Tuesday, August 4, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Forest of Souls by Lori M. Lee


Forest of Souls is the first in a new young adult fantasy series by author Lori M Lee.  It was not a novel on my radar until some authors I pay attention to on twitter threw some praise its way, so I put it on my list.  And when it showed up as available as a Hoopla Audiobook and I was looking to try to get back into audiobooks I picked it up.  And I'm glad I did in the end, as I enjoyed this one a good deal, with excellent worldbuilding and a very enjoyable lead character through it all.  I'll definitely be back for this book's sequel.


Note: I read this in audiobook format, and I do recommend the book in that format, as the reader is very good.  That said, it's very likely that I'm misspelling names of characters or places in this review as a result, and for that I apologize.


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Sirscha Ashwyn grew up an orphan in the country of Evewyn, a girl with no family or class ties to speak of, an absolute nobody.  But for the past few years, she has secretly been one of the pupils of Kendara, the Shadow (Assassin/Spy) of the Evewyn's ruling queen, learning combat and other skills from her legendary mentor, with the hope of succeeding her one day as Shadow.  To that end, Sirscha has followed Kendara's request to enlist with the Queen's Company - the royal army - where she's been mistreated by both the company's commanders and its noble members, who despise her for her low upbringing.  The only two things that keep her going are the dream of making her name by being offically appointed as the Shadow's Apprentice and her friendship with Saengo, a noble girl in the company.

But when Sirscha tries to steal a mission from another of Kendara's pupils, she barely makes it out alive....and Saengo is killed in the process.....until Sirscha somehow brings her back to life.  In the process, Sirscha reveals herself as a Shaman, the magic wielding people most known as coming from a neighboring empire, and who are hunted and imprisoned by Evewyn's Queen.  With nowhere else to turn, Sirscha and Saengo soon find themselves at the mercy of the Shaman known as Ronin, the Spider King, the legendary ages old being renowned for two things: Defeating the monster known as the Soulless who terrorized the world ages ago, and for maintaining the peace between the three major nations in the world.

But Sirscha quickly realizes that Ronin has his own agenda - which has something to do with the "Dead Wood", a forest of monstrous trees that border all three kingdoms and tends to kill any who would dare wander into its midst.  And if Sirscha can't figure that out, in addition to trying to figure out her own mysterious power, it may mean the end for everyone and everything she's ever known or cared about.....
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Forest of Souls is a story told entirely from Sirscha's point of view, but it uses that point of view to build a very complex and fascinating world.  You have a world with two legendary figures in the past - the founder of the Shaman empire - with the power to bring souls back to life or usher them into the afterlife - and the Soulless - who could rip souls directly from others' bodies.  You have three nations of opposing forces - with two of them having their own distinct and varied forms of magic, and third featuring a human ruler with a hatred towards magic users.  You have the spider king between those empires, and the forest filled with creepy monstrous murderous souls.  It's a world that is absolutely filled with depth and possibilities, making it often very unclear where the story is heading at any point, but in a good way: where I always felt really interested in seeing what comes next.

That's helped by our phenomenal main character in Sirscha, whose first person narration carries the story.  Sirscha has learned to be an incredibly resourceful person towards achieving her own goals through both her upbringing as an orphan and Kendara's training, hiding her feelings of pain at will and doing whatever she feels necessary to obtain her goals at any given moment.  She's not an idealist - as she tells one character explicitly at one point - but at the same time she finds it hard to keep a blind eye towards injustice as that injustice become more and more apparent.  And yet again, when she does act to try to remedy those injustices, it's almost always as a result of other motives as well.  She's a good person, but she's not driven by the need necessarily to do good.

What she is driven by instead is her loyalty to those she cares about - particularly Saengo - and her need to make something of herself - a need she realizes more and more as the novel goes on.  First for her that means she'd do anything to become the Queen's Shadow, and later that means she'd do anything to try and obtain the power she needs to save all she cares about and earn up to the attention she's now drawing but the key is that her desire for recognition is always tempered by her need to save her friend.  Sirscha is a very cold and calculating person at times, and is definitely cynical about practically everyone's motivations (she's nearly always - but not always - proven right mind you), but she's - unlike I swear many characters I've read this year with similar needs for recognition - not sociopathic in the least.  She cares, and the balance of her acting on that caring and acting on her need for recognition works really well.

This - complete with a number of other interesting characters: poor Saengo, who is thrown through a ringer, the mysterious Kendara, the Evewynian prince Meilek, and a shadow wielding prince with unclear loyalties - results in a plot that like I said before moves at a really nice pace up to a conclusion that ends both in a satisfying way and with a pretty strong cliffhanger.  Interestingly, the book never shows any interest in romance - despite there being two men and one woman I might've expected Sirscha to show romantic attraction for, she shows no inclination towards any such relationship (and neither do they in return) - it's just not what this story is interested in following.  Which works fine and only stands out in comparison to the typical YA novels I'm used to comparing this to.

In short, I rather enjoyed Forest of Souls and look forward to the sequel, where I hope a number of secondary characters, less explored here for various reasons, get a place to shine.  I'll be back either way.
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