Perhaps, I conceded, I didn’t hold myself blameless for my silent consent to the policies I didn’t agree with.
Well... for a book about a working-class heroine in a society on the brink of an anti-monarchist revolution, I've gotta say this was pretty damn classist. :D
I did enjoy a lot about the story. It was certainly interesting and twisty, if a little slow, and there's this cool magic system: pretty loose, yet teasing at great narrative opportunities. If I end up continuing the series (I'm not sure yet), it will largely be because of the worldbuilding, especially the magic, and being super curious about what else the author is going to do with it. While I didn't find most of the characters particularly likable, I do think they're compelling and well-rounded. The prose flows well, and the tension is upheld nicely throughout the book.
What I took issue with were the messages I saw here, and, to a large extent, the heroine. I confess I almost DNFed early on because the MC was so annoying, and it's a chore to read something written in first person when you constantly want to yell at the narrator. See, I have this deep seated belief that, in oppressive and unjust societies, victims often become accomplices of the system (while also remaining victims, of course; the world and human nature are complex like that). I'm not saying everyone should become a rebel leader or anything. But I feel like when you're surrounded by wrongness, it's a moral duty to keep acknowledging it instead of adapting and shrugging the really bad parts off. The MC here chose the latter.
I could certainly sympathize with the reasons behind the MC's practicality, with her fear of getting thrown back into the hunger and the cold, with the way she fiercely held onto her shop, the business she'd built. But it grated on me that for the longest time, she didn't want to do anything about the hunger and the cold and the root causes behind them. Or rather: she didn't want anything to be done about that, not even by others. Stay quiet, don't rock the boat, sure, it would be nice if some band-aid fixes were applied to the broken system, but don't you dare rebuild it from the ground. After all, Sophie has managed, through a unique combination of advantages, to carve a place out for herself! And the oppressive nobles give her money! Don't you dare touch the system!
In other words, she was rather damn egocentric for the longest time. And even later on, when she started acknowledging the causes behind the injustices, the things she
could do to make things better for others, and how her silent acceptance made her somewhat complicit... she kind of kept shying away from it all. She kept trying to stay neutral while also leaning toward sympathizing with the nobles. Again, I understood her reasoning and could sympathize with a lot of it, but overall, she reminded me of too many people whose similar approaches to life have brought a lot of pain to me and my loved ones. I do want to say that it's a testament to the author's craft that the book managed to hold my attention from start to finish, despite all these negative associations.
And now for the messages that go beyond the MC's personality: I disliked how it was the rebellion leader who turned out to be the villain, wishing to build a faux democracy through tyrannical means. I disliked how there was this constant implication present: "The nobles actually work so hard and have so many responsibilities, and the angry mobs wishing for their democracy and rights don't even understand what foreign politics are, and anyway, lots of nobles are perfectly good, friendly, kind people who wouldn't mind reforms as a compromise." Except those saintly nobles discussed reforms as abstract concepts and viewed the unhappy masses more as a natural disaster than people with personalities and needs. And while the MC sometimes acknowledged the effects of it, as well as the power imbalance between her and her new friends and boyfriend, there was this constant undercurrent of, "But they're good people, so let's all just be friends."
I wish the story was subtler and went deeper into these things, focusing more on the inherent unfairness of a system where power is obtained through birthright. I wish it acknowledged that even if there surely can be perfectly good people among those in charge in such a system, it's still not necessarily right for them to be in charge and that the commoners still suffer from being into these good people's power. But the narrative preferred to lean into stuff like, "But if a commoner is special and catches a noble's eye, they can benefit instead of suffering!" and it just—it really didn't sit well with me and my views.
Equal opportunities are good. Oppression is bad. Eat the rich.
All my feelings about this aside, the book
is rather well-written.
