As those who have read the first two Chronicles of the Bitch Queen books will no doubt expect, this is not a happy book where bad things do not happen to good people and all conflicts are resolved with a group hug and a nice chat over tea. It’s bloody and it’s rough.
There’s one moment (which I can describe without spoiling) that encapsulates the feel of the entire trilogy, for me. Something horrible is about to happen to someone who doesn’t deserve it. I’ve got a sick feeling in my stomach. I’m bracing myself to power through. And then Kay hits me with this:
And so those who grow mad with power learn they can do these things because no matter how we say we abhor them, a part of us will allow them to happen if it means holding on to those little comforts that make our lives worth living. Monsters know what they are. I am not much different. My desire to tell the truth comes at a price: the disregard of the ones who suffered the most while I spend pages upon pages immortalizing creatures like Yuebek and Yeshin. Such is the way of the world.
So let me tell you what I later learned about [REDACTED] instead.
And then, rather than tell us about the horrible things that were done to this person at the end of their life, Tali tells us about their life. So we, the readers, know them as more than a person that helped Tali and died horribly because of it. We don’t know the details of how they died, and that’s OK. It’s not disrespectful to skip over the tortures they went through. They get to be remembered for the good and the bad that they did, not the things that a villain did to them.
This is what makes K.S. Villoso one of the best grimdark authors, for me. Many people would argue against her getting that label, I expect, but I think it fits. The world of Jin-Sayeng is a grim and dark one, and Kay does a fantastic job of describing it without using the kind of graphic shocking violence that many less talented authors use in a cheap attempt to bolster their grimdark bonafides.
The ending of the story, unsurprisingly, isn’t happy for everyone involved. But it’s not awful for everyone involved either. It felt like the right ending. This is a powerful series, and I look forward to whatever Kay has coming next.
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