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I generally enjoyed this, but not as much as I hoped I would gives how much I love Nghi Vo. That’s not to say this was bad compared to their other works, just that the characters didn’t grab me nearly as much. I felt the true strengths here were the setting, an early 20th century Hollywood where the magical realism is so honed in, most of the time it almost feels like poetic analogies of reality. I think this time period is under represented in fiction, at least in my sampling, and I found it refreshing; especially with queer representation, we were always here, just beyond the sight of society.

The main character was well developed, I could sympathize with their motives, and their decisions followed their persona. I just don’t relate to people that are reckless while having it all, which of course is an oversimplification because at what cost does having it all come at? I think it revealed to me how much more I will prefer safety to recklessness (or rather expressing your true self in the face of oppression), so I learned more about myself, albeit in an uncomfortable way. The rest of the cast didn’t do it for me and were there to support the MCs narrative, which I believe was intentional, it was always about the MC.

I think the real draw here is the setting and how it’s in conversation with historical (and modern) social power structures and the cost not only existing as a marginalized person of society, but what success looks like and at what costs does it come?

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This third book was a great send-off to the Daevabad series. The ending did a good job of coming all the way back around (in several ways) to how the whole book started. It filled in historical details that previous books been teasing. Mostly though, it was an emotionally satisfying ending that neatly wrapped up the stories of the major characters. I think a lot of the politics I enjoyed from the earlier books fell away into more personal dynamics and larger plot happenings, but I think that shift worked here for a final third climactic book.

My single favorite part of this book were some of the new side characters. Fiza!!! Sobek!!! Mishmish!!! Fiza deserves her own book, just sayin'.

Overall, this series is not some Sandersonian book where details about the world and magic are eventually explained to a wikiable degree. At the end, there's still quite a few unanswered questions about history, the world, and especially around magic itself: the ring, the nature of several resurrections spoilery handwave, the lawyer parrots. In the end, these elements are ultimately not the focus of this story (in the way the three major characters are) and ultimately the ambiguity and uncertainty don't get in the way of the story that's being told here. (Although, folks who want these kinds of details might be disappointed.)

I wrote about the last book that I wanted more Aqisa and Zaynab and so I was delighted that my ebook had some extra bonus scenes with them that were edited out of the book. It makes me excited to go read River of Silver and get a little bit more taste of this world and the characters before I'm done with it.

I have some additional comments that have mild spoilers, which I will put in this reply.

cc #SFFBookClub for November sequel month