Monday, March 9, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Stormsong by C.L. Polk




Stormsong is the second book in C.L. Polk's "Kingston Cycle", which began with 2018's "Witchmark" (which I reviewed here).  I didn't quite love Witchmark as much as other reviewers did, due to me not quite buying the chemistry between the protagonist and his love interest, which was a major part of the story.  Still, I thought the world was setup really well, enjoyed how the main conspiracy thriller plot worked out, and was intrigued at the setup the book left us off with.  So I was definitely curious to see how the sequel, Stormsong would play out.

And Stormsong is definitely better for the most part - particularly in the romance, which switches from focusing on a M-M pair to a F-F one, and worked much better for me.  The progression of the world after the events of the last book is once again fascinating, with interesting issues and themes - of freedom and power, incrementalism vs revolution, and of the blindness of privilege in particular.  But oddly the thriller parts of this book are far more predictable than in the first book, to its detriment, and the book ends extremely abruptly, with little warning, and is thus a bit unsatisfying as a single volume.  But I'll be back for book 3 to see how this continues or concludes, for sure.

Note: Minor Spoilers for Witchmark are present below. 


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------------
Grace Hensley's world has been turned upside down, having betrayed her father to help her brother and his lover destroy the atrocity her family had engineered to power the nation of Aeland.  Due to her actions, the country now lies in chaos, and Grace knows that if she ever returns to the capital from her place with the Amarathines, she will be arrested for treason.  But when she feels magically the coming of a devastating storm, Grace knows she has to return, even if it costs her everything.  Yet what Grace retturns she finds herself not sentenced to death, but instead appointed to high political office in order to try and help calm the chaos.

But with the system that held Aeland in place for so long disabled, curing the chaos while doing what's right seems like an impossible task.  And in the midst of all this multiple other actors are still scheming for power - Grace's controlling father from behind bars, an Amaranthine with a hatred for those from Aeland, a Queen unwilling to bend on any point that might threaten her control, and possibly more.  And then there's Avia Jessup, the brilliant photojournalist, to whom Grace can't help but feel a little attracted to....even as Avia works to uncover the truth of what really happened to cause the chaos in the first place, a truth that could break open everything.

Soon, it won't just be the devastatingly powerful storms that threaten everything Grace knows, and it may not be possible to save everything....or everyone Grace might love or care about......
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Witchmark focused its story around Miles, a former noble who had rejected the duties of his blood in the pursuit of freedom and wound up living among the common people in secret after a traumatic war, helping where he could....until he got caught up in the conspiracy of that book.  By contrast, Stormsong revolves around Miles' sister Grace, who is very different from her brother.  Whereas Miles cast away privilege years ago, Grace has always been sheltered by her own (which led to her being annoyingly naive in the first book) and thus is far less comfortable confronting the injustices she now knows are have always been in front of her, nevertheless doing something about it.  Still, the siblings both share the same inner need for freedom - from their duties, and from their all controlling father - who Grace has now realized (like her brother) is power hungry and controlling, and not someone worth following.

The result is a lead character that it is very different from that of the first book, but who is just as interesting.  And her own need for freedom and her need to do good, especially to atone for her father's and grandfather's actions, clash frequently with her privilege, resulting in interesting and believable plot conflicts.  As I hinted above the jump, this clash results in Grace trying to urge for incrementalism - small changes at a time towards an end goal of justice and betterment of all - but Grace finds herself confronted not just by those who would fight even those small changes, but those who wish to see nothing more than revolution, with the whole band-aid ripped off at once.  This conflict, to go along with everything else - Grace's attempts to play power politics with those who would unseat her, a murder mystery that pops up, etc. - really works to drive the plot.

The conflict also works to underline the romance of this book, in which Grace finds herself falling for cast-off noble and now commoner journalist Avia (and vice versa), and makes this relationship feel much stronger than that of the first novel.  You can clearly feel the chemistry between Grace and Avia - even as Grace tries to fight it - and Avia's different perspective - being more in favor of big changes than incremental ones, and finding it hard to both want to be with Grace and not be repulsed by Grace's own privilege - makes her a strong foil and romantic interest.

Not all the characters are so effective mind you; while the returning characters from the last book are still excellent in their lesser roles, some newer (or at least more prominent than in last book) characters feel kind of two dimensional.  In particular note is one character who could not more obviously look like the villain if the book tried, and whose entire personality is basically just being angry at Grace and everyone from Aeland, with nothing else whatsoever.  There are perhaps some hints (i may be reading too much into this) that there was more going on with him than we see here, but for this book none of that ever pans out and it kind of ruins much of the interesting parts of the thriller plotline in this book - a surprise after the thriller plot was the best part of Witchmark.

And then there's the ending which just.....what?  It's not that the events that occur are inexplicable, it's just that the book just.....ends abruptly, without notice, with a ton of things completely and utterly unresolved.  I don't even mean a cliffhanger ending, I just mean the book just drops everything and heads into the acknowledgements, which is a bizarre choice that truly feels unsatisfying - and it's not like this is a long book, being only 345 pages.  I assume we're getting a third book in this series to follow up on things (I haven't seen one announced though), but it's just a weird way to finish what seemed to be a book avoiding quite well the perils of 2nd books in a series.

In short, I liked Stormsong a lot more than Witchmark mainly because the romance and themes worked a lot better, but it still has some issues, and I hope book 3, if we get one, will be the novel that will finally show Polk pulling it all off.
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