Friday, April 17, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review Crier's War by Nina Varela



Crier's War is a YA Fantasy novel from debut author Nina Varela, which I had skipped at first until I saw the book recommended by a few authors I trust.  The book features a Fantasy world in which humans created androids (known as "Automae") overthrew humans as the dominant species, and now humanity exists as an oppressed subspecies, one whose lives depend upon the opinions of the leading Automae.  In this world comes the two protagonists, an Automae princess and a Human girl, with each their own feelings towards this unjust system, and who over the course of the novel, obtain feelings towards each other - feelings that threaten their own individual goals towards better lives in the future.

That's a pretty great setup, and the book does a really good job with it, but wow, is it utterly unsatisfactory in its ending.  The book contains a number of moving pieces, with no less than 3 potential antagonists along the way, all with their own agendas, and the book ends before concluding any particular plot arc whatsoever, ending everything with a cliffhanger.  The book is advertised as a duology, and the characters are well built enough to make me care enough to pick up the second book which comes out this fall, but those who are looking for some satisfactory resolution will not find it here, and that drives me nuts.

Note: I read the first 2/3 of this, until the COVID-19 crisis hit, as an audiobook.  The reader is fine, without too distinct voices for the characters, and struggles to differentiate flashbacks (Denoted with italics in print) from regular scenes.  It's not the worst book to pick up in audiobook, but it probably is better off read in print.


--------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
It is Automae Era Year 47 - 47 years after the end of the War of Kinds resulted in Automae, the made kind, taking control of the Country of Zulla from the humans.  Now humans live at the sufference of their Automae rulers, with human rebellions put down harshly and immediately.

Crier is the 17 year old daughter of King Hesod, the Automa ruler of Zulla.  Hesod supports the theory of traditionalism, that Automa life should continue the form and traditions of human life, but otherwise cares little for the humans themselves.  Crier for herself, feels more sympathy for humans, even if she never would consider them as direct equals, and wishes she could soon join the ruling council of Red Hands to push for such reforms.  But when Crier is engaged in a political match to Scyre Kinok, a mysterious Automa who founded an anti-human political movement, she begins to realize how many secrets about the world have been kept for her, and that her chance to affect politics is farther away than it seems.

Ayla is a 17 year old human girl who works for the King's servants in the fields.  7 years ago, her family was slaughtered in one of Hesod's raids, and since then she has been raised alongside her friend Benjy by Rowan, a woman in touch with the skeleton that is the human resistance.  Ayla dreams of getting assigned into the palace so she can kill Crier, to get revenge on Hesod for her family.  But when Ayla finally gets into the palace, and in fact assigned as Crier's handmaiden, she finds that she is worth more to the resistance than just as an instrument of revenge.

But Crier and Ayla's meeting will change the both of them tremendously, and the two of them will develop forbidden feelings for one another, feelings that will put both their lives and agendas at risk.  With the fate of both humans and automae's futures on the line, can the two of them find a path between their growing personal feelings and what needs to be done to protect everyone and everything they care about?
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Crier's War is, as you might imagine, split into alternating chapters from its two protagonists' points of view: Crier and Ayla.  The two characters are both 17 years old, but there backgrounds are very different.  Crier is the classical privileged character from a higher class archetype, while Ayla is the typical character from an oppressed lower class struggling through life in anger archetype.  But while these archetypes do explain a good deal of what goes on in this book, the book doesn't quite take them all in the typical directions, which would involve Crier learning the truth about her privilege from Ayla and trying to help Ayla fight for a better world - so if you expect for the point in which the two compare notes (which sort of happens but not in the way you'd think) to result in a unified direction against oppression, you will be surprised quite a bit by this novel.

Which is again not to say those archetypes aren't felt and aren't a little bit annoying.  Crier in particular is almost mindblowingly naive about how certain aspects of her world work, which seems almost impossible given how obvious her father's cruelty is to anyone with eyes.  She dreams of the upcoming day her father agreed she would join him at a council meeting from the beginning of the book for instance, but is so painfully blind to the fact that her father isn't going to give her a voice on the council - which is obvious to the reader from the clear start - that it hurts to read when the event finally occurs.  Similarly, she's just a slight bit less naive about the evil of her betrothed, Kinok, who might as well have a sign hung around his neck screaming "I'm an ambitious evil bastard with designs on genocide!"

Still, despite all of the above, Crier somehow works as a character and made me really care about her.  Her wanting to help humans while still thinking herself above them is a realistic touch, and her confusion over her desires for Ayla are really well written.  And as she learns more, her turns toward independent action and attempts to take stands for herself are really well done, and as noted before, don't go in the obvious directions of going full on rebel, as you might expect.

Similarly, Ayla has a few naive moments, such as a point where she gets into a dangerous argument in public in an emotional panic despite having the key to a safe space in her very pocket at that moment.  And she has a bad habit of not telling certain characters facts that could better explain herself to them - a narrative device I find I hate.  But again, her pain from her past and her desires towards her future are really well done, and it's really easy to like her as a character, especially as she becomes more and more confused about her feelings for Crier.  But her actions always take her in some interesting directions, and her quick thinking at times makes her hard to predict as well, as the plot moves in different directions.

And of course there are the other characters, from the obvious villains like Hesod and Kinok, to Ayla's best friend Benjy who obviously has an unrequited romantic love of Ayla, to Rowan the revolutionary and more.  And then there's the intriguing potential third faction, led by the Mad Queen Junn of Varn, who throws a wrench into the middle of things.  All of these characters add up to a plot, that intrigues throughout even as its romantic subplot grow and simmers.

Unfortunately, the plot intrigues but never manages to come together in a promising fashion.  Just as major events, one of which the reader wonders whether it's ever going to happen from the start, break up the status quo, the two characters are forced apart and the book just....ends.  As I've said in a number of book reviews before, there's no problem ending a book on a major cliffhanger, or even a couple of them.  But if you do, you need to have the book provide a satisfying conclusion to at least some plot arc and we get none of that here....where really the cliffhanger is the climax just finally happening far far to late.  If this was the beginning of a trilogy and required a two more book commitment, that would probably be a deal breaker for me.

Since this is a duology instead, with the sequel supposedly going to wrap things up this Fall, I'll be back for that book to see how it all pans out.  But for a new reader looking at whether to try this book, I might opt to wait to see how that book pans out and is reviewed, because you can't go into this book expecting a satisfying experience at all.
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