While we have that, we also have a power struggle going on between Mouse, whose magic is growing out of control to the extend of her feasting on human souls to survive and the growing might of the Bone Lord, the manifestation of one man’s starvation and the breakdown of his gut instinct to survive. When his favourite slave Seraphina escapes, it starts a destructive path that rebirths the gods. Magic begins to break into the world properly as Eyad tries to collect all those who can use it. His lover and rival Vadden leads rebels against him – and he is someone not of mercy. You must break before you become and under such ruthless economic reforms, hatred and suffering are everything. Remember what I said about Stalin? The main antagonist Eyad is a brutal man with plans to turn his realm into something breaker. They’re living, breathing works of art, not words on a page. There is a deep level of characterisation and development with all of them. Having a focused character setup is a good thing for any fiction, and we really get to grips with the characters. The story focuses on these select few and it does well. The cast of the book is small with the number of dedicated POVs in the single digits. Hell, it’s even a character in this book. I’ve never seen a novel that writes the destruction that is starvation so well. In a way this is historical fantasy at its core, but there is a powerful magic at heart in this book. Not once did it annoy me or wind me up with things some grimdark books do. This is a brutal book that goes beyond the rest in many ways, but it does so in a way that made me keep reading. It’s heavily inspired by Stalinist Russia during his Five-Year economic plans, decisions that cost millions of lives. There is a deep level of human suffering in the book. This book hit me on levels similar to Threads, on a form that few other books have achieved. It covers a nuclear attack on Britain and its catastrophic aftermath. It did something no horror film could, and that was frighten me to the bone. Have you ever watched Threads? It was a BBC docu-drama in the 1980s, and perhaps the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. It’s leading the pack on books I have read this year so far as well. It’s hard for me to say in words how much I enjoyed reading Seraphina’s Lament, but had I read it in 2018, it would be my Book of the Year. Lanelle Fried on A Tale of Rengar: My fantasy W… Jlennidorner on E3 2021: Games to Look Out…
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