Wednesday, May 20, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso


Full Disclosure:  This novella was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on June 2, 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.



The Obsidian Tower is the first book in Melissa Caruso's new fantasy trilogy, "Rooks and Ruin."  It is not however the first book set in this universe - this book is set in the same fantasy world as Caruso's Swords and Fire trilogy (which began with The Tethered Mage in 2017), just 150 years later.*  I really liked that trilogy, which began with a novel that was solid and had potential it didn't quite reach only to then be followed up by sequels which did reach that potential, featuring an interesting contrast of magical countries and fascinating characters.  So I was definitely excited to revisit this world at a later point in time for another story.

 *Note:  No foreknowledge of the prior trilogy is needed to enjoy or understand this novel: no characters from that trilogy appear herein, and other than a few sparse references to events/people from that trilogy within a few pages at one point, there really isn't anything that you'd miss out if you read this trilogy first - Caruso is quite clearly making it possible for anyone to read this series first if they so choose.  The only clear benefit I got out of reading the prior trilogy first was to more clearly understand the setting from the start, but new readers should probably be fine.

And The Obsidian Tower is a very promising first novel in this new trilogy, with a fascinating fantasy world, a sort of locked room-esque mystery (kind-of), dueling political powers, and a heroine desperate to try to get it all - and her own dangerous powers - under control.  The story doesn't quite have any particularly great characters other than the heroine herself, but she's enjoyable enough to carry the story quite nicely, with the other prominent characters showcasing potential to grow in future novels. And the story flows really nicely, being quite hard to put down once you get into it.  I'll definitely be back for the sequel to see where it goes from here.

---------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Guard the tower, ward the stone 
Find your answers writ in bone 
Keep your trust through wits or war
Nothing must unseal the door

As the granddaughter of the Lady of Owls, the Witch Lord of Morgrain, Ryx should have been a powerful vivomancer, able to manipulate life in some tremendous fashion through her magic.  But Ryx's magic is corrupted, killing everyone she touches and so her parents gave her to her grandmother's keeping.

Now, Ryx acts as the Warden of Gloamingard Castle, the seat where her powerful grandmother sits, and uses her political skills to try to wield power instead of her magic.  But Gloamingard possesses a secret family legacy - a sealed door within that all in the family are taught must NEVER be opened.  Yet when a peace conference Ryx plans brings both ambassadors of the powerful neighboring Serene Empire and the Witch Lord of Alevar, the castle soon finds itself full of dangerous ambitious persons out for blood....and all it takes is one such person for the worst to finally happen.

For what is behind the door is something far worse than Ryx could ever have imagined, and instead of having time to deal with it in peace, she has to deal with a host of scheming parties in her home, all of whom have their own agendas and plans.  And with her own magic only capable of causing death, how exactly is Ryx going to somehow stave off not just the outbreak of war inside her own castle, but a danger that threatens to destroy the world as she knows it if unleashed?
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The Obsidian Tower features the same world as Caruso's prior trilogy (the awfully named but very good "Swords and Fire" trilogy), a fantasy world in which the world is mainly split between two powers: The Serene Empire and The Witch Lords of Vaskandar.  The Serene Empire is a colonial empire reminiscent of many historical countries in our world, ruled by an oligarchy/parliament and requires those born with strong enough magic to be marked to be "Jessed", so that their magic can be turned off by a trusted third party.  Vaskandar is more of a conglomerate of independent states, ruled by mages, vivomancers who have power over life, and its Witch Lord leaders have utter control over life in their domains (territories)....but often find themselves in conflict with one another.

Our heroine in this novel, who tells the story in first person, is Ryx, who has a mother from the Empire and a father from Vaskandar and is thus supposed to be a vivomancer....except her magic is corrupted, so instead of allowing useful control of life, it merely kills everything it touches.  This is hardly an unusual archetype in genre (most famously perhaps held by the X-Men's Rogue), but Ryx is done particularly well in a way to make her stand out: she has opted not just to wallow in misery but to make herself useful as a diplomat - using her connections to both sides of her heritage - since she can't rely upon her powers in any useful way.  Oh she still suffers as a result of her powers - and as a result, a conflict for her is the potential desire to have those powers turned off by a Jess (something which Vaskandarian pride would suggest is sort of like enslaving herself to another) so that she can actually touch other people without fear.  And she can't help but look at those with human contact and potential relationships without envy.  But it doesn't define her - instead what defines her is her need to try and find a solution that can satisfy all parties, even as things get more and more disastrous and more and more conflicting agendas come out of the woodwork.  And Ryx isn't trying to do so from a naive point of view (to contrast her with the prior trilogy's heroine in her first book) - while she might be perhaps a little too trusting of a few people, she's still well aware of the consequences of various actions and agendas, and that everyone is hiding something.   It makes her tremendously interesting to read throughout.

Which is good because Ryx is the only really strongly developed character in the novel, which features a ton of named characters all of whom are playing their own games and don't have quite nearly enough time to come into their own just here.  Which is not to say they're not interesting archetypes, and Caruso plays a bit here by having a bunch of characters with similar archetypes acting in different fashions: so you have two individuals who were raised up from nothing by dangerous patrons with possibly dangerous agendas, who react very differently to the discovery of same, and the two potential love interests are both cowardly in their approach to potential love/friendship vs their own professional circumstances.  Each of these characters is built well enough that I'd like to see more of them in the future - especially the Rooks, a group of neutral individuals who investigate magic in both countries, but they can't quite capture individually the same intrigue as Ryx or some of the side characters in the prior trilogy.

Moreover these characters and Ryx work well enough to set up a plot that intrigues from is very beginning and continues to get more and more complicated as things move on in this story.  Caruso's prior trilogy dealt very much with the issues dealing with power and control over other people and their lives, and while those themes do exist here as well, they're less overt than in that novel - we're more dealing with a more typical fantasy novel here.  But it's a really good fantasy plot, filled with twists and powers and agendas that enable the plot to take various shapes: from a locked room mystery to political intrigue to a dangerous fantasy struggle, and it all works from beginning to end into a satisfying tantalizing ending.  The only part that didn't really work for me is the romance element - the attraction between Ryx and the eventual chosen love interest just seems to come mainly from nowhere until it's mentioned by a character and is from then on a thing (I reread those portions, and the setup is there just a tiny bit, but it's incredibly scant) and it didn't quite work for me.  Mind you, I felt the romance in Caruso's first novel was its weakest element before additional elements came into play later to make it stronger in the rest of that trilogy, so hopefully that'll improve going on forward.

In short, The Obsidian Tower is a very good first novel in a trilogy, with a really strong heroine, a strong plot, and enough tantalizing possibilities that I could see this becoming really great.  Can't wait to see if it takes that next step.
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