Tuesday, September 14, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Bright Raven Skies by Kristina Pérez

 





Bright Raven Skies is the third and final book in Kristina Pérez's Sweet Black Waves trilogy, which featured a dark fantasy and YA take on the story of Tristan and Eseult/Isolde.  The first book, Sweet Black Waves (reviewed here) introduced the basic elements of the story, including our strong protagonist Branwen who would fall in love while gaining magical powers that she desperately tries to use to help her cousin due her duty and bring peace to her home country.  The second book, Wild Savage Stars (reviewed here) saw the lengths to which the heartbroken Branwen would go to do her duty to preserve the peace, even in the face of her loved ones jeopardizing everything.  The two books left the trilogy in a fascinating place, thanks to its tremendous lead character who felt both real and compelling as she tried to navigate impossible dilemmas and to take what little joys she could from it all.  

Bright Raven Skies, up through its final act, is a worthy successor and finale to the trilogy, as Branwen firmly deals with the consequences of her actions, and has to find a way to live going forwards.  And while the final act of the story feels a bit disjointed, as if it was written first before other plot developments were thought out, it still works as a conclusion to the story of a tremendous lead character, which makes this a satisfying conclusion in the end.  It's not quite a concluding volume that can elevate this story to the masterpiece it came close to, but I'm still really glad that I got tipped off to this trilogy, which features tremendous characters and relationships throughout.  

Spoilers for Books 1-2 are inevitable:
------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Tristan and Eseult are missing and Branwen knows they must have run away together.  All of Branwen's work to bring peace between her home country of Iveriu and Kernyv seems likely to have been in vain, as Kernyv has been attacked by its neighbor of Armorica, and Iveriu may be drawn into the conflict by its new alliance.  And to save the king of Kernyv, Branwen called upon the Dark One, Dhusnos, and her healing magic turned into a monstrous thing, that swallowed up the whole Armorican raiding party and turned them into undead shades.  

It all seems on the edge of collapse for Branwen, but she has come too far to let it all fall now.  Even lacking the memories of her childhood love with Eseult, Branwen is determined to find Eseult and Tristan before anyone else, so that there impropriety doesn't blow open all that she's attempted to accomplish.  But Branwen's lover Ruan is deeply suspicious of the truth and determined for his king's honor to get to the bottom of it all - and others in Kernyv would be equally happy to disgrace a queen from Iveriu in any way possible.  

And of course there's the cost of Branwen's calling on the Dark One - she must murder another person within the next year or find a loved one of her own dead instead.  With it all coming crashing down, both physically and magically, is there any hope for Branwen to achieve her goal of creating peace...both for her home nation and within her own heart?  
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Bright Raven Skies has a lot of wrapping up to do as the concluding volume of a trilogy.  It has of course the central romantic problem of the trilogy, the tangle of Tristan and Eseult.  It has Branwen's struggles with her deal with the dark god for necromantic - and otherwise deadly - power.  There's the conflict in Kernyv - both with its neighbor Armorica, and with the nobles who quite clearly aren't happy with King Marc's plan to give power to Eseult.  It's a lot to wrap up in a single volume.  

As with the other two books, Perez manages to pull off all these plot threads thanks to her tremendous lead character in Branwen, whose struggles have reached a near breaking point.  She no longer has those memories of love of Eseult, which makes her feel less than whole, and the lure of the Dark One's power is immense and deadly....as is the horror she feels at the choice she has made.  Branwen is a mess of caring, of forgiveness, of love, and of duty, and the biggest underlying struggle in the entire book is her lack of internal balance, which threatens at practically every point to throw her over the edge.  Especially as her secrets largely start to unravel through the good-intentioned efforts of others.  

Two characters help to do so and strengthen this book.  Branwen's lover Ruan remains an excellent character (with one issue, see below), in his devotion to Branwen as well as to Marc, even as he finds himself unable to stay away from his family teachings and to reconcile his loyalty to Marc and his mother with changing realities of the world....leading to utter tragedy.  The Armorican princess Alba, whose brother Branwen killed to save Marc, leading her to be very similar in circumstances to Branwen, forms another strong side character along the way.  

And for the first three quarters of the book, Bright Raven Skies utterly delivers on its promises.  Sure certain reveals are pretty obvious and have been for a book and a half, but the way the book deals with Branwen and Eseult's reconciliation, Branwen's determination to do good and save the most people even as her power turns dark and deadly, the relationships Branwen has with the other characters like Ruan and Marc, etc is all done incredibly well.  And even the eventual villains turn out to be more three dimensional than expected, leading to an end of much of the conflicts in the novel that is again somewhat tragic, but satisfying.  

And then there's the last act, which largely feels like it was written first and grafted on, dealing with Branwen's final conflict as she deals with the price she paid for her new dark power....and with the conclusion of her relationship with Tristan and Eseult.  For Esuelt, this works fine, as the trilogy has done strong work throughout showing the ebbs and flows of hers and Branwen's relationships, such that it seems like an appropriate conclusion.  But for about a book plus, Branwen's relationship with Tristan has been one of hurt indifference, and even with the effects of the love potion neutered, it feels unwarranted for Branwen and Tristan's relationship to be the focus of the end of the story, when it hasn't really been a thing for so long - by contrast Ruan essentially is cast off in the last act for reasons I won't spoil, and well, while his role was done, Branwen had more of a relationship with him than with Tristan.  It's the one part of the book that didn't really work to me, which is sad because it's the conclusion of it all.  

Still, I really did like Bright Raven Skies, and I REALLY liked this trilogy, and would definitely recommend. 
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