“All Hail Chaos” by Sarah Rees Brennan

The sequel to Long Live Evil left me thinking that Sarah Rees Brennan is being very smart with this. Spoilers for book 1 ahead.

In many ways the point of the first book was our protagonist, Rae, coming to realize that the people around her were people, and not just characters in a book series. She’d been treating them as props, as pieces in a game, and hadn’t realized all the pain she was causing in the process.

I’d say this book is about Rae learning a different point, but a related one: she’s not a character in a story either. If everyone in the story is their own person, with their own dreams and feelings and lives, it necessarily follows that they are also their own person with their own plans, ambitions, and agency. Rae has freedom to act, to form her plans and bring them about; so does everyone else. Rae is not a protagonist in a story; there is no story, and no protagonist. And things are out of her control, and always have been.

The plot picks up right where the first book ended, with Rae as the betrothed of the risen-from-the-dead Emperor. Rae quickly realizes how bad a position that is to be in, for numerous reasons, and once again looks to the stories she knows so well for a solution: she casts herself in the role of the wicked betrothed that the Hero will eventually forsake for his One True Love. So she continues casting herself in the role of the villain of the story, while trying to find the ideal candidate for the true hero of the story (since it’s obviously not Lia, and certainly not Rae). Someone who’s pretty but doesn’t know it; someone clever but humble; someone who strains against the rules of proper behavior in the right ways, and not in the wrong ones. Someone who will see Rae herself shoved aside, but ideally not in a way that gets Rae killed in the process.

Things generally go from bad to worse.

For all a major theme of these books is that it isn’t a story, there’s also the fact that this is both a deconstruction of and a love letter to Romantasy. Only-one-bed, fake-engagements, came-back-wrong, all of these can be found with more than little lampshade hanging. Rae at one point remembers talking about the Emperor with her younger sister, who pointed out he was a walking red flag; Rae responded that red was her favorite color. That’s kind of a recurring theme here.

Having discussed these books with others who tried them, I don’t think book 2 is going to change anyone’s mind. Those who bounced off book 1 are going to find the same things annoying in book 2. Mostly those complaints centered around Rae being something of an abrasive edgelord - I can’t say I disagree, but I see it as a front put up by a kid who has dealt with a lot of pain, and I sympathize with her over it. But that doesn’t change. So if you didn’t like book 1, nothing in book 2 persuaded me you might change your mind.

But if you liked book 1, as I did, this made me like it even better. Brennan is playing a long game with this series, I think, and I look forward to seeing where it’s going.