Wednesday, April 21, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Reaper of Souls by Rena Barron

 




Reaper of Souls is the second book in a dark YA fantasy trilogy by Rena Barron, which began with last year's "Kingdom of Souls," which I reviewed here.  Kingdom of Souls was in many ways a fascinating book, featuring an African-myth inspired setting filled with gods, demons and orishas, a girl desperate for magic, and kingdoms and tribes all with various mythologies, gods, and beliefs about magic.  At the same time, I wasn't quite as enthused with how much it leaned into not just darkness, but well things like sexual abuse and rape as backstories, to go along with one instance of false identity girl on boy rape in the book's final third - it wasn't completely excessive....and yet it still didn't do enough with these lazy tired tropes to make it worth it to me.  So I was hoping, like some other books, that with the first volume out of the way - with the book ending on a massive change to the status quo - that the story wouldn't lean on those issues nearly as much.

And to my satisfaction, Reaper of Souls does just that, continuing its dark story with its new status quo in some really interesting ways, with strong characters (and new point of views besides our central heroine, Arrah), and pretty much no reliance on sexual abuse as motivation to go along with it all - heck, the book even course corrects for the rape mistake from the last book.  The story remains very dark, as we receive the backstory that was only hinted at last book, and our heroes must deal once more with demons of the past, unreliable and untrustworthy Orisha, and destinies that seem almost impossible to escape...but the darkness here works really well all in all.  The book's only weakness is once again featuring a bit of a rushed ending, but I am definitely all in on seeing how the trilogy concludes.  

Spoilers for book 1 after the jump:



--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Arrah once wanted magic more than anything in the world.  Now she has all the magic of the tribes and the memories of the tribal chieftains and the witch doctors within her head and she wishes she could give it all back.  For the tribes are dead at the hands of the demons led by Arrah's inhuman sister, the god Heka has disappeared, the Almighty One is dead, and the Kingdom knows that her mother was to blame for it all.  Arrah herself remains banished from the kingdom, while one of her closest friends remains injured, and the demon king's prison - the prison only she can open - is missing, hidden away from even the memories of the Orisha who hid it.  

But the demons are not done with the land, and so Arrah and Rudjek, still in love but kept apart by their powers of magic and anti-magic, must find a way to stop them from their next sinister plan.  Soon Arrah and Rudjek must separate once more - he to lead an army to stop the demons, she to try and find any escaped survivors from the Tribes.  But as she begins to tap more into her magic, Arrah begins to hear the demon king's voice once more, calling her by a different name, and sharing with her memories of the once Unnamed Orisha Dimma, of how she and the demon king fell in love and started the world down the path to its very end.....
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Kingdom of Souls was entirely the story of Arrah, with occasional interludes from the perspectives of various Orishas (generally talking cryptically), as she first desperately yearned for magic, then took dangerous risks to obtain it when she realized the Kingdom was in danger and her mother was behind it.  Reaper of Souls continues Arrah's story, but splits the narrative into three, with Rudjek, the son of the Vizier and secretly an anti-magic bearing prince of the Craven, providing a second point of view, to go along with flashback points of view to the perspective of Dimma, the unnamed Orisha we discovered at the end of the last book to be Arrah's prior incarnation.  

And this setup works really well, even with a lot of balls once again being juggled in the air - between Arrah hunting for the survivors of the tribes, Rudjek hunting down the demons before they can invade the world through a magic gate, and Dimma recounting how she fell in love with Daho and how he became the enemy of the Orishas.  All of these characters are incredibly believable, and so it's really easy to care a ton about them, and the African inspired world continues to be really well done as it gets further explored.  Through this world, Arrah comes to grips with how easily she is tempted to misuse her power and how much she fears becoming like her mother - and how much she fears falling for the demon king's words in her ears, and of what that might do to her friends.  It shows Rudjek dealing with his father's power grab and his attempt to deal with his new Craven heritage as he tries to both fight off demons and play politics at the same time.  And Dimma's doomed tale of love is really well done, such that you really feel for her and Daho even as they become more antagonists in the present day.  

The gods themselves, really just the Orisha this time as Heka is AWOL for....reasons, remain interesting and far less cryptic as they deal directly with our protagonists this time around, and again the setting works really well as the plot expands from the central city of the Kingdom to another world to a different country (yes those are different things).  The plot even pleasantly surprised me by course correcting on one of the first book's bigger issues - Rudjek's rape by Arrah's sister using Arrah's form, which it more clearly admits is a crime against Rudjek rather than a failing of him (as Arrah basically accused him of in the first book).  Yeah certain elements of the plot are rather predictable, and one character's love declaration midway through and Arrah's reaction to it just didn't quite work out for me.  And the ending features a plot twist that is briefly foreshadowed but not really - it relies on a character hinting of something bad early on but without any further explanation, it just seems still to come out of nowhere.  

But overall, Reaper of Souls works really well, as the second book in a trilogy with a really strong set of characters, an interesting world, and a darkness now that doesn't simply come from tired tropes over abuse and rape.  I am very much looking forward to the trilogy's end, presumably next year.

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