring kingdom of Mondrago was at fault for the disappearances and probable murders, and in a bloody war, St. John del Mar wiped Mondrago off the map.

18 years afterwards, Antoni's youngest son, the explorer Elias returns home to his friend and king, Ulises, the youngest brother of the two missing princes, to find a strange mystery: a pair of maps discovered abroad which seem to be the work of Antoni....but could only have been made after Antoni's disappearance.  Even more curiously, the maps contain a riddle suggesting that perhaps what happened 18 years ago is not quite as solved as people think, and that the King's brothers - the two princes, may still be alive.

Under Ulises' orders, Elias and Ulises' cousin, and his good friend Mercedes - who faces prejudice not just for her sex but also for being half-Mondragan herself - set out to discover where the two maps lead.  But what they discover may lead to some hard truths about what happened back then and what was done as a result, and some people may still have an interest in preventing the truth from getting out....even if it means the deaths of two of the King's closest companions.....
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Isle of Blood and Stone oddly is the second book I've read recently which features essentially three main characters, one of whom is a young ruler, but with the story really only told from the points of view of the two of the three protagonists (and not the ruler).*  Elias is basically our lead character, but Mercedes gets about a third of the book told from her perspective as well, with both characters being integral to the plot.

*There are a few pages that are told from other perspectives, but I don't count that.

And I liked Elias, Mercedes, and Ulises a good amount.  In an interesting twist, the most prestigious profession in this fantasy world is essentially being an explorer or navigator, rather than a warrior, and Elias is indeed just that.  His dream is to find areas on maps that haven't yet been filled in and to go out there and explore, and when we first find him, he's just come back from remapping the coastline of a land affected by earthquakes (and is helping a poor family in his own land).  On a personal level, the book puts an interesting twist on the son who never knew his father in that Elias is very happy with the stepfather he grew up with and is afraid that the journey he's being asked to go on will lead him to unhappy places - such as to a father he knows only from others' stories and a family he's never been part of.  It's weird to see the hero not want to go on a personal quest, but it makes total sense for him.

Mercedes meanwhile is the young incredibly capable and smart woman who is willing to deal with prejudice because she has to, but is far less hesitant in doing what she thinks needs to be done than Elias, making a decent complement to him.  Of course, it also makes it annoying when Elias tries to do things without her for her own protection (a character trait I've seen repeatedly in some books and it's never NOT annoying), because she's incredibly capable and able to handle things herself.  So yeah, she's a very solid secondary character throughout all of this, helping Elias and Ulises keep on track.   Still, the romance between her and Elias never really pops, and while you can buy that the two are great friends and maybe harbor more feelings for one another, the romantic chemistry feels kind of lacking.

The rest of the world and characters is generally well done, with some interesting setup of this world - again the Island nation makes the importance of explorers and navigators make sense, and it's nice to see how warm so many characters are to the ideas of family and adopted family.  The book has some weird aspects to its setting though - for example, there are occasional parts that show fantastical magical elements (Spirits!  A Door that magically appears!) do exist in this world, but they exist only for small set pieces and then completely are irrelevant in importance thereafter, as if they weren't part of the same story as the rest of this world.  Less fantastical, but just as annoying, is the sexism involved in some of the culture - young girls aren't taught to fight and can't be explorers and are expected to marry despite....seemingly being given every other aspect of education as boys up to a decent point?  It's again like a halfway measure, a conflict brought in and then not fully bought-into, so it is just annoying to read rather than adding anything.

Most irritatingly though is the book's final 20%, in which the truth behind the mysteries are revealed, the main characters appear threatened.....and then the threat is resolved basically entirely off screen (off page).  It's an utterly bizarre decision which just makes everything feel rushed and unearned, and the book gives the reader no clues that could lead them to decipher the mystery ahead of time either, so it doesn't work as a mystery plotline either.  It's like 50 pages of resolution were missing, for no reason whatsoever, which makes things hardly satisfying.

Still, there are some interesting aspects to the revelations, and to some of the characters and how this world works, so I will be taking the sequel out of the library when its available.  But it does make it hard to recommend this book unless you're looking for a very just "fine" YA fantasy story.
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