Charlotte Kersten

“Sometimes our hearts are full of monsters. It takes valor to look them in the eye.”

Year published: 2022

Category: YA fantasy

Representation: genderfluid characters, genderqueer characters, gay characters

Summary:
MIND OF THE WORLD,
OPEN YOUR EYES.
At the bottom of the world lies a Serpent, the last of its kind.
Finding the Serpent will change lives.
Tess is a girl on a mission to save a friend.
Spira is a dragon seeking a new identity.
Marga is a woman staking her claim on a man’s world.
Jacomo is a priest searching for his soul.
There are those who would give their lives to keep it hidden.
And those who would destroy it.
But the only people who will truly find the Serpent are those who have awakened to the world around them—with eyes open to the wondrous, the terrible, and the just.

My thoughts: Tess of the Road is a standout YA fantasy to me, and I was delighted to find out about the sequel. While In the Serpent’s Wake was still a pretty solid read for me, I definitely did not enjoy it as much as its predecessor. The new perspective characters feel underdeveloped and the plot, while still somewhat picaresque in nature, feels much less purposeful than the first book’s.

The main perspective characters are Tess, Jacobo, Marga and Spira, and each has their own struggle to face over the course of the book – Marga realizes that neutrality is complicity in the face of wrongdoing, Jacomo finds purpose in “sidekicking” in others’ journeys, Tess confronts her white savior tendencies and continues to deal with the damage done by Will’s abuse, and Spira explores their gender and the possibility of romance while facing grave illness. While Tess of the Road focused exclusively on Tess’s journey through self-loathing and trauma to great success (in my opinion), I can’t help but feel that the broader focus here ends up leaving each character with much sparser development. Probably the most egregious example of this would be the romances that develop between Jacobo and Marga and Spira and Hami – they really, really do not work at all for me because of how little time is spent developing them.

I accidentally read some spoilers before reading the book, so I knew that Will was going to make a return. This ended up feeling like a plot point with great wasted potential to me – while I appreciate some of the realistic touches like Will’s manipulative character assassination of Tess and her ethical dilemma over whether to tell Marga (his new fiancee) about his abuse, it feels almost like the whole thing is more of a lesson for Marga than it is a chance for the narrative to explore the complexities of Tess’s experience. And the whole thing abruptly ending in his gruesome death by serpent ultimately makes me question why he is even featured at all given that Hartman ends up spending so little time exploring all of the complications and conflicts that his return bring up. Even his death feels oddly brushed under the rug in the grand scheme of the book’s course and characters’ emotional reactions.

The main focus of the book and its various subplots is the Ninyish colonization of a diversity of island societies spread across the main characters’ voyage to the World Serpent. There are a lot of things that ring true about this depiction, from displacement and genocide to cultural erasure and indoctrination. Overall, the main focus is on the well-meaning, privileged outsider characters like Tess, Marga and Jacomo realizing that they should be allies in the anti-colonialist fight but that they need to actually understand the complexities of the situations and cultures involved before blithely barging in and ruining things – good intentions on the part of the privileged are not enough. In addition, Jacomo’s notion of “sidekicking” is also a major theme, broadly meaning that it’s important to know who a particular story belongs to and who should be in charge of changing the narrative; again, the outsiders need to unpack the privileged mindset that they should be at the center of a resistance, listen and learn, and find what they can actually do to help the fight as allies instead. There are definitely important conversations to be had about allyship and navigating privilege in activism and resistance, and I think In the Serpent’s Wake is a good introduction to those conversations, especially for young people whose first reactions might otherwise be to get defensive and avoid any kind of self-reflection.

There are some really interesting and inventive additions to the world’s serpent lore and I loved everything about the serpents, from their psychic powers and amazing abilities to their impact on the different (also very well-realized) island cultures. Pathka and Kikiu are back and are as adorable as ever – sometimes I randomly remember them saying the word “thubmerthible” and have to say it aloud to myself because it’s just so fun.

If I were to guess, I would say that another Tess book might be coming because her realization at the end of In the Serpent’s Wake is that she needs to confront everything complicated and messy she’s been avoiding about her family dynamics. If that means a return to a tighter focus on Tess and her internal journey, I’ll be very glad to hear it, but I’ll definitely check it out either way.