LR Lam
Hodderscape, 2 May 2023
Available as: HB, 429pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy and audio subscription
ISBN(HB): 9781399715485
I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Dragonfall via Netgalley to consider for review.
Dragonfall is a hard one to sum up, as there is so much going on with this book. Just to name a few things, while it's got a fairly audacious plot in itself it's also establishing a bigger, wider story than just this volume (yes, it's part of a series), it introduces us to Arcady and Everen, two fascinating and deep characters (but to some others as well) and it gives a glimpse of an intricate and convincing world (well, two worlds actually).
Central to all this is I think the Arcady-Everen relationship.
Arcady is a familiar kind of fantasy chancer - a thief and a con artist living by wits, an enemy of the authorities in the city of Vatra but also of its underworld, and necessarily half a dozen steps ahead of both (or it would be a short book). He also has secrets, including kinship to the Plaguebringer, the most reviled magician of recent times, a relationship for which Arcady would be proscribed and shunned were it known. Arcady is determined to vindicate his grandfather, and will do whatever it takes - theft, dark magic, betrayal - to achieve that.
Or at least he believes so...
The first step he takes on this road - a forbidden spell worked late one night - sets events in motion.
Everen is a dragon, exiled with his kind to a bleak, dying world and believing that he is born to save his people. Caught up in the backdraft of Arcady's magic, he falls into Vatra in human guise. His relationship with Arcady is based on a magical entanglement that remains mysterious through much of the book. That entanglement is variously a source to both of strength, of weakness, of knowledge, and of great peril.
The balance between Everen and Arcady, underpinned by equal parts of fascination, dread, longing and hostility, is a kind of barometer of this book, the main event (apart from some episodes of showy magic and a heist that brings Arcady unwillingly back into the fold of his former criminal associates). It's a complex, fascinating affair, one that certainly has romantic overtones but which is also deeply, richly explored in terms of their backgrounds and motivations, of the evolving power difference between then - all of which makes any kind of Happy Ever After rather problematic. Indeed, the relationship has complications that would make Romeo and Juliet seem one dimensional, as both Everen and Arcady have personal and immediate, rather than just familial, reasons for fearing the other. The drive to betrayal, as well as a powerful urge not to, is strong and I was genuinely uncertain how things would turn out.
The relationship between the two is only made more tricky by the fact that others on the periphery of the story may be aware of events and manipulating them: or they may themselves be deceived, manipulated. It's not clear. There's a lot hinted at that doesn't exactly come to fruition here, rather the story closely follows the two central characters as they come to terms with who and what they are (or may be - there are no certainties!) But what is clear is that Arcady and Everen lack complete, or even much, knowledge of what's going on, being, rather, fed scraps by others: and not all these others are actually in plain sight. (I'm being a bit vague here to avoid spoilers).
It all makes for a powerful, involving, even if at times frustrating, novel which shows signs of growing into something rich, strange and fascinating.
I read this book partly in print and partly by listening to the audio. The audio presented a bit of a problem for me in that the sections as told by Arcady and Everen are read in their entirety by different actors - but as at times each is recounting things the other says and does, there is a fair bit of reported speech in the other's voice. While the actors do try to convey this by varying accents, this does mean that it can be difficult to follow the point of view. I think both actors are brilliant, but things might be clearer if the book had simply used one voice, or matched actor to character.
For more information about Dragonfall see the publisher's website here.
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