Tuesday, April 18, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Song of Salvation by Alechia Dow

 


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 July 11, 2023 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.

A Song of Salvation is a young adult space opera novel by author Alechia Dow. The novel is technically the third in a series, after The Sound of Stars (which I read and reviewed HERE) and The Kindred (which I have not read), although it is entirely stand-alone, and does not require reading those books to be enjoyed. It was a novel that I probably wouldn't have taken too much interest in based upon the prior novel I'd read (which I'd liked but not loved), except one of my favorite reviewers (Alex Brown) highlighted it as a rare kind of YA novel - a YA space opera written by a Black author. So I was interested enough to request it and give it a try.

To be honest, my feelings on A Song of Salvation remain kind of mixed, just like its predecessor novel. On one hand, this is an enjoyable YA Space Opera novel, featuring a solid duo of main point of view characters (plus a really enjoyable third main character who doesn't get POV chapters) - Zaira, a girl from a race on the verge of genocide who possesses the lost power and soul of a goddess inside her, and Wesley, a boy who ran from the godlike beings who could tell him his destiny and has instead found a cynical life as a pilot/smuggler. Together they get involved in a conflict between gods and races for the sake of saving the Universe and the way they interact, learn to love, hope, and find something despite difficult lives and destinies that wait them, works pretty well. On the other hand, the book throws in a bit too any things, like a last act destined love interest (a minor character from a prior book) who just felt out of place and utterly unnecessary, and too much of things seem to be resolved by last second deus ex machinas, as if the author couldn't bear to let any characters' plots and relationships go unsettled. The result is an enjoyable read, but not one that'll make one of my highlights of the year.

NOTE: As I mentioned above, this book is stand-alone, but is also the third and final book in a sequence of other books that began with The Sound of Stars. Characters from both prior books do recur in this novel, with the protagonists of The Sound of Stars playing a peripheral but important role in the book's conclusion. So if you have any interest in reading those books, I recommend doing so first. If you aren't sure, you can start here instead, it's not like there are any spoilers here for those books that will affect your enjoyment of those, and you won't really be lost at all when the prior books' characters show up.

---------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------
According to legend, the Universe was created through the songs of a goddess Indigo, who came to be opposed by a God of destruction, Ozvios. Together with the unity of all the beings she created, Indigo was able to defeat Ozvios, after which she faded away, to leave the mortal beings of the universe to their own fate.

But generations later, the Ilori people, following the worship of the maybe-reappeared Ozvios, have begun and succeeded largely in a brutal war of conquest and colonization. And while forces have begun to marshal themselves in opposition to the Ilori, none have realized the extent of what the Ilori have done to the ancient planet known as Mal Ares, and its people there, the Nightweavers, who they murdered. The only nightweaver left alive is a teen girl named Zaira, a girl who is said to be the reincarnation of Indigo and her power, but whom cannot really access that power, and whose death seems inevitable in only a few days....

Except Zaira gets help and escapes into space, where her power begins to grow, and is sent to find an Andarran pilot, Wesley Daniels, in order to fight back to save the universe from the Ilori and the resurgent Ozvios. But Wesley is far from a hero himself, as a boy who once fled from the chance to see his own grand destiny, and has no idea how he can help Zaira save the universe. Yet together Wesley, Zaira, and an interplanetary upbeat broadcaster, Rubin Rima, will find themselves on the road back to the places of their pasts, and then to the place where the whole universe is converging, a conquered planet named Earth.......
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A Song of Salvation is largely told from the perspectives of Wesley and Zaira, with the story alternating between the two character's first person perspectives and here and there interrupted by interludes from other characters, most notably Rubin's broadcasts but also news alerts and bits involving the main protagonists of the prior two novels in this series. It's a story that depends upon its two lead characters as well as Rubin so this method of storytelling largely works.

For both Wesley and Zaira have reasons for cynicism and despair about the world. For Zaira, everyone she grew up with as family has been killed by the Ilori, with her own power being unable to protect them, and while she doesn't want to harm people with her powers, it's kind of understandably hard to control her own rage as that power grows and she's confronted with people trying to get in the way of her fighting back against those foes. This is especially the case as she's faced not only with enemies, but with peoples who should be allies who did nothing to try to stop the Ilori from their slaughter. She means well, and wants to fulfill a destiny of saving the universe from Ozvios, but despite knowing that her predecessor was a kind goddess, she just can't help feeling anger and righteous rage, for better or worse, and her own lack of understanding about how things work in the universe mixed with that rage does repeatedly get her into trouble. She's an angry hurt despairing young woman with immense growing powers and she acts like it, and a large part of the plot involves her learning the hard way about what path she is destined to and even wants to follow. Meanwhile, for Wesley, you have a boy whose species submits to a godlike fish-esque species to get glimpses of the past and future...except Wesley was too afraid to try that. And so he doesn't know his own destiny, but can feel people's emotions thorugh empathic abilities, and has to deal with his mother casting him off and calling him a failure for his refusal to try to learn his own destiny. And while he's made out an okay and somewhat enjoyable life as a smuggler and pilot, the whole thing has gotten him cynical about the world, which has only treated him with disdain and spat him out to survive on his own. So when he meets Zaira and hears her talks about destiny, he's immensely skeptical and not onboard at first, because that way only has driven him to unhappiness so far.

Naturally the plot doesn't let these states of mind continue without challenge, and the plot spurs both Wesley and Zaira to action. And so Wesley has to use his empathic abilities to help Zaira with her mental trauma so she can continue growing and developing and to save them all, while Zaira has to realize that her anger and rage cannot be the only thing to guide her...while also acknowledging that such feelings are real and part of who she is - and that Zaira is someone independent of her Goddess predecessor in Indigo. Helping this along, and working to tremendous effect, is the third member of their trio, Rubin, a livestreamer of news (sort of an instagram influencer/podcaster hybrid here) who is super popular and famous who broadcasts the truth about what the Ilori are doing (to their dismay) and who somehow keeps up an incredibly optimistic and idealistic attitude about it all, despite his own traumas and past tragedies. In another story, Rubin would be a naïve jackass whose optimism is beaten out of him as it rubs off on the others, but here his naivete isn't really that big of a deal and he remains the good natured counterpart to the other two protagonists, and is just a really great counterweight to the grimness of it all that allows everyone to develop into better people. It also helps that his dialogue is often very humorous if not outright funny.

Through these characters, and the space opera plot, we have a story about peoples coming together to try and save each other and make a better world, about destiny and what it means to be fated and how we control our fates somewhat, and how the most important thing isn't doing something on one's own, but through working together in love and harmony to make a better world in the face of evil opposition. It also deals well with themes about how the worst outcomes can occur when good people do nothing, and take no action to try and stop evil people from genocide and murder somewhere out of sight. And the plot works fairly well in this respect for the most part.

I say for the most part because the book has some issues in its final arcs in that it just seems unwilling to let plot threads and character relationships remain up in the air. So for example, Wesley and Zaira do not have a romantic relationship, with Wesley instead being attracted to and in a M-M relationship with Rubin. Zaira is portrayed at first as uninterested in romance instead. And yet the book throws in Wesley's brother, a minor side character from book 1, in the final few chapters as her fated romantic partner, and she falls for him because....well destiny says so? It's just really lousy and adds absolutely nothing except to prevent Zaira from not having a partner, as if that was a problem. Other plot arcs or issues are resolved by deus ex machinas that are nice to ensure the ending is happy but well, just feel out of nowhere. And the final plot arc relies upon the protagonists from the first few books taking some actions, and well their stories just feel like the should be separate from Zaira/Wesley/Rubin's.

Overall, A Song of Salvation is a solid YA space opera novel, featuring characters of color and queer characters all over the place, with some decent themes overall. But it just kind of lost me at times in the resolution, preventing it from being something truly great to recommend.

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