Tuesday, September 15, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Ikessar Falcon by K.S. Villoso




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 September 22, 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 Ikessar Falcon is the second book in K.S. Villoso's Filipino-inspired Epic Fantasy series, "Chronicles of the Bitch Queen" (My review of the first book, The Wolf of Oren-Yaro is up at the blog here).  I really liked the first book in this series, with its fascinating heroine, torn between what others - including her dead father - expect of her and her duties and lost in a part of the world she is unfamiliar with, and was really excited to see what was going to happen next.  As I noted in my prior review, I believe this series was first self-published, but Orbit picked it up for republishing, and it was through Orbit that I managed to snag an early copy to review.  

And well, The Ikessar Falcon is a damn hard book to review.  On one hand, our protagonist, Talyien, remains fascinating in how she's developed from book 1, and the world expands in many many ways as she and her few allies return home from the city of the first book, dealing with threats new and old.  On the other hand, I'd hoped that she would be able to make a "breakthrough" and take a stand for the idea of her having her own personal wants in this book, which uhhhh doesn't really happen, letting a real asshole of a character mostly off the hook.  This is very much a story in transition here, and it's a LONG one, the longest book I've read all year, which only makes it all a bit more frustrating.

NOTE:  This book comes with a few page long "The Story So Far" summary of book 1, to make it easier to jump right in without having to reread the first novel.  I cannot tell you how much I appreciated that.  

More specifics after the jump (minor spoilers for book 1 follow):



-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Talyien of Oren-Yaro, Bitch Queen of Jin-Sayeng, is stuck in the Empire, far from her home - where disloyal warlords may be making a power play at this very moment.  Even worse, while she remains stuck in the City behind a blockade, her husband Rayyel has threatened to find a way home and to kill her son Thanh - should magic prove Thanh to be the son of another man.  Desperate to get back to protect her son, Talyien, her two remaining retainers and Khine - former medical student turned conman - know they will need to take desperate steps and forge a dangerous alliance to track down Rayyel and protect her son.  

But the situation in Jin-Sayeng is even more perilous than Talyien could have imagined.  In addition to the threat of a made Zarojo Prince, Jin-Sayeng is once again on the verge of war, as the squabbling warlords have taken advantage of Talyien's absence to consolidate their grips on power, even when it would violate taboo.  Thanh himself remains in a castle with members of her husband's traitorous clan all around him and they have every reason to hate her blood.  And even worse than all that is a magical threat Talyien could never have imagined, which threatens to destroy it all while the humans of her people are busy killing each other.....
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For the second straight novel, this novel is told from some point in the future, a point that this book again never reaches.  It's a weird choice that leads to some initial confusion, but mostly is easy to ignore as Talyien's narration is really strong.  The book is split into three parts, with the first part featuring Talyien and crew's escape from the Empire back into her country and the final two parts feature Talyien struggling to deal with what she finds in her own country.  

As such, this book is very much expanding upon the world, introducing us to elements that we've previously only seen in Talyien's head - the different factions of Jin-Sayeng, the belief in the merits or blasphemy of magic and how that magic works, magical creatures, etc.  It's a massive expansion of a world which we previously could only imagine, limited to the city for the most part in the Empire, and it really works damn well, although I had trouble telling different warlords apart until they were introduced.  It's a fascinating world filled with threats and possibilities, and it made me want more - and didn't even make me upset when it became clear how much would be unresolved by the novel's end.  

Of course, the focus of this story remains upon Talyien, and there things are a bit more frustrating.  In the first novel, Talyien was an overly trusting ruler despite the vicious warlords she had to deal with at home, unable to understand the backstabbing and unfriendliness in the Empire between ordinary people of different classes.  Moreover, she carried guilt over her one act of unfaithfulness which drove Rayyel away, a man who she more or less forces herself to believe she loves - despite the fact that he was even more unfaithful.  And she found herself discovering more truths about her dead father, the man who molded her into what she was, that turned her stomach.  The first novel used her unfamiliarity with the Empire and city life to deal with themes like imperialism, class issues, and discrimination based upon gender and some of that is still here, although we lose a lot of the issues with Imperialism as we leave the Empire.  

But the events of the first novel changed Talyien and she's not nearly the same person she was there - no longer so easily trusting, and now extremely cynical about it all.  With her father's legacy now in question - with the very likely possibility that he sold her life to a monster in betrayal of his supposed ideals - she clings even more tightly to the idea of duty and image.  So while she knows how hypocritical it is for her to feel guilted by her husband for her infidelity when he had affairs FIRST, she can't get over how her doing so jeopardized her claim on the Empire and thus gives in to his framing of the whole situation as HER fault.  She refuses to deal with the two other men in her group, both of whom clearly have feelings for her, and the feelings she might have for the two of them - particularly Khine.  If you - like myself - were hoping she'd assert her own wants and desires in this book, you'll be disappointed, instead she insists for the entirety of this book of trying to pretend she can't have any that exist outside maintaining the appearances she needs as the Queen she believes she has to be....even as all of that is stripped from her.  

The result is frustrating at times, with it making me want to scream at Talyien repeatedly for the path she insists upon taking.  If this book was shorter it'd probably be less of an issue but it's honestly with it being so long, I wanted a reversal that never comes.  And mind you despite that, it DOES work to carry the plot, even as Talyien keeps getting herself in one bad situation after another (and the # of times in the plot she finds herself captured is high enough to start a drinking game over).  And the new characters and situations met continue to keep the story steeped in themes of class and gender, so it's not like we're dealing with less serious subjects here.  And while I haven't mentioned them here, I really like the other characters we deal with here and how they all interact, from the old ones like Khine Aggo and Nor to new ones like the specific warlords and rulers with their own agendas and beliefs on their minds.  

In short, The Ikessar Falcon is a second novel that perhaps drops a level from the first book, with a strong expansion of the world but frustrating character development for such a long book.  I still very much long forward to the trilogy's conclusion in the Spring of next year, to see how it ends, and hope Talyean can find a way to live in happiness without the legacy of her father or rules of her title to weigh her down any longer.
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