Charlotte Kersten

Summary

Indevan Algara-Vayir was born the second son of a powerful prince, destined to stay at home and defend his family’s castle. But when war threatens, Inda is sent to the Royal Academy where he learns the art of war and finds that danger and intrigue don’t only come from outside the kingdom.

Review

The specific form that my struggle took with this book was an utter inability to keep all the boys of the Academy straight. You guys, there are just so many boys. And you have to remember their nicknames, their family names, their family allegiances and why they’re constantly fighting with each other! If you have a dumb brain like I do, the sheer multitude of boys and boy fights may pose a challenge in enjoying the first half of Inda.

The good news is that the second half of the book largely takes place away from the Academy, and I ended up enjoying and understanding the book much more when it wasn’t exclusively focused on the politics of the Academy. And while I struggled with the family politics, I can absolutely say that the world-building shines in this book. It’s a fully realized world full of meticulous history, societal structures and some truly fascinating little touches. I particularly loved the commonplace, practical uses of magic such as birth and waste spells, which respectively allow you to get pregnant without sleeping with anyone and magically vanish your waste without having to go to the bathroom. I also loved the hints of wildness and magic that have to do with the deadly magical realm of Norsunder and creatures that live in caves and under the sea.

Inda also shines as an examination of the effects of a militarized society. We see the way that the Sierdanael is obsessed with achieving his own personal glory and victory and is willing to drag the entire country into war just to achieve it. We see the ways that Dogpiss’ and Inda’s lives are entirely destroyed because they represent a threat to the Sierdanael’s power, and because two boys’ lives are expendable in the pursuit of consolidated power. We see the way that boys are raised constantly getting beaten by their older siblings as though it is perfectly natural:

“It’s a bad way to train,” Dun said, his tone serious. “I didn’t see it until I got away. This tradition of boys beating boys in the families of rank, one day it’s going to cause big problems.”

Finally, that devaluation of life is apparent in the Sierlaef’s belief that he can simply kill Tanrid to get what he wants (namely, Joret). I think the Sierlaef is one of the most interesting characters I’ve encountered in a long time, because you can so clearly see how his cruelty and frustration stem from his learning and speech disabilities and how incapable he feels as a prince – and he is so clearly manipulated into his misdeeds and further entitlement by his uncle.

What is really interesting about the situation with the Sierlaef and Joret is that it’s ultimately revealed that generations ago women with magic selectively killed sexual predators:

“They killed sexual predators until that instinct was eliminated from humankind…”

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I don’t agree with the idea that being a sexual predator is simply an instinctive trait that could ever be bred out of people – I don’t know that we can ever separate “instinct” from the cultural mores that facilitate and encourage sexual aggression and entitlement in some people and not others, and the way that sexual violence is an expression of power and control. And if these women could breed out sexually predatory behavior, why would they not also breed out the Marlovans’ instincts for the other kinds of abuse that are still perpetuated in the present day? In addition, I don’t understand how the Sierlaef’s behavior could be coded as anything other than sexually predatory – he murders Joret’s fiance so that he can marry her instead!!! What else could you possibly call that?

Another really interesting aspect of Inda‘s world-building is the diversity of sexualities that are present in its cast of characters. Sponge is gay, as is his father the king, and I think it’s pretty apparent that Joret and Ndara are both asexual. The challenges that they face because of this are well-presented. While Sponge would not necessarily be outcast or denounced because he is gay, he still struggles with the thought of people knowing about it because of the possibility of the other boys using his sexuality as a way of vying for power and favor. My heart went out to Joret because of the agony she faces due to the attention she receives for her beauty when the entire thing is a source of revulsion and dread for her.

I think you could make the argument that Inda’s world is still a patriarchal one, where men seem to be the main rulers and the ones who go out to war in a society where these seem to be the most important signifiers of power. We see several women contend with the difficulties that accompany being married off into unhappy marriages that they had no say in, and they struggle with the way that their society hurts and endangers the children they love. In addition, it was absolutely fascinating to see the ways that women developed their own secret forms of communication and agency by more or less sneaking through the shadows and engaging in subtle manipulations:

“If they had to make men stand down from violence, they needed to know skills that the men did not know.”