‘Guard the tower, ward the stone. Find your answers writ in bone. Keep your trust through wits or war–nothing must unseal the door.’
Deep within Gloamingard Castle lies a black tower. Sealed by magic, it guards a dangerous secret that has been contained for thousands of years.
As Warden, Ryxander knows the warning passed down through generations: nothing must unreal the Door. But one impetuous decision will leave her with blood on her hands–and unleash a threat that could doom the world to fall to darkness.
I’d been meaning to read something from Melissa Caruso for a while now, and when I saw the premise of this one (and the cover!), I couldn’t resist.
Ryxander is the Warden of Gloamingard Castle — a hodgepodge of architectural styles that is the home to a mysterious door that family lore states should never be opened. Ryx’s magic is broken, meaning that every living thing she lays hands on may die. A little like Elsa from Frozen, except, y’know, with actual death instead of ice.
And hey, this is a fantasy novel. So you just know that the door is gonna be opened and Ryx is gonna kill someone, right?
This actually comes to pass fairly early on. Right when Ryx is supposed to help mediate a conflict between two neighbouring nations to prevent a war, a foreign dignitary dies, the door opens, and all hell breaks loose.
What follows is a very fantasy-of-manners state of affairs. Ryx tries to juggle both the aftermath of this death and the discovery of the door by her foreign visitors, either of which could start a war. Also involved are the Rookery, the badass magical equivalent of a travelling IT department that wants to study the door and its contents.
All sounds pretty great so far, right?
Well, yeah. This was a pretty great book. Ryx is a hell of a sympathetic character, and I found the fact that she can’t actually even brush past someone in the corridor without potentially killing them to be a really novel way of keeping tensions high. She’s such a sweet, isolated character, and all I really wanted was for her to find a friend or two who would be there for her. The world is also fleshed out with a number of colourful side-characters and antagonists, all with their own agendas and politics.
In terms of setting, The Obsidian Tower has a cool almost-gothic aesthetic with some entertaining quirks. The ruler of a realm has complete control over all non-human life in their dominion, and so there’s a few spooky scenes with trees trying to suffocate people, or a bunch of poisonous snakes advancing as one. The world seems like it would be a lot of fun to explore, and while most of this novel takes place within Gloamingard, there’s hints that we could see more of it in the future.
The plot rolls on at a steady pace, with a number of revelations right where they need to be. I did find that sometimes these could be spelled out a bit too opaquely for my tastes, and that every so often the dialogue could seem a little cheesy. However, these are only minor quibbles, and your mileage will obviously vary.
For the most part, I really, really enjoyed this book. I found it to have that rare bingeable quality that meant I tore through it in around a day. As a reviewer, I tend to read a lot of “book ones”, and I’m never quite sure which series I’ll continue and which I’ll set aside. The Obsidian Tower was such a fun read, though, that I’ll be picking up the sequel as soon as I can.
We received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you Orbit Books for the review copy!
