Tuesday, September 29, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Incendiary by Zoraida Córdova


Incendiary is the first in a new Young Adult Fantasy trilogy by author Zoraida Córdova, with the setting inspired by Inquisitorial Spain.  Córdova is a prolific YA writer whose work I hadn't gotten to previously, but one I was hoping to get to at some point, so I requested this novel via inter-library loan once my library reopened.

And well, Incendiary is a really interesting YA fantasy novel, with a compelling protagonist....but also one that feels not quite sure what it wants to do with her.  The idea behind the protagonist is strong, a young woman from a magical people who are hunted by the king as lesser for their culture who is ostracized even further for her ability to take people's memories, and because of her childhood using that power to help the king hurt her people.  The result is a heroine who is wracked with guilt and trauma as she desperately tries to atone and do good, but the book's plot has a number of predictable plot twists and ends at a place where I just wanted more - and not because i was satisfied with what had taken place.  I'm intrigued enough to continue on with this trilogy, but I'm hoping that the 2nd installment will contain a more satisfying package to reward me (even when it almost certainly ends in a cliffhanger).


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
The Kingdom of Puerto Leones years ago declared war on the Moria people, the people with various magical powers - illusion, truth telling, and more - and their own culture, hunting them down as outcasts to be eliminated.  When she was a young Moria girl, Renata "Ren" Convida was taken from her parents to the palace and raised by King Fernando's "Arm of Justice" - the cruel Justice Méndez.  For Ren is not just any Moria, she is a Robári - able to steal memories from people with a touch, all the way to hollowing them out until there's nothing left but an empty husk.  Robári are feared even among the Moria, and as a girl, Ren used her power to help the King hunt down and kill far too many of her own people....before the second in command of the Moria resistance, Dez, rescued her and took her among his people.

There, Ren has spent the last few years, distrusted for both her power and her past actions, but desperate to atone for what she did - even though she doesn't remember most of it, having locked her own memories and the ones she's stolen unconsciously inside her head.  The only one who seems to care for her is Dez, who loves her passionately, and Ren will do anything to protect him.  So when Dez undertakes a dangerous mission that goes horribly wrong, Ren breaks from the resistance to rescue him and to complete that same mission to make it all worth something.

But the mission will take Ren back to the capital where she committed the atrocities she cannot remember, and will require her to once again be among the people who raised her to do so.....and may trigger memories and revelations that will change everything Ren understands about the world, assuming she can even survive undercover in the first place.....
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Incendiary takes the setting of Inquisitorial Spain and gives it a minor fantasy touch, with Spain transforming into Puerto Leones, a land that hunts the magically gifted outsider culture who once lived in harmony within it and has grand expansionist plans of its own.  It's an easy setting to understand from context, and Córdova makes it work really well through the first person narration of our protagonist, Ren.  Aside from the prologue, we never leave Ren's side in this book, as seeing how she navigates this horror of a setting, a horror she once aided, is the center of the story.

And it works because Ren is someone who is both traumatized by the acts she did as a child - acts she cannot even fully remember - and ostracized by almost everyone.  The King would either seek to use her power to hunt her own people or to kill her like the rest of her people - but her own people distrust her not just for her own actions, but for what she is.  Because while there are non-harmful uses of powers of illusion, truth seeking, or persuasion, the power of memory stealing is almost exclusively harmful, and so she doesn't fit quite in with the resistance of her own people either.  Only Dez's love appears unconditional among her people, where even the rest of her squad features a pair who openly distrust and disdain her for her acts.

So when Ren feels forced to return to the capital, where she once lived in luxury - and again is treated with luxuries in an attempt to resume as such - the contrast is so hard for her to take.  Add in the fact that she feels alone with her true feelings, her missing memories that pop up at exactly the wrong moment, and that she doesn't quite know whom to trust (there's a spy within the castle but she doesn't know who it is), and it's a nervewracking and desperate journey to read, one which Córdova manages to pull off incredibly well.

Less well unfortunately are many of the side characters, who don't quite get enough time to shine and to make their actions believable.  Some of the people inside the castle are done well, but Ren's fellow Moria allies disappear after the first act only to come back later, and their actions there are kind of hard to believe (especially one late plot twist).  And while the plot is generally well done, a major reckoning is obviously coming from the start based upon Ren's missing memories, and what that reckoning is becomes quite obvious by the start of the book's final act.....only for that reveal to occur just at the very end of the book.  The result is that the reader, such as myself, will be expecting that to occur earlier and to see what the reveal will really mean....except the book ends before it can ever explore that reckoning.

The result is a novel whose setting and main character I found extremely compelling, but a story that just ended before we could really see the impacts of their own actions, relying instead upon reveals that I could see coming from a mile away.  It makes me want to read the next book sure, although if that one pulls a similar bait and switch I may not be back for the third one, and that's a bit of a shame.
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