Friday, September 24, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Wake of the Phoenix by Chelsea Harper

 



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 September 28, 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.


Wake of the Phoenix is the debut novel of author Chelsea Harper, and in a bit of a rarity for me, a self-published novel from an author I basically hadn't heard of before.  But a promotional tweet by the author on twitter got retweeted by an author I follow, and well, I'd seen the book on NetGalley, so I decided to give it a whirl.  

Alas, the result is a bit uneven - Wake of the Phoenix shows promise in its premise and characters, but muddles it all behind a political situation that is just incredibly confusing for way too long (and I'm still not sure I get it), as well as several characters making decisions that are just utterly baffling, such that it never really comes together.  I really wanted to like the main characters - a noble lord who once rebelled against his Empire, fell in love with a magically empowered man (with the gift of foresight), and came home to try to stop a new war AND a young orphaned girl turned thief trying to find a way to support a better life for her brother.  But there's just so much going on that isn't explained well, that it was hard to really understand what was happening, and the character work wasn't good enough for me to be willing to overlook it all.  I'll probably not be back for book 2.  

Trigger Warning:  Off Page, but one character has a backstory of being the victim of rape/sexual assault, that becomes relevant to the plot.   ---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Arkaen (Kaen) spent the last few years fighting for a rebellion against his own Empire, on behalf of a recently annexed province, and had no intention of going home....until his lover, Kilasha, a mysterious man with strange magical powers (and referred to commonly as The Demon) foresees that only Kaen's return to his province will allow Kaen to forestall a new and greater war.  And so Kaenreturns to take his title of High Lord of Sentar Province, with the hopes of beating back the corrupt and greedy lower nobles and improving things.  

Niamsha was the daughter of a reputed glasswright, who was cast onto the streets with her brother when her father died and her father's guildmaster refused to help out.  Now she works as a thief for the dangerous Rendell Gang, working to gain coin to pay for her brother Emrys' apprenticeship, such that he can stay off the streets himself.  But Emrys isn't interested in that life, and soon Niamsha's attempts to save him lead her directly into the plans of the Rendell Gang's leader, the mysterious Nijel, who has ambitious plans of his own for Sentar Province and High Lord Arkaen.  

When Nijel's plans with a rogue baron, along with Kaen's own naivete about ruling, threaten to set the province into outright war, it will take both Kaen and Niamsha's efforts to avert disaster...and not everyone will get out unscathed in the process.  
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Wake of the Phoenix features four POV characters - Kaen and Niamsha, who are our two main protagonists, as well as Arkaen's sister Saylina and his lover, the "demon" Kilasha (affectionately referred to as Lasha).  And the four are interesting characters in many ways.  Saylina is a wise noble woman who is well trained in the arts of politics, and would clearly be a better leader in many ways than Kaen if not for the prejudices about her gender (indeed Kaen tries repeatedly to put her on the throne), and her struggles with Kaen's recklessness are easy to understand and interesting to read.  Lasha, a being who can see multiple futures (with significant exceptions) and who loves Kaen*, is also interesting as he tries to manipulate events to their best possible outcome, even as the source of his powers and origins are never quite explained.

*Secretly, as this world is homophobic at least at the noble level, which might be annoying to some readers.*

But again the big two are Kaen and Niamsha, who again are very solid characters who can at times carry the story well enough.  Kaen works really well as the politics-ignorant noble who jumps into things with his head, and acts on his outrage at how bad things have gotten in his absence, with the province ruled by his father, the corrupt lower lords, all in fear of a cruel and brutal but now overthrown empire.  Kaen is trying to keep things together because of what Lasha has foreseen, but his reckless actions keep jeopardizing all of that, and he's still a noble, not quite able to understand fully the plight of common people like Niamsha.  Niamsha herself is a really quick thinking young woman who is desperate to save her brother, who unfortunately isn't quite as innocent as she believes him to be.  And so she finds herself the pawn of a gang leader with ambitions towards power, and forced into steps she knows are wrong on behalf to save a brother who it turns out does not deserve it...but is all she has left.  

The problem however, is that while Kaen and Niamsha, and the two other characters, are intriguing enough to carry the plot at times, the plot is bogged down repeatedly by dealing with political and historical situations that are never really well explained to the reader.  Much of the story deals with the aftermath of a civil war between a rebellious province and the Empire, but well it's not quite clear what that is all about unless you read the quotations from an in-universe text that start some chapters....but not all, meaning you don't really get the full story for a while, well after characters have been dealing with the aftermaths of that war for ages.  The story also deals heavily with the political relationships between Sentar province, the Serni province (formerly Senyii Kingdom), the Laisian Empire, and another neighboring Kingdom....none of which are really ever made clear, leading to a LOT of confusion (honestly I still can't figure out if the Laisian Empire is a bigger deal than Sentar Province or vice versa - I think it's vice versa - and I read the whole book).  You CAN get away with an underexplained political backstory for a world if the main plot doesn't rely upon it and the characters are strong enough (see Gideon the Ninth), but neither is the case here.

This extends to other elements of the plot as well, which just aren't explained in any satisfactory way and led me to be more confused than anything.  What is the war Kaen and Lasha are trying to forestall?  I don't know, it never gets explained.  Where does Lasha get his power from and who are his people?  Sorry, not here.  And certain actions by various characters are just dumbfounding, particularly a final plot turn for Niamsha, who reacts to the finale in an unbelievable way (really you can't see what happened girl?) to set up a new conflict for the sequel.  

Again, I'm totally fine with books not going out of there way to explain aspects of the setting, and trusting readers to figure it out.  But there's not explaining, and having what's going on be completely confusing and indecipherable at the time you're reading it, but relying on the reader to understand it anyhow, and that's the case with Wake of the Phoenix.  A more experienced writer, or one with a better editor, might've been able to salvage what is here and hammer it into a better form.  But that's not this book, unfortunately.  

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