Thursday, April 1, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Written in Starlight by Isabel Ibañez

 




Written in Starlight is the sequel to Isabel Ibañez' "Woven in Moonlight," a Bolivian-culture inspired YA fantasy novel from last year (which I reviewed here).  Woven in Moonlight dealt well with themes like oppression, colonization, figuring out one's identity, and realizing that one's own culture may have made its prosperity from the blood of others.  At the same time, while its main character is done well, the story's handling of these themes is pretty predictable and similar to other books which feature those themes, which don't make the book standout except perhaps for its setting being not the usual one for Western audiences.  

Written in Starlight follows up from its predecessor by switching its protagonist to Catalina, the former ruler and best friend to the old protagonist Ximena, who couldn't let go of her right to rule when confronted with a chance for peace amidst another people - and found herself exiled as a result.   I very much expected Catalina's story to go in a similar direction to Ximena's in this book, and while there are similar themes, Written in Starlight takes on those themes in a very different, more introspective way, that worked really well.  As a complement to Woven in Moonlight, it works really well and I was really happy I decided to continue with this sequel even if didn't quite love the first book as much as others.

Spoilers for Book 1 are inevitable below:


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Catalina spent her whole life thinking she was destined for the throne of Inkasisa, as the heir to the Ilustrian people who used to rule from La Ciudad Blanca.  But then the Llacsan people, and their monstrous leader Atoc, drove her people out of the city and forced them to hide in safety in a single fortress.  And then Catalina's best friend, her decoy Ximena, went to La Ciudad Blanca to try and obtain their freedom...only to throw in with Atoc's sister Tamaya and try to forge a new future for the Llacsans and Ilustrians to live together in peace under Tamaya's rule.  Catalina found herself unable to forgive her friend's betrayal...and was exiled as a result, forced to head into the dangerous jungle where she is expected to die.  

Catalina's own magic, the magic of Luna, the magic of a seer, does not seem to work for her: when she looks into the night sky, the words are just out of reach.  And so, she assumes that the expectations aren't wrong at first and that she will not make it.  But then she is rescued by Manuel, the son of her former general, and her childhood love, who has spent the last few years in the Jungle, searching for allies.  For the Jungle is home to the Illari, the people who were first forced out of the City by the Llacsans hundreds of years ago, and their legendary city of gold, Paititi.  

If Manuel can teach Catalina how to survive the jungle, and if she can convince the Illari to fight for her cause, perhaps Catalina can get back what she thinks of as her rightful throne.  But the Illari have their own strange ways, and their own strange magic and worship of not only Luna, but the Sun and the Earth as well....and they find themselves hunted by a strange evil, that if not stopped will consume the jungle and everything within it......
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Woven in Moonlight followed a fairly predictable path - Ximena would go to the Llacsans, discover that their leader may have been monstrous, but that the people themselves were good people who had been conquered, colonized, and oppressed by the Illustrians unjustly.  She would realize that even if Atoc had to be overthrown, the Illustrians could not go back to their old oppressing ways, and that the way forward was to live alongside the Llacsans, with their queen as a ruler.  And this worked well, and so I expected Written in Starlight, featuring Catalina - who expected to be ruler of the Illustrians (and thus the Llacsan's by default) - to feature a similar plotline with the Illari standing in for the Llacsans in showing her the wrong of her people's past ways.  

Written in Starlight however does not go in that direction.  Catalina is blinded by her own birthright, by the fact that she was told she would rule someday and that for her protection she was sheltered and never allowed to go out.  And so what she needs isn't simply being told of the past, but to be broken out of her shell - to first have to not be able to simply hide in the background but to go out on her own.  It's a rough lesson, and the book takes care to note that it's important for her not to go overboard also - she needs to learn not just to stand for herself, but when she should accept help and admit her limitations also.  And only when she does that, can she accept help in not aiding her ambitions, but in realizing the truth behind her own unlocked power, and how the past that she has been told may not be as true as she once believed.  

The story does this in a number of ways, through the perils of the jungle and Catalina's feelings for Manuel at first, with whom she has a really nice if predictable romance (he feels duty bound to not have her and while she also feels the tug of duty she's so far down that she allows herself to feel and act on those feelings).  It also confronts Catalina not directly with the injustices done by her own people, but by revelations about the magics of others - for the Illari can wield their own forms of magic despite worshiping two different gods in addition to Luna, and Catalina cannot deny their power.  Moreover, Catalina cannot deny both the beauty of the Illari and their jungle and thus is forced to reconcile with the idea that these people, who were also forced out of their homes by the Llacsan years ago (even if not as justly as Catalina's people were kicked out) are able to move on from that past in peace and happiness.  Through it all, Catalina realizes the beauty they have in seeing the good in others, and in shedding the urges for bloodshed of the cycle of vengeance.  And all of this works really well, with the plot still being fantastic but essentially being more of an introspective one - which complements the very different plot of the first book.  

Obviously it's not a perfect book, with the eventual antagonist basically coming out of nowhere and being defeated by a deus ex machina that I don't think is setup very well.  And there's some trickiness about the theme of moving on from the cycle of vengeance when it's another version of a conquered indigenous culture that's arguing for that perspective, without any thought to reparations by the conquerers, even hundreds of years later, that the book never really reconciles with. Still, I really enjoyed Written in Starlight, which really uses its Bolivian inspired setting to excellent heights, and look forward to seeing whatever Ibañez has in mind next - whether it be another book in this world or not.  

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