Thursday, April 2, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Iron Cast by Destiny Soria




Iron Cast is a YA Fantasy Novel written by author Destiny Soria and her first novel (her second novel, Beneath the Citadel, was another YA novel that I liked a lot).  The story an alternate version of Boston on the eve of prohibition in which magic/illusion wielders ("hemopaths") exist, with these wielders commonly using things like their own words or music to affect others' minds.  The story setup is a classic one - a world that fears people for their powers oppresses and hunts them for insidious purposes - but this novel stands out with its strong friendship between its two young women protagonists, its twisty plot, and its refusal to take the easy way out with how things play out.


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
1919 Boston, a city on the verge of prohibition.  But what it has already put in place is a ban on the acts of Hemopaths, persons whose blood gives them the ability to create illusions, alter the mind, and other special powers through the use of art.  Corinne and Ada come from different backgrounds - Corinne from a rich high society family and Ada from a poor mixed-race immigrant family split apart by the police.  But the two best friends share a home at the Cast Iron club, where the two use their gifts - Corinne as a "wordsmith" through her poetry and Ada through her music as a "songsmith" - to entrance the crowds in an underground operation for the club's mob boss owner Johnny Dervish.  But their acts in the club aren't enough to keep it open, so Ada and Corinne also perform cons on normal people with their powers to earn the money they need to keep their home open.

But when a job goes wrong, Ada is sent to a hemopath prison with a  suspicious operation going on in the basement.  And after Corinne breaks her out, the two find everything is about to change: Johnny has hired a dashing young man Gabriel to be additional muscle and tasks him with following them around, while the police and Hemopath Protection Agency (HPA) begin to take active notice on the street.  And then Johnny goes missing, and Ada and Corinne's home seems on the verge of breaking down.  Together they decided to stop at nothing to find Johnny and to ensure that they are never cast out back into the world that hates them....but what they will find will test them like never before and threaten to destroy the lives they have so carefully built....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iron Cast is told in third person from the perspectives of Ada and Corinne, its two main protagonists, with each chapter usually taking turns between their perspectives.  As noted above, the story is a familiar one in terms of setting and setup, featuring a just-before-prohibition Boston and a world in which people with what could be called a mutation are feared and litigated against - comparing the world to one in which the X-Men are in 1919 isn't crazy far out from this setting.  But Soria builds this world really well through Ada and Corinne's perspectives - Ada being from a poor immigrant and mixed race family who has always had to struggle to survive (and has a father wrongfully imprisoned) and Corinne from a wealthy family about to marry in to another family famed for its anti-hemopath activism - so that it really feels like a special and unique world.

It's helped by how strong Soria writes the friendship between Ada and Corinne.  Both have romances with other characters that go in different (and interesting) directions, but the centerpiece of the novel is the two's relationship as friends who are so close as to almost be sisters.  The two match up really well - Ada knows how tough it is on the streets but still isn't hardened to the realities of what she does, and feels more pangs of conscience (to say nothing of terror at being caught or her mother being caught) while Corinne is colder in her emotions as a result of her raising in a high society environment she feels to be an outcast in but is fiercely protective of those she cares about from unjust treatment, whether that be Ada or anyone else.  Ada keeps Corinne remembering her essential obligations that Corinne would otherwise not care about, while Corinne ensures that the two of them can take the actions they need to survive, even when those might cause harm to others.  They're both determined when it matters, using their powers in interesting ways to protect each other and those else they care about, and its their central relationship, from Corinne saving Ada at the very beginning to the multiple times the favor is returned that keeps this book working.

The rest of the world also contains a really nice set of characters, from Corinne's seeming love interest Gabriel Stone, who serves as sort of a viewpoint character to help the reader learn how hemopaths work, to a pair of "thespians" who use their power to disguise themselves to put on plays with only two people, to the owners of a rival club with a surprising power dynamic to the hemopath mob leader who really cares about pushing socialist ideas etc.  Soria impressively uses these characters to wield the issues of our own 1919 into this alternate version, making the setting more real and allowing for some surprising directions.  You may see some elements of the plot coming (the major bad guys' operation is blatantly evil and you know the plot will wind up there at some point) but many plot points don't go as I expected, and yet all work really well.

The weakest part of this novel honestly is its final ending.  It's an ending that is thematically appropriate, but comes essentially after the book has wrapped up every plot thread in a way that makes it seem like the book is over, only for one final sequence to take place abruptly to close it out.  The result is more than a little jarring, as if the author grafted that ending sequence to the book at a last minute (or it was originally placed prior to the other parts), and doesn't quite work.  To be clear, the book's closing of most of its plot threads is very satisfying and works well enough, and I still enjoyed the book, but I'm specifically speaking of the very last ending sequence, which just feels extraneous in a way that the rest of the book does not.

Still, this is a generally pretty strong book with some solid themes, and done well enough to work despite the ideas in general being not original.  Worth a read.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)