This was a good-yet-imperfect book. I enjoyed it a great deal, despite the flaws.
The main part of the story follows along with a woman, Rovena, the daughter of a merchant commoner, who catches the eye of and marries a local noble (it’s a love match). Things proceed along a somewhat predictable path. She’s not a refined noblewoman, and looked down upon by the nobles of the baron’s court. His steward is jealous of how much his lord comes to rely upon his bride’s counsel and hopes he will set her aside before she conceives. Rovena is intelligent and capable, and moves the barony in directions that increase general prosperity but at the cost of reducing the wealth and privileges of the nobles. Intrigues happen, et cetera, et cetera. It’s familiar, but it’s well done.
The frame story is much more interesting: the main story is told from the perspective of Rovena, a banshee trapped in the ruins of the castle. She doesn’t remember her life before becoming a banshee except in the vaguest of feelings and flashes, but she knows there was a lot of grief involved. The frame is banshee-Rovena searching the ruins of the castle, finding things that spark memories, piecing together her past. She wants to know what happened and why she is trapped in the ruins.
Obviously this is not a cheerful story. Even knowing that everyone dies, the castle and town burn down, and Rovena ends up as a banshee, I wasn’t prepared for how much of an emotional gut punch the climax was.
There are two areas of weakness here. The first is that the central plot did, as I said earlier, feel familiar and somewhat predictable. On the other hand, it is well done, and there was a twist at the end I didn’t see coming (though I feel like, in retrospect, I should have). I also spent much of the book wondering where on earth the sequel was going to go, since this is a duology. I’m pretty certain I can answer that question now, and I’m thoroughly intrigued.
The other critique is about the writing. At the beginning, the book is very hard to take seriously. For example:
But if her unusual attire was what caught his eye, it was her face that kept him from looking away. What little of it that showed was remarkably pale, if flushed, and yet she did not appear sickly. Her eyes were dark as flint and sparked as if struck against steel. Paired with lips that curved like a composite bow, the effect was entrancing. Whatever her machinations happened to be, Kalsten very much wanted to be invited along, and woe betide anyone who dared to impede her.
Fortunately, as the book goes on, the language gets … toned down, I’ll say. That is to say, I stopped feeling the urge to melodramatically read it out loud to Mrs. OfThePalace. The beginning section is very purple in its prose, but that doesn’t last long before it becomes much more (in my opinion) reasonable.
Overall, I feel like this isn’t a 4 star book so much as a 4-and-a-half rounded down. Strongly recommended.