Thursday, October 7, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Broken Web by Lori M. Lee

 




Broken Web is the sequel to 2020's "Forest of Souls" and the second book in Lori M. Lee's YA fantasy series, "Shamanborn".  I really liked Forest of Souls (review here), which took a couple of classic YA fantasy premises - young woman raised to become the newest top spy in a Kingdom, young orphan girl discovers she has magical powers and has to deal with prejudice and her life changing as a result, etc. - and mashes them up into something that felt fairly original.  The story had a really strong lead character, a couple of excellent side characters, and a focus not on romance but on friendship, which really worked.  So I was curious where the series would take the cliffhanger at the end of book 1, one which was blatantly foreshadowed from the very beginning of that book.  

Broken Web takes that cliffhanger and runs with it to mostly strong ends.  With clearer antagonists than ever before, the story loses a bit of its gray nature - at least in its protagonist's heart - and a mid-book plot turn feels like it throws away much of the setup and development that the book started in the first half for little reason.  And yet the book makes up for it all with strong character development, and a story of bonds, found family, and again of friendship (and not romance) as its protagonist Sirscha takes a stand for who she herself is, and not who others think she might be.  Will be very eagerly awaiting book 3.

Spoilers for Book 1 are inevitable below: -----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
The world around Sirscha Ashwyn has gone to hell.  Queen Meilyr, ruler of her homeland of Evewyn, has embarked on war on the two neighboring magical kingdoms.  The Soulless, the centuries old Soulrender who once terrorized the world, has been freed from his imprisonment by Sirscha herself.  And Sirscha is not only a shaman, hated by her own Queen, and has not only turned her best friend Saengo into her own familiar, but she's secretly a soulrender herself, and not the soulguide that the world believes her to be.  And if anyone finds out about that last secret, Sirscha will be hunted down and killed for sure.  

But Sirscha has no hope of just hiding her secrets, for Saengo is still infected with the Soulless' foul rot, and in danger of dying as a result, and Sirscha will not rest until she finds a way to defeat the Soulless and free Saengo from the plague.  To do so, Sirscha plots to figure out the Soulless' own weakness - what his own familiar is - so that she can destroy his power.  

But the secrets of the Soulless' familiar have been lost to the centuries, and uncovering them will require Sirscha to dig into the Soulless' own past.  And what she will find there is that the Soulless' brags about being not too different from Sirscha herself may not be as far from the truth as Sirscha would like to think......
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Sirscha Ashwyn used to be a character who was a bit grey, willing to sneak, kill, and spy as the apprentice to Evewyn's top spy/assassin, its shadow Kendara.  Even when her magic was revealed and she was taken to the home of the Spider King Ronin, she was wiling to do whatever it takes to help those she cares about and to prevent injustices she could see around her, such as the oppression being inflicted upon fellow magic-wielding shamanborn by Queen Meilyr.  She had a good caring heart, but she was also cold and calculating at times, as she attempted to navigate tough waters, where everyone else seemed to know more than she did....and her best friend's life hung in the balance.  

In Broken Web however, Sirscha has grown quite a bit, and while she still maintains the skills of a Shadow to sneak around, her aims are a lot clearer this time around - she needs to defeat the Soulless and Queen Meilyr, so as to save both Saengo and her own place in the world, all without giving away what she really is.  She no longer has the goal of trying to achieve recognition for her work, as that life as a Shadow seems all the more impossible to imagine now, especially when Kendara reappears and begs Sirscha to go into hiding and not take an active path.  

Instead, Sirscha's new conflict is dealing with isolation and the fear of being potentially alone, as exemplified by the Soulless himself.  The Soulless once was similar to Sirscha, only he lost everything (in ways I won't spoil) and he insists to Sirscha that she will similarly wind up alone once everyone realizes what she is.  But what Sirscha discovers in this book is that as similar as she is to the Soulless, she is not similar in that way: for while she may be an orphan by blood, she has a found family in Saengo, the Evewynian prince Meilek, and the shadow-wielding Theyen.  Again, this is not a book dealing with romance, despite it offering two male characters and one female one who would absolutely be candidates for romance in another book, but about found family and friendship, and it works generally really well.  

Helping it work really well is the expanding of the setting to include the magic-wielding Shaman Empire of Nuvalyn, and the shadow-wielding peoples of Kazahyn and its Fireborn Queens.  The political dynamic works really well as a backdrop, and the new characters and peoples are really interesting, even if the main character dynamics remain focused on the foursome of Sirscha, Saengo, Meilek, and Theyen.  And the plot remains quite unpredictable throughout, to the point where I had little clue where things would go at any given point.  

The only flaw here is really that the midway point of this book features a plot turn that basically forces Sirscha into a new dynamic that takes her and her allies away from all the new characters and plot developments, such that all of those interesting new additions wind up feeling pointless in the end.  I assume those characters will show back up for the finale to the trilogy with greater importance, but it just feels a bit weird that they're introduced, are clearly meant to have an impact, and then just are dropped (most notably the shamanborn sister of Sirscha's friend and guard from last book, who died saving Sirscha in that book).

Still, I really enjoyed the character dynamics here, which work really well, and unlike many book 2s in trilogies, Broken Web satisfies by ending in a way that closes off several plot threads (instead of ending on a cliffhanger that only opens up more).  I look forward to seeing how the remaining plot threads and Sirscha's final story get wrapped up in 2022.    

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