Started: 11/04/22
Finished: 17/04/22
Spoilers: No
Plot
Romy is the esteemed, and beloved courtesan to the Shadow Lord of Cantagna. He treats her well and she loves him. She's also, along with her troublesome brother Neri, a sorcerer. Magic is illegal in this world and all sorcerers are put to death. Romy's had a hard time concealing her magic from the city's overlord, but after her family is disgraced, she'd removed from her position and thrown back into the city's sordid underbelly, a place she hasn't been since she was fifteen.
As she struggles to get by, now the sole caretaker of her brother, she not only has to keep him fed and clothed, but also has to make sure he doesn't break the agreement of his parol by causing trouble.
About half the story follows this thread of Romy trying to make ends meet whilst making sure Neri doesn't do anything illegal or get caught using his magic. It's very business as usual, more or less the same stuff happening for many chapters, and yet it somehow doesn't feel boring or samey. This isn't a huge book, so in reality, this section doesn't go on too long. If anything, it feels more like a long montage of Romy trying to get Neri on the straight and narrow by hiring a swordmaster to teach him focus, patience and discipline. In the second half of the novel, things get much more interesting.
I picked this one up because of the promise of a heist, and I am nothing if not a sucker for even the smallest of heists. In a sense, this was a reverse heist. Planting something rather than stealing it.
Due to circumstances, Romy finds herself with something incredibly rare and valuable in her possession, and the item's absence could spell war for her Shadow Lord and see him overthrown. Using her magic, and an assembled team, she must plant the object elsewhere to prevent a war.
I do love a good reverse heist and this one is pretty good, detailed, and high stakes. I enjoyed it a lot and the only complaints I have were that I wish it had gotten more page time. Not necessarily in place of the character-building 'normal life' stuff that came before, but I feel the book could've been a tad longer to better accommodate the heist turn it took. I like heists to be long and complicated with twists and things going wrong and characters being forced to improvise cause this wasn't part of the plan. Though this heist does carry a lot of tension, it goes pretty smoothly and I couldn't help but feel the characters got away with it too easily.
An enjoyable caper, but ultimately I wanted more from it.
Characters
There are various magic users in this book, but the two main ones are Romy and Neri. While he has the ability to move through walls, she is able to alter someone's mind, and make lies become reality by making a person believe or forget whatever she tells them. Both useful abilities for heisting. Through Romy's power, she's also able to manipulate her own mind into believing the character she's playing during their cons is actually her true identity. But this power has its drawbacks. When doing this, she loses herself, and only hearing her true name can bring her back to herself. This is such a cool idea and one that I thought would be the downfall of the heist. I figured Romy losing track of her true identity would inevitably become a problem during the heist and here would be where the characters would have to improvise. But, again, that didn't happen and everything went according to plan a little too smoothly to fully satisfy me.
Romy was a decent narrator, interesting and bold, strong and determined. There was still something about her that was a little bland. She could do with a bit more personality but I liked her and found her a strong enough character to lead the story.
In the beginning, Neri was such a little shit and I really didn't like him. He was reckless, impulsive, rude, and more than likely just going to wind up getting them both killed. However, he did grow a lot as a character. His relationship with Romy improved greatly and he started to apply himself. He became a great asset to the team.
Setting
Set within an Italian-inspired world, this marks the third fantasy heist book I've read within an Italian influenced city. Though normally Venice is chosen, I can't say this city gave me any Venitian flavours. I've visited a lot of Italian cities and this city didn't seem to lean too heavily on any one city for its inspiration.
There were times when it didn't feel all that Italian at all or otherwise I'd simply forget. Besides the mention of piazzas and a coliseum, there isn't a whole lot to define its influences. It mainly just feels like its own city, defined by its own individual features, so whenever Italian sounding things, people and places were mentioned, it almost felt out of place. Like the city wanted to be Italian inspired but was insisting too firmly on being wholly original, making the two ideas clash a little. The city would have been more defined if the author had committed to just one of those ideas.
But the world itself is very interesting politically, and it certainly serves its purpose without feeling empty or neglected, but I also feel there was a lot of room to expand. It does a great job depicting the day to day living standards of the people as well as the hierarchy of society, but I would've loved to have seen more of this city's culture and traditions, the architecture or food culture. It's the tiny little details that can really say a lot about the world, city, or community.
Writing Style
The writing is very solid, probably the book's strongest feature. I usually feel there're two main narrative types. Voice or prose. Normally a narrative will lean more heavily towards one or the other. This definitely leans into voice, what with it being written in first-person perspective. We view the entire story, heist and all, through Romy's eyes.
The prose itself doesn't lack, but it is very subtle to feel almost unnoticeable. I would've liked a few more bold descriptions to paint more vivid pictures of the world and characters in my mind, but besides that, I have no complaints about the writing. The voice is very strong and consistent, and the pacing never lags, even though the first half should in theory, I was never bored reading this book.
Final Impression
I think the general theme for this book is, entertaining read but wanted more from it. I was interested and invested enough in the characters to go straight into the second.
A solid first book in this trilogy. Could be better, of course, but a very decent read.
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