Wednesday, October 16, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Warrior Moon by K Arsenault Rivera





Since I got back into reading genre in 2015, there are few books that I've loved more than K Arsenault Rivera's, "The Tiger's Daughter" (Reviewed Here), the first book in her "Ascendant" trilogy.  That book was just such an amazing fantasy romance tale that I put in on my list of "perfect" books - just a perfect romance between two fantasy heroines as they grew up and faced a world of demons and evil humans that threatened not just destruction, but to pull them both apart.  The book was followed up last year with "The Phoenix Empress" (Reviewed Here), which couldn't quite measure up to its predecessor - the book was a little less focused and centered more firmly on the fantasy side than the romance unlike the first book - but was still really good, and ended with things firmly set up for the concluding volume.  And now, with The Warrior Moon, that concluding volume is here.

And what a volume it is - The Warrior Moon still doesn't measure up to The Tiger's Daughter's perfection - the book is much more epic in scope, with far more characters to keep track of, whose stories are being told alongside our main duo and as such Rivera can't quite keep everything together without a few noticeable flaws sneaking in.  But Rivera manages to come incredibly close to doing so, wrapping up the trilogy, and the stories of not just our main duo, but of several other:  characters we've come to know and love, in a satisfying, if sometimes bittersweet manner.  It may not measure up to the trilogy's beginning, a tour de force of a love story's first act, but as the final act of that story it's still pretty damn incredible.

Spoilers for the first two books are inevitable after the jump, although I don't think they'll reduce your enjoyment of the series if you haven't read those books before this review.  Of course, you totally should read those books first anyhow, so get on that already.....

--------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
Barsalai Shefali and O-Shizuka do not have much time left: with Shefali sentenced to die soon on her next birthday.  And so, they know the time has come for them to take action and fulfill their childhood promise: to kill the Traitor, the god of demons whose forces are once again making an incursion into Hokkaro and who personally lies beyond the Wall of Flowers, in the Lost City of Iwa.  The stakes have become more personal for the two of them: for Shizuka now knows that the Traitor is her ancestor, the first Emperor Yamai, and Shefali now knows that the Traitor holds in his thrall thousands of Qorin, unable to join the Sky as they belong.  As such, there is no longer any choice: Shefali must free her people despite her pain and oncoming death, while Shizuka must leave her Empire for someone else to govern to end the horrors caused by her dynasty, and the two must take their forces - and their friends and family - into the Traitor's territory at last.

But the land of the Traitor is filled with those infected by his horrifying blackblood, to say nothing of his demon generals and their sinister immense power.  It is a land of horrors, where time and space are twisted to the Traitor's own purposes, and even two women who might also be gods cannot simply walk through it all in impunity.  And as their allies die around them, and they fight to survive and move forward, Shefali's death date moves ever closer, while the Traitor's power remains great and terrifying and seems to have no end.

The battle of Gods, new and old, of those who love each other, and of those left behind, will end here.  And in the end, nothing will be the same.
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The Tiger's Daugher was told near entirely from one perspective (Shefali's), with occasional interludes from another (Shizuka) and really told one united tale.  The Phoenix Empress was split roughly 50-50 between the two heroines, with the book essentially split between two stories, past and present.  The Warrior Moon fractures the story ever further: with three major perspectives telling the story and a number of other smaller perspectives telling aspects of it as well.  It's truly morphed into an epic fantasy tale from the fantasy romance of the first book, and our characters and the plot have come a long way.

Two of our major perspectives remain from the views of Shefali and Shizuka, as always.  The two have changed quite a bit from their original appearances, although at hear they're still the same people: Shefali more quiet and unassuming, insecure of her family's responses to her, but possessed of the need to help her people; Shizuka, outwardly brash and overconfident, but still deeply afraid of certain things (particularly large bodies of rushing water after the horrors of the last book) and whose fierce determination as the Empress can make her hard to deal with and almost another person....even to Shefali.  Still, their love for each other is so damn pure, and guides so much of this book as the two face greater and greater horrors brought forth by the Traitor.

However, this book expands the story to more fully contain the stories and perspectives of other characters - previously, the book would simply allude to the lives of those characters off-page, but here we get them fully or mostly on-page, with their own tales core to this story.  The biggest one of these is that of Minami Sakura, whose perspective is given a substantial time in the book.  Sakura's story begins as one of frustration (that Shefali won't tell Sakura what the letter from Sakura's mother contained) and changes to one of love and of the meaning of home.  I don't want to spoil anymore than that, so I'll leave it there, but she's a tremendous perspective to add to it all, and I grew to love her and one other character so damn much, almost as much as I loved our prime couple of Shefali and Shizuka themselves.  And besides Sakura we get occasional viewpoints from other characters, showing perspectives of this world other than that of our godly couple, who aren't quite the most normal unbiased perspectives on this world.

This all adds up to give context to an incredible plot, which Rivera writes incredibly.  I should point out that since book 2, the story has taken on a tinge of the horror genre (I use that word very on purpose), as the demons of the Traitor, and the land he resides in, is as psychologically and physically terrifying as you might imagine: beings reciting words spoken into their mind by the Traitor all at once, with mountains and chasms appearing out of nowhere - these are just some of the examples I'm willing to give here without going into detail and spoiling.  And then there's the tragic angle, as the story takes occasional moments to step back and show us the lives of those left behind by Shefali and Shizuka, and how those others have to deal with their absence.  I may have used the words "heartwarming" and "wonderful" to describe the first book - and those words did fit its ending - but while there are a few of those moments here, this book is also filled with tragic moments as well: this is the end of a grand conflict and not everyone will survive, and no one will really be the same, with some good people winding up worse off than others.  But it all generally works, with Rivera managing to pull it all together tremendously, into an ending that is bittersweet a little, but oh so satisfying. 

The book isn't perfect: like a lot of epic fantasy books that expand as the series goes on, it occasionally tries to deal with events happening away from our main cast by showing one-off point of view perspectives, and while these are written well and never seem fully out of place, they don't quite seem as necessary.  And a twist before the ending gives a little bit of whiplash of momentum, as what seems like the end only gives rise to another conflict all of a sudden.  Still, it works out really damn well, even if I wish Rivera had found some way to resolve every plot arc without some of the bittersweetness that resulted - I expected to be heartbroken at times throughout the middle of this book and I was, but I was still a little for one character at the end which just tinged it all with a little sadness.

But god, I love this world, I love these characters - particularly the main couple, their mother figure, and the new secondary couple introduced in this book - and I love the way it plays out so much.  And Rivera has managed to introduce so many elements and concepts of this world that are not explored here: from an event in Shefali's past we never explore that occurred between books 1-2 but is referenced occasionally to events in other countries and dealing with other people and gods like our main duo - that there is so much more that could be written in this universe, so much more that I'd love to read.  At the moment, all that's planned is a prequel novella featuring the Sixteen Swords, but if there is anything more Rivera wants to do with this world, I will be there.  In a heartbeat.
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