Adrienne Martini Reviews The Art of Destiny by Wesley Chu, The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O’Keefe, and The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab
The Art of Destiny, Wesley Chu (Del Rey 978-0-59323-766-3, $29.99, 651pp, hc) October 2023. Cover by Tran Nguyen.
The second book in a trilogy is always a rough go. You can’t pay off any of the larger story arcs you set up in the first book, but you still have to close out book two with a sense something has changed within your characters – but that they haven’t changed so much that they lack the initiative to go on to book three. Plus, the writer has to remind the reader what came before and who all of these people are and why we should care. And it’s got to sell well enough for the publisher to justify printing book three.
Wesley Chu’s The Art of Destiny is the second book in his War Arts Saga. The first book, The Art of Prophecy, was great fun. In it, Chu set up a world in which martial arts schools develop specific mystical powers (like one brand of fighters can skip through shadows or harness the wind or influence the mind). There’s also a prophecy – it’s right there on the tin – and young Jian knows his destiny is to kill the Khan. We learn early on that the Khan is dead, Jian had absolutely nothing to do with it, and no one is really certain what should happen next.
In The Art of Destiny, Jian and his teacher Tiandi are public enemies numbers one and two. They’ve been on the run but Tiandi is whipping her charge into something resembling a true war artist. Around that story, Chu continues wrapping the tales of Qisami the assassin and Sali the viperstrike – and makes it clear that all three fighters will meet before the larger plot unwinds. But not yet, of course, because this is book two.
That’s kind of the problem, which I hesitate to point out because the world Chu has built and the characters he’s created are so fun and interesting that I want to know how their stories wind up. The Art of Destiny starts strongly enough before losing momentum in the middle, which it never fully recovers from. Still, there’s a lot to enjoy here, even if the whole book lacks the snap of the first installment nor can it pay off all of its plots like it could in the last book.
The Blighted Stars, Megan E. O’Keefe (Orbit US 978-0-316-29079-1, $19.99, 483pp, tp) May 2023.
I am late to the Megan E. O’Keefe party. In my defense, there has been a lot of good and meaty SF/space opera lately and I can read only so quickly. On the upside, my delay in getting to The Blighted Stars means that the next book in the trilogy – The Fractured Dark – is already available. Procrastination is best when you can follow it with instant gratification, you know?
O’Keefe introduces us to her meticulously constructed world through the eyes of Tarquin, the young male heir to the Mercator empire, which spans solar systems and is one of five families in control of all human needs. Tarquin, frankly, would rather be in his lab studying rocks rather than exploring new worlds. He’s pulled onto this mission to an undiscovered planet in order to clear his family’s name.
That whole endeavor goes pear-shaped in the opening pages. Rather than stride triumphantly down to the surface, Tarquin and a small cohort of the crew crash-land. Among them is Naira Sharp, a bodyguard of sorts who is not at all who she appears to be.
Which is where O’Keefe’s work catapults from fairly standard space opera meets romance (not that there’s anything wrong with that) into a more layered exploration of the philosophical implications of having a largely disposable body. See – most people are able to store their mental ‘‘maps’’ and have them decanted into their preferred physical shape at will. While this innovation makes interstellar travel much easier, it makes a fair chunk of actual life more complicated, to say nothing of all of the problems that can crop up when software glitches.
At its heart, however, The Blighted Stars is about a romance that develops while on the run from zombie-analogues and simultaneously solving a mystery. For the most part, despite a few sections where her words lack the polish of the rest of the text, O’Keefe pays our attention off with cash to spare. The main questions of this story are answered, even though there are larger arcs that are clearly in limbo. The Blighted Stars is a satisfying start of something delightful.
The Fragile Threads of Power, V.E. Schwab (Tor 978-0-7653-8749-3, $29.99, 656pp, hc) September 2023.
V.E. Schwab ventures back into the world of A Darker Shade of Magic with The Fragile Threads of Power. But if you haven’t read those earlier books, worry not. The Fragile Threads of Power lives on its own. While it might enhance the reading experience to know about Schwab’s four inter-leafed magic worlds, a new reader can easily tease out the underlying conceit. There are differing levels of magic in each world and only a very few people – called Antari – can jump between them. Unless, of course, someone discovers how to open a door just anyone can stroll through. That would change everything.
The pursuit of that device drives the plot, even though Schwab is very good at using character- driven stories to disguise this engine. We meet a merchant’s son whose reliance on stories leads him astray. She puts us on board a pirate ship, where Kell Maresh and Delilah Bard have created a cover story for their true goal. And she takes us to a repair shop whose foundation is a fiction. All of these stories will intersect. When they do, it feels like a force of nature rather than a devised plan.
That’s the magic trick that makes Schwab’s work so engaging. It’s part of what drove her The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue up the bestseller charts. With The Fragile Threads of Power, she proves her success at compelling narratives isn’t a fluke.
Adrienne Martini has been reading or writing about science fiction for decades and has had two non-fiction, non-genre books published by Simon and Schuster. She lives in Upstate New York with one husband, two kids, and one corgi. She also runs a lot.
This review and more like it in the December and January 2023 issue of Locus.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.
©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.
