Two years ago, Csorwe and Shuthmili defied the wizard Belthandros Sethennai and stole his gauntlets. The gauntlets have made Shuthmili extraordinarily powerful, but they’re beginning to take a sinister toll on her. She and Csorwe travel to a distant world to discover how to use the gauntlets safely, but when an old enemy arrives on the scene, Shuthmili finds herself torn between clinging to her humanity and embracing eldritch power.
Meanwhile, Tal Charossa returns to Tlaanthothe to find that Sethennai has gone missing. As well as being a wizard of unimaginable power, Sethennai is Tal’s old boss and former lover, and Tal wants nothing to do with him. When a magical catastrophe befalls the city, Tal tries to run rather than face his past, but soon learns that something even worse may lurk in the future. Throughout the worlds of the Echo Maze, fragments of an undead goddess begin to awaken, and not all confrontations can be put off forever…
ASSUME SPOILERS FOR THE UNSPOKEN NAME.
I kept wanting to pick this book back up. What I loved was its narrative structure and the attention given to the characters. There was just something so real about them. Their struggles came to life on the page, such as coping with the loss of a loved one before you can truly express to her how much she means. Or coming to terms with the fact that you’ve been in a toxic relationship, no matter how good he might have made you feel in the past. There’s a found-family aspect, too; at least, I’d call it that—a father/child dynamic. Well, teenager technically. You can see Tal attempting to play some semblance at being the mature one—attempting to protect Tsereg—and it’s very endearing. Beyond that, there are no characters without their faults and no one without their redemptions.
The book doesn’t hold anything back in terms of plot, and I appreciated that so much. There’s a climactic scene near the end that sort of just fades to black, though. It’s explained what ultimately happens (or the aftermath at least), but I do wish we’d gotten to see it. The book also features a big time jump near the very beginning. However, it does a good job of portraying what life was like during the intervening years without us having to actually have been there.
All in all, I can only say wow! This is a book I’m glad I requested to read. It’s witty, unique, and has an amazing cast of characters. I can’t wait to see what’s next for the author.
(I received an e-ARC via NetGalley from the publisher. The book releases February, 2022.
Check out Trav’s review of The Unspoken Name, book #1 in the series.)
