Wednesday, April 29, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Cry of Metal and Bone by L Penelope



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 11, 2020 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Cry of Metal and Bone is the third novel in L Penelope's Earthsinger Chronicles.  The series was initially self published before being picked up by a publisher - and now before this book consists of two novels - Song of Blood and Stone (Reviewed Here) and Whispers of Shadow and Flame (Reviewed Here) - and two novellas which serve as prequels/sequels to the novels.  The Series is essentially romantic fantasy, with the first one being close to a pure fantasy romance at times* and the second one still featuring romance as a major part of the plot.  Perhaps more interesting, the novels feature countries with racial/nationalistic views that will feel very familiar to modern American readers and form important parts of the plots.

*I use "Fantasy Romance" to describe books in which the primary plot in the book - in its fantasy world - is the romance, which ends on a happy ending whereas "Romantic Fantasy" refers to Fantasy novels where Romance is a central element of the plot but is not the only central focus....and the plot doesn't necessarily end in a happy ending.  So for example a book in which our heroes' final goal is to save the world is likely a romantic fantasy whereas one where the ending centers around the finding happiness and love, even if the threat to the world is still out there, is a Fantasy Romance.

 I had mixed feelings about the first two books.  The first novel (Song of Blood and Stone) had a lovely romance and predictable but well executed fantasy plot, but I felt the socio-political themes seemed a bit too underdone, as was the world in general really, existing mainly as a skeleton for the rest of the plot.  The second novel (Whispers of Shadow and Flame) fixed this completely - with the novel taking place at the same time as the first novel in a different setting - and made a far more real feeling, albeit just as familiar and depressing in many ways, world....but felt incomplete at the end with an unsatisfying cliffhanger.  Still I really liked the main duo of the second novel and was really interested on seeing where the plot would go forward from its cliffhanger ending, so I quickly requested this third novel on NetGalley when it showed up.

And Cry of Metal and Bone is very good and surprised me greatly and is a much satisfying if still a little frustrating novel compared to its predecessors.  The story has fully moved into Epic Fantasy here, with a cast of important characters far more expansive than we started with, and a number of competing subplots all over multiple continents and countries that we flip around between as the plot goes on, and it can't quit manage to cover all of these elements in its duration.  And yet, the characters remain excellent, the new and old romances are terrific, and the story & setting continues to hit a number of very important themes - racism and nationalism, the plights of refugees, misogyny and sexism, the corruption of power, etc. - in ways that feel really well done and very real given today's world.  I'm not sure how long this series is intended to be - it does not end here - but I'll be back for sure with book 4 after this one, and I'm glad I stuck around.

Note: Minor Spoilers for Books 1 and 2 are inevitable below:


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
The Mantle has fallen, and the nations of Lagrimar and Elsira are one once more.  But many of the citizens of the wealthier nation of Elsira isn't very happy with the merger - and what they see as poor Lagrimari refugees now trying to live on their land, especially given the magical power of Earthsong some of the Lagrimari possess.  But Queen Jasminda and King Jack are pushing strongly for full unification - and Elsira's almost-goddess, The Queen Who Sleeps but is now awoken and active, is demanding reunification as she travels the temples around the country.

But peace is not what some hidden members of Elsiran society wish, and a group of these nationalists detonate a bomb in a temple with the goddess and Queen inside.  These nationalists are pushing subtly also as well, inflaming the populace and threaten to overturn all the good that has been done.  And they may be being backed by forces outside of Elsira, forces with their own dark agendas.

To solve this, the Goddess and the Queen and King send a task force of disparate individuals to search for the culprits abroad.  One of these individuals is Darvyn ol-Tahlyro, the powerful earthsinging Lagrimari man desperate to save his lost love, the nethersong wielding Kyara, and who distrusts the goddess' actions.  Also among them is Lizvette Niall, the Elsiran noble who once plotted to take Jack's hand and a foreign smuggler named Tai Summerhawk, who can't help but try and needle at Lizvette's pride-bound demeanor....until the two begin to possibly feel something for each other.

But their potential romance will be up against grave dangers, as the group chase a foreign force intent on using Kyara's deadly power for their own evil means, and in the process possibly starting a dangerous war that threatens the entire world.....assuming Elsira doesn't destroy itself in civil war first.
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The first book in this series was split between two perspectives - Jack and Jasminda, which made sense, because their romance was basically a central element.  The second book was split between four characters - Darvyn, Kyara, Zeli and Ulani, but still mainly focused upon a duo (Darvyn and Kyara), on whom focused the main plot and romance.  By contrast, while this book does have a few duos (Darvyn and Kyara again, Tai and Lizvette in addition) it is a lot larger in scope, with book having no less than six point of view characters it alternates between on my first count, and it's entirely possible I've missed one or two (a mysterious antagonist also gets one every now and then I realize).  By the time the first fifth of the book is complete, the story has sprawled out in multiple directions with characters all over the place taking different actions to deal with different and not obviously all related problems.  In short, while romance is still a very important things for these novels, I'd say it's quite clear at this point that this book can now firmly be defined as Epic Fantasy in a way its predecessors (especially book 1) could not.

And this is not a complaint because this book is really great at being an epic fantasy, especially in terms of its character development and building of the setting.  The setting is really well done here, which cements in the story's themes quite nicely, especially those dealing with racism and its relation to nationalism.  For example, in a nice early touch, the King notes that nationalist propaganda was used to turn people against the building of railroads, which was of course really meant to disadvantage and keep out those of other races and lower wealth statuses.  That's uh, pretty damn exactly what we see in the Modern United States today.  Our sinister bad guy conspiracy is made up of a group which has fanned the flames with propaganda in multiple newspapers for years to ensure their anti-Lagrimari sentiment is mainstream (think white supremacists) except for one newer member who wishes instead to use more direct and open attacks (gee, sound familiar?) and is no longer willing to hide it.  The so-called nationalist racists meanwhile have suspicious ties to nationalist and racist groups in other countries as well, even as they supposedly reject outside technology and aid.

I could go on and on here, but the point is this is such a well built "fantasy" world that features foundations that people should immediately recognize and allows for Penelope to play with these themes through her plotting and characters.  And while it's not subtle, it's not overly blatant either, with faults lying also with so called figures of authority and goodness in this book as well in how they try to fight against these dark forces.

It's helped that the character set here is tremendous.  Our two central new characters, Lizvette and Tai, were both introduced in prior works - Lizvette was a minor character and antagonist in book 1 while Tai was in a novella I haven't read.  But they both get POVs here that make them very easy to empathize with - Lizvette as the noble lady who has always been talked down to by her father and discredited as anything more than someone's pawn, as she learns that not all she's been taught is true and that she has her own power and will & Tai as the young smuggler/pirate who has already gone against his mother to do what is right - most particularly in that everyone, lady or gentleman, has autonomy to do what they wish to do themselves.  Their romance is really well done, even if Tai reads quite a bit like a stalkerish asshole at first.  Our returning romantic pair, Darvyn and Kyara are also excellently done, and this book continues their storyline in a way that is much much more satisfying than it was in the last book.  And the odd wheel out, foreigner Ella has a sideplot back at home in Elsira dealing with a corrupt religion, adoption of refugees, and the conspiracy to bomb the temples which often feels a bit random, but Ella is so easy to like that it still works.

Honestly, the biggest issue with this book is that it's trying to do so much that some characters get lost in the focus.  Our secondary main characters from the last book - Ulani (and her sister) and Zeli - show up as minor characters without POV chapters and might as well be random unnamed strangers for all they're given to doing here.  Jasminda and Jack also get relegated to the background, which is a bit of a surprise given that Ella's plotline dealing with the growing resentment of refugees is clearly a long term simmering arc that the two are profoundly in the middle of.  This, as well as the large number of plot threads, leads to an ending that is far better than the last book - it does resolve enough plot arcs this time to be satisfying - but also leads to a lot of threads clearly left untouched......and that's even before dealing with the epilogue cliffhangers!  But some of that is to be expected for Epic Fantasy, which this series now clearly is, so it's hard to mind it too much.

In short, I kind of wish that the first two books were rewritten and merged into a single epic fantasy volume, so this could be book 2 of the series - a series which I doubt will end with book 4 given how the author has laid things out - and I could describe this series wholly as epic romantic fantasy.  Instead it has taken us two books to get to this point, which is a point I like a lot, but may not be something new readers are willing to wait for.  I hope they will, because few series are as interesting and more clearly connected to real world issues in the epic fantasy genre, and I am fascinating to see where Penelope takes this.
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