Charlotte Kersten

Year published: 2018

Category: Urban fantasy

Representation: all characters in Atlantian society are queer (pansexual specifically, I believe)

Summary: Rune Saint John, last child of the fallen Sun Court, is hired to search for Lady Judgment’s missing son, Addam, on New Atlantis, the island city where the Atlanteans moved after ordinary humans destroyed their original home.

With his companion and bodyguard, Brand, he questions Addam’s relatives and business contacts through the highest ranks of the nobles of New Atlantis. But as they investigate, they uncover more than a missing man: a legendary creature connected to the secret of the massacre of Rune’s Court.

In looking for Addam, can Rune find the truth behind his family’s death and the torments of his past?

My thoughts: unfortunately, this book was not a good fit for me. It was a quick and easy reading experience and I definitely don’t regret giving it a try, but too many things about it ultimately did not work for me.

The core of the problem is that I really bounced off of Rune and Brand as characters. I don’t necessarily need my characters to be likable to enjoy a book, but the constant disconnect between how they treat people and how people treat them is jarring. An example that more or less sets the tone – one of their first interactions with a traumatized child who has just survived the murder of his entire family is to trip him, push his head into a toilet, and shove him into a shower stall. I had to read this section a couple of times because their actions were so absolutely bizarre, but there ended up being plenty of other instances of both of them acting in incredibly off-putting ways, from stabbing someone panicking in a crisis to using others as monster bait; from Brand’s frequent jokes about weight to Rune “tipping” a waiter by giving him useless advice (ha ha). Their relationship is definitely of the ride-or-die, forged-by-the-trials-of-fire type, but the antagonistic banter between them grew tiring to me and I really wish the book spent more time exploring how exactly Brand is tied to Rune. To me, they ultimately come off as brash, inconsiderate hotheads who resort to violence at the flip of a switch.

I could definitely see this being a reaction to their shared trauma, but given that there is so little time spent exploring that trauma beyond the villain torturing Rune, a conversation with a love interest (that I did really like) and extremely graphic descriptions of the rape while one of the perpetrators taunts Rune, I’m not totally sure about that. I do think that Rune’s strategy right now is just to suppress, suppress, suppress, and I anticipate more exploration of healing in later books. I was really interested to learn more about how Rune says the Atlantians view survivors of trauma more as “object lessons” than as survivors, but this was briefly mentioned and not addressed the way I think it could have been.

I know KD Edwards himself has commented on this and how he regrets it and has worked to change it over the course of the series (this was in an r/fantasy thread that I can’t find now), but the role of women in this book is also a sticking point for me. Queenie and Lilly Rose are 1950’s sitcom embodiments of catering caretakers, while Ella is so desperate to be loved by a man that she gets manipulated into committing a crime (and then escapes capture by lying to a guard that she’s being harassed by men). Ella also has anorexia and her body is described in a way that I really, really disliked; the happy ending to this storyline is a seer’s prediction that she will end up with a man who “makes her eat a lot.”

On the positive side, there is lots of fun action for those who enjoy a punchy plot that moves at a quick pace, and the “everything but the kitchen sink” style worldbuilding is cool. I particularly like the descriptions of the abandoned buildings with their different histories. I also really like how Edwards wrote the younger characters. The teenage seer is really sweet and his relationship with his brother is great, for instance. Some of the humor definitely didn’t land for me, but other jokes resonated more. I might consider continuing with the series, but I won’t be in a hurry.