While Mokoya, the one with Seer powers, begins to help her Protector mother keep the throne, Akeha decides to flee and become a fugitive from the palace. While he has become a delivery man for the disreputable, he saves machinist Yongcheow. Akeha then ends up on the other side of the war, helping those who want his mother's awful reign to be over. Along with his sister, who has started to side with the Monastery for which her husband has ascended to Head Abbott. This novella sets up this world. It is easy to see the power imbalance held by the Protector, her merciless stranglehold on her people, her selfishness, her desire for power and prestige at the expense of those without magic. The book is quick and could have been longer even, I would have still been sucked in. As it was, I loved the dichotomy of Mokoya and Akeha as they start to transition from twins to their own people. The first instance of divergence occurs when they both go through a ceremony in which they decide their gender and then doctors use Slack to help change their bodies to align with their chosen gender (Mokoya chooses to be female and Akeha chooses to be male). From there they drift away from each other, with Mokoya falling in love with the new Head Abbott, with whom Akeha also had feelings, to Akeha fleeing the feeling of being in her shadow. It is his desire to be himself that causes Akeha to miss out on his sister's life and to miss ever meeting his niece, who is merciless killed by the Protector. He must overcome his own feelings of being less and embrace who he is and what he means to those who love him.
This novella diverged from the first novellas science fiction/fantasy format and became more a monster hunting novel. It was thrilling and mysterious. How could Mokoya find this beast, why was it behaving the way it was, how did it know to target a specific location? Could it be controlled by someone else? I liked how this took place a few years after the last and we are in the thick of the fighting between the Protectorate and the Machinists (who simply wish to provide technology to the people). So as you go along with Mokoya on this hunt you also have this background story of Lady Han, Akeha, Yongcheow and the Machinists at work trying to overthrow the Protectorate. It is also a story of grief as Mokoya is honoring the fourth year of her childs murder. Her loss is felt on every page, but it also makes her understand better than anyone else what is happening when it is revealed the true nature of the beast. She also goes through depression and through PTSD when she is confronted by a large machine in the machinists meeting house that reminds her of the area where she and her daughter were bombed. It is a book about letting go, about fighting to stay alive when you feel everything you had was lost to you.
I loved Sariman as a character. She is a no-nonsense detective who is willing to risk her neck in order to find the truth. She has be laboring for years trying to get a foot up and then this case landed in her lap. What should seem like a fantastic assignment she knows is not, it is a death sentence to her career if she does not let it fade away. But, as she has begun to lose respect for the Protectorate and the tensors that obey blindly, she is not one to shrink away from finding out the truth. So they chose wrongly when they thought they could throw this assignment away. The case felt like a monster story, scary and befuddling. But it also held the most science fiction elements of all four. So it was an engrossing detective novel, science fiction novel, and horror novel. Especially when we embark with Rider to the lab and then Sariman and witness firsthand the horrors that were unleashed there and can almost also hear the scrapes of whatever ravaged the people. The truths revealed are deeply disturbing and this novel is just as heartbreaking as the first two. Each novella is unique with a different trope and character within the kingdom as the main focus.
Once again you are introduced to the depravity of the elite. What others will do to gain favor, money, power, privilege. Even Lady Han, who was once poor herself and was sold to be in servitude, falls prey to the game of gaining favor and advantage over others. It is not until she herself is affected, first with the loss of the Protector's first child whom she cared for and loved, and then when the Protector herself was using Lady Han for her own gain. It is a novel about loss and love. Because even after everything that happened between them, Lady Han acknowledged that at one point she had loved Hekate. All of these novellas were incredibly woven together to create a full fantasy world complete with lore, heroes, villains, monsters, and a dream of peace. And it was realistic in the way that not all characters were safe from harm, that freedom inevitably comes with a price. There is pain, punishment, and in the end is one outcome better than the last? We as readers are unsure, but we are hopeful. This is a must read for all fantasy fans. Especially if you love mixed genres, intense characters with deep emotion and growth, and a world that is fascinating to read about from any point of view.
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