I have received this book in return for an honest review from NetGalley. I'd like to thank NetGalley and Sara Hashem for giving me the opportunity to read this book.
This review may contain spoilers, be warned.
* * *
At ten years old, the Heir of Jasad fled a massacre that takes her entire family. At fifteen, she buried her first body. At twenty, the clock is ticking on Sylvia's third attempt at home. Nizahl's armies have laid waste to Jasad and banned magic across the four remaining kingdoms. Fortunately, Sylvia's magic is as good at playing dead as she is.
When the Nizahl Heir tracks a group of Jasadis to Sylvia’s village, the quiet life she's crafted unravels. Calculating and cold, Arin's tactical brilliance is surpassed only by his hatred for magic. When a mistake exposes Sylvia’s magic, Arin offers her an escape: compete as Nizahl’s Champion in the Alcalah tournament and win immunity from persecution.
To win the deadly Alcalah, Sylvia must work with Arin to free her trapped magic, all while staying a step ahead of his efforts to uncover her identity. But as the two grow closer, Sylvia realizes winning her freedom means destroying any chance of reuniting Jasad under her banner. The scorched kingdom is rising again, and Sylvia will have to choose between the life she's earned and the one she left behind.
* * *
I pre-ordered this book as well as requesting the ARC from NetGalley (which I was approved for) and then I took a thousand years to actually read the thing and I apologize for that! I got distracted by so many other books that I never actually sat down to read this. Let us get on with the review, yeah?
I did like how we were not actually told anything at first. We open up the novel to a seemingly young woman hunting for frogs. We're told, through her grumbling about it, that she is the apprentice for an older apothecary who cannot go out himself to get them and that she does it in order to earn a place. To eventually be given (or purchase) the apothecary shop so that the man running it now can retire. Nothing seems particularly out of place.
Then everything kind of goes sideways. Sylvia, as we come to know her, accidentally murders a soldier from an enemy nation and has to hide the body. She then attends a waleema (is that right...I think it is), a kind of festival to celebrate the end of a god who nearly caused the destruction of the entire world as they know it. While there, what she did is revealed. The Nizahl Heir, Arin, who is looking for someone to represent his faction in this contest called an Alcalah is there and notices what she did to the soldier (and knows its her), so he picks her to be his champion. With no idea who she really is.
I liked the way she thought she was hiding stuff from Arin as they trained. I also loved her interactions with the various guards. Wes and Jeru both understood that she was the Champion of Nizahl whether they liked it or not, and just took it in stride. Vaun could have been dealt with much earlier and relieved some of the pressure that was on Sylvia to do what she needed to. I didn't like him at all and how he tormented her. It was interesting that Arin knew she was Jasadi and kept her around anyway. Did he know who she was under the mask of Sylvia? Why did he not just do what he had done to all of the other Jasadi they had caught? Imprisonment or death? He must have known, even deep down, that she was hiding something from him.
I also wondered just why the Mufsids and Urabis were after her in particular. We knew that the Mufsids had a habit of convert or kill. If you did not join them, you died. They did not try to kill her after she refused to join. They actually tried multiple times to get her for their cause. The Urabi, too. They didn't kill as much as the Mufsids did. They also tried repeatedly to get her. I didn't understand why they wouldn't follow their own well known modus operandi. It made no sense there.
I wish I understood why Arin's little base was a replica of Usr Jasad. Her home. Was it intentional to keep her on her toes and try to weasel information out of her? Things she may not know she was revealing. Like her ability to read dead languages or the Resar at the beginning of the book when she revealed herself to be Jasadi by only reciting a passage from a funerary rite? In the end, she was still smart enough to not quite reveal everything but I think he knew more than she realized.
The reveal at the 80% ish mark was devastating. I would have lost it right then and there. It was a true testament to Sylvia's will that she didn't just immediately blow up. But then, she had been getting blow after blow and may have become desensitized to it a little bit. To learn that the people you trusted more than anything else did not have your best interest at heart, I could never.
Her explosion during the end was justified. To suddenly have everything you love nearly ripped out from under you for the third time? She deserved it. They all had it coming and I am not surprised at all about what happened.
I gave this book a 4.5/5 star rating because while I did love the narrative, it was missing....something. I can't put my hand on what. I am definitely curious about the Supreme Rawain's fancy stick. What does it do? Why is it important? I also want more of a history of the Malik and Malika of Jasad and why they started to do what they did. Who was behind what happened to Sylvia's mother, Niphran? What is going on? What happened to Arin that caused his hair to go all silver? We get part of an explanation, but I feel like there is something that's missing there.
I am definitely going to grab the next book when it comes out to see what explanations we do get and what new things we are told that will need more explanation. I am looking forward to more books by Sara Hashem. It certainly doesn't help that the publisher for this book is one of my absolute favorites as far as fantasy books go, Orbit! I highly recommend this book for fantasy lovers out there.
* * *
The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem will is available for purchase as of 18 July 2023
No comments:
Post a Comment