Tuesday, March 30, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Helm of Midnight by Marina Lostetter

 



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 April 13, 2021 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 Helm of Midnight is the first in a new epic fantasy series by author Marina Lostetter, previously known for her Noumenon trilogy.  I read the first Noumenon novel before abandoning the trilogy - the book featured issues involving a generation ship, and while I enjoyed much (though not all) of the character work, I found that not all parts of the novel, as it moved into later parts, really worked for me (My review is here).  Still, I tend not to love generation ship-type narratives, so I was interested to see how Lostetter's character work would translate to epic fantasy and I was happy to request this off NetGalley.  

And The Helm of Midnight was well worth it.  The book features a world with a fascinating magic system (sort of), an interesting fantasy setting with a really interesting, if possibly inaccurate, mythology.  And most importantly, it features a number of storylines which center a number of really great characters, such that I really really felt for them all whenever things inevitably went wrong.  The story doesn't fully deal with some of its more interesting potential themes - issues of class, of power, of lies and myths and debts - which prevents it from truly being one of my all time favorites.  But as its own story it works really well, and as a series starter, I am very intrigued to see how the story plays out from here.  



----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
The Five Gods created humanity and provided them with a place to live in the Valley, as well as a barrier to keep out the monsters that lie outside.  But though their gifts have provided humankind with greatness, they come with severe penalties for misuse.  It is the Regulators who ensure that no one misuses these gifts - the gifts of time, nature, emotion, knowledge, and the unknown - without paying the penalty.  

Krona Hirvath is a Regulator under her sister's command with a particular talent: the ability to put on Mask's containing the knowledge and echoes of others long past, no matter how powerful, and being able to use them safely like no one else can.  But when a Mask containing the knowledge of one of the Valley's most notorious serial killers is stolen out from under her squad....and someone quickly begins using its knowledge to resume its work of murder, Krona finds herself desperately trying to stop the killer before he can cause too much damage.  

But the killings are not quite the same as before, and seem to indicate that the killer is searching for something....and as Krona begins to track down the culprit, she begins to discover that she is searching not just for a simple murderer, but for a conspiracy that seeks to expose the past and the myths of the valley as falsehoods, with ties to a far greater and more sinister force......
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Helm of Midnight is a really interesting epic fantasy, especially in how it tells its tale.  Our main story is told from Krona's perspective in the present day, but three other storylines from the past are told alongside it in various forms.  In Krona's own chapters, a story is told through one paragraph at the start of each chapter, in which an unknown character makes a confession of guilt of an act from her childhood.  In between Krona's chapters, we switch to two other stories - the story two years back of Melanie, a young woman who seeks a mask with the knowledge of a healer in order to save her mother; and the story of Charbon ten years back, in which he began the killing spree that would make him infamous throughout the valley until his death and his mask's creation.  All of these past storylines eventually come to significance in Krona's story, as you'd expect, and as all three of the side storylines occur in the past, it soon becomes pretty clear that all will end in some sort of tragedy or disaster.

And yet, Lostetter portrays each of these main characters with such depth and in such interesting ways that I always felt absolutely invested in each of their stories and never felt too disappointed to switch away from one to the other.  Each of these characters is distinct in their own ways, and yet each are very easy to empathize with for all their differences.  For Krona, you have a young woman desperate to make her older sister proud and to prove herself despite a sometimes crippling phobia, who might have some feelings for a criminal informant she can't quite admit, and whom has a strong sense of justice.  For Melanie , you have another young woman, but one who first is desperate to obtain a mask of knowledge of a healer to save her mother, and who then finds herself caught in an impossible dilemma due to the mask, alongside a man she starts to have feelings for.  For Charbon, you have a man searching for knowledge despite it coming from forbidden sources (examining dead bodies) being driven by what might have been the preventable loss of his child, which forces him to expand his search to the bodies of the living - an absolute horror, but still...one you can understand.  For the Confessing character, she's obviously a child and it's easy to understand why she'd make the acts she did.  These characters are all great and well done - and the side characters are generally pretty solid as well - and because these characters are so easy to like and empathize with - even the serial killer - it's hard sometimes to read as they come closer to their conclusions...and their inevitable tragedies (especially the serial killer and the mysterious confessor).   

This all takes place in a setting that's fascinating - a valley where humanity has been living because outside of its magical barrier supposedly lies only death and destruction by horrifying monsters created by the world's first deity, the one who created the five gods humans now worship.  The gods represent nature, time, emotion, knowledge and the unknown (literally the "Unknown" is the 5th god, of whom little is know about), and each god has their own pronouns/genders.  You have normal class issues inside the Valley - there is a noble class, a common class, as well as others from the "Dregs", and the give cities in the Valley all have slightly different cultural quirks, although these are never really explored much here in this book.  But you also have the gods' magic playing into those issues - so every child has a tax of "time" taken away from them, which is held in trust by the government, and "time" also serves as the everyday currency - so the rich have the ability to use it to "cash out" and extend their lives (or leave it for their heirs). 

There's also a tax of emotion, which is less discussed, but the related magic allows for objects to be crafted to give people artificial emotions like courage, despair, and hope, in anywhere from small to dangerous quantities.  And then there's knowledge, which can be left behind in masks that contain a dead person's knowledge/memories of certain skills - such as medicine, anatomy, smells, picking apart small details, seeing lies in facial expressions, etc. - but can contain dangerous and possibly overpowering echoes of their originator's minds, which the Regulators try to strictly control supposedly for the people's safety.   Really the only disappointment of this book is that the book doesn't really go into the class and other issues that go with these magics and costs - or the unexplained magic/control of Nature, which seems to be used to ensure people don't do things that are considered unethical (but by whom?).  

But the characters are so good, and the plots come together so well, such that the ending is both tremendous and satisfying as a single volume, while also providing sequel hooks for future volumes in the series.  And those sequel hooks suggest that we might be going into those themes more in depth in the future, which would be really exciting.  So yeah, The Helm of Midnight is an excellent epic fantasy series starter, and I would definitely recommend it, even if doesn't quite manage to hit all of its potential.  

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)