Review:
Redemptor, by Jordan Ifueko
| Series: |
Raybearer #2 |
| Publisher: |
Amulet Books |
| Copyright: |
2021 |
| ISBN: |
1-68335-720-5 |
| Format: |
Kindle |
| Pages: |
328 |
Redemptor is the second half of a duology that started with
Raybearer. You could read the first
book without the second, but reading the second without the first will not
make much sense. I'm going to be a bit elliptical in my plot description
since there's a lot of potential for spoilers for the first book.
Tarisai has reached a point of stability and power, but she's also
committed herself to a goal, one that will right a great historical and
ongoing injustice. She's also now in a position to both notice and
potentially correct numerous other injustices in the structure of her
society, and plans to start by defending those closest to her. But in the
midst of her opening gambit to save someone she believes is unjustly
imprisoned, the first murderous undead child appears, attacking both
Tarisai's fragile sense of security and her self-esteem and self-worth.
Before long, she's drowning in feelings of inadequacy and isolation, and
her grand plans for reordering the world have turned into an anxiety loop
of self-flagellating burnout.
I so much wanted to like this book. Argh.
I think I see what Ifueko was aiming for, and it's a worthy topic for a
novel. In
Raybearer, Tarisai got the sort of life that she
previously could only imagine, but she's also the sort of person who
shoulders massive obligations. Imposter syndrome, anxiety, overwork, and
burnout are realistic risks, and are also important topics to write about.
There are some nicely subtle touches buried in this story, such as the
desire of her chosen family to have her present and happy without entirely
understanding why she isn't, and without seeing the urgency that she sees
in the world's injustice. The balancing act of being effective without
overwhelming oneself is nearly impossible, and Tarisai has very little
preparation or knowledgeable support.
But this story is told with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and in a way
that felt forced rather than arising naturally from the characters. If
the point of emphasis had been a disagreement with her closest circle over
when and how much the world should be changed, I think this would be a
better book. In the places where this drives the plot, it
is a
better book. But Ifueko instead externalizes anxiety and depression in
the form of obviously manipulative demonic undead children who (mostly)
only Tarisai can see, and it's just way too much. Her reactions are
manipulated and sometimes externally imposed in a way that turns what
should have been a character vs. self plot into a character vs. character
plot in which the protagonist is very obviously making bad decisions and
the antagonist is an uninteresting cliche.
The largest problem I had with this book is that I found it thuddingly
obvious, in part because the plot felt like it was on narrowly constrained
rails to ensure it hit all of the required stops. When the characters
didn't want the plot to go somewhere, they're sidelined, written out of
the story, or otherwise forcibly overridden. Tarisai has to feel
isolated, so all the people who, according to the events of the previous
book and the established world-building rules, would not let her be
isolated are pushed out of her life. When this breaks the rules of magic
in this world, those rules are off-handedly altered. Characters that
could have had their own growth arcs after
Raybearer become static
and less interesting, since there's no room for them in the plot.
Instead, we get all new characters, which gives
Redemptor a bit of
a cast size problem.
Underneath this, there is an occasional flash of great writing. Ifueko
chooses to introduce a dozen mostly-new characters to an already large
cast and I was still able to mostly keep them straight, which shows real
authorial skill. She is very good with short bursts of characterization
to make new characters feel fresh and interesting. Even the most
irritating of the new characters (Crocodile, whose surprise twist I
thought was obvious and predictable) is an interesting archetype to
explore in a book about activism and activist burnout. I can see some
pieces of a better book here. But I desperately wanted something to
surprise me, for Tarisai or one of the other characters to take the plot
in some totally unexpected direction the way that
Raybearer did.
It never happened.
That leads directly to another complaint: I liked
Raybearer in part
because of the freshness of a different mythological system and a
different storytelling tradition than what we typically get in fantasy
novels. I was hoping for more of the same in
Redemptor, which
meant I was disappointed when I got a mix of Christianity and Greek
mythology.
As advertised by
Raybearer, the central mythological crisis of
Redemptor concerns the Underworld. This doesn't happen until about
80% into the book (which is also a bit of a problem; the ending felt
rushed given how central it was to the plot), so I can't talk about it in
detail without spoiling it. But what I think I can say is that
unfortunately the religious connotations of the title are not an accident.
Rather than something novel that builds on the excellent idea of the
emi-ehran spirit animal, there is a
lot of Christ
symbolism mixed with an underworld that could have come from an Orpheus
retelling. There's nothing inherently wrong with this (although the
Christian bits landed poorly for me), but it wasn't what I was hoping for
from the mythology of this world.
I rarely talk much about the authors in fiction reviews. I prefer to let
books stand on their own without trying too hard to divine the author's
original intentions. But here, I think it's worth acknowledging Ifueko's
afterword in which she says that writing
Redemptor in the middle of
a pandemic, major depression, and the George Floyd protests was the most
difficult thing she'd ever done. I've seen authors write similar things
in afterwords when the effect on the book was minimal or invisible, but I
don't think that was the case here.
Redemptor is furious, anxious,
depressed, and at points despairing, and while it's okay for novels to be
all of those things when it's under the author's control, here they felt
like emotions that were imposed on the story from outside.
Raybearer was an adventure story about found family and ethics that
happened to involve a lot of politics.
Redemptor is a story about
political activism and governance, but written in a universe whose bones
are set up for an adventure story. The mismatch bothered me throughout;
not only did these not feel like the right characters to tell this story
with, but the politics were too simple, too morally clear-cut, and too
amenable to easy solutions for a good political fantasy.
Raybearer
focused its political attention on colonialism. That's a deep enough
topic by itself to support a duology (or more), but
Redemptor adds
in property rights, land reform, economic and social disparity, unfair
magical systems, and a grab bag of other issues, and it overwhelms the
plot. There isn't space and time to support solutions with sufficient
complexity to satisfyingly address the problems. Ifueko falls back on
benevolent dictator solutions, and I understand why, but that's not the
path to a satisfying resolution in an overtly political fantasy.
This is the sort of sequel that leaves me wondering if I can recommend
reading the first book and not the second, and that makes me sad.
Redemptor is not without its occasional flashes of brilliance, but
I did not have fun reading this book and I can't recommend the experience.
That said, I think this is a book problem, not an author problem; I will
happily read Ifueko's next novel, and I suspect it will be much better.
Rating: 5 out of 10
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