Lily Yu is having a pre-wedding dinner with her family when the next strike in the ongoing battle against the Lupis’ ancient enemy strikes
And the victim is her mother – her memory is wiped out,
she thinks she is still a child again. And she is not the only victim.
And while the loss eats at Lily’s heart, reality itself
is under threat and she tries to find the truth behind this bizarre and
incomprehensible attack
I
mentioned in the last book how much I absolutely loved Lily because of her
professionalism, her logic, her intelligence; her careful way of addressing the
problems. I mention her actual investigative skills and how absolutely awesome
she is. Well I want to add another layer to that – I touched on her ethics last
book but I really need to praise her integrity. There’s an awesome element of
her not wanting to lead this investigation because it touches so close to her
family – but she’s actually trusted to lead it, especially the shadow unit
which has absolutely no accountability – because she is so concerned about the
lack of oversight and bias that she can be trusted to be fair. Her personally
acknowledged bias keeps her honest because her ethics, her integrity is so
reliable that she is the one who can be most relied upon to second guess
herself; that’s her integrity.
This is so special because of the genre; after all we
have no shortage of protagonists who simply have to shoot people in the head or
have to torture people. Usually with lots of angst about how terrible it is
they have to murder people but they totally have to do it. This is not Lily –
and not because she isn’t capable of murder. She knows she is – but that’s why
she has such an iron hard moral integrity
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Lily is an awesome protagonist with some awesome conflicts (including her difficulties with faith and her history as to why).
And this book lets us look more at her family, especially
her mother. Like so many protagonists in this genre (I say this a lot about
this series because they’re really good at subverting a surprising amount), Lily
doesn’t have a great relationship with her mother. Even her larger family is
something of a wider burden for Lily (except for Madame Yu who is, of course,
absolutely awesome in every word). So to see more of her family, to see her have
a full family, no-one tragically dead, no-one terrible or abusive. Just a
genuine family who aren’t perfect, but do care for each other. Characters who
can get really angry with each other but continue to move on and love
Through that we continue to see Lily’s relationship with
Rule – again with difficulties, not always understanding each other, often
being angry with each other but always loving each other, being patient and
trying to understand each other. No random misunderstanding causing a book long
loathing of each other – no, any difficulties are followed with understanding
always with underlying love. They work so excellently together – and it’s just
part of her ongoing complex and powerful relationships whether with Rule or
Cynna or Sam.
I’ve mentioned repeatedly how I like the world building
of this story now it has focused down more – and I really like that this book
is more willing to countenance that there are other forces out there: there isn’t
just the Lupis’ own war no matter how epic and all encompassing that is. There
are other forces, the influx of magic into the world has woke other powers –
while still keeping the focus overall still on that great battle and how it is
continuing to play out
This battle continues to be both intensely personal
(especially with Lily this book with it hitting so close to her family) and
widely epic which is such a wonderful balance to strike – and so hard to do
well. The plot is well paced, fascinating and shows off all this world and
characters to an excellent degree.
Lily is a WoC and with her family is all Asian. This is
never hidden or minor, never downplayed and definitely informs Lily’s and her
mother’s past in ways that are seen in their characterisation without
overwhelming stereotypes. We have a number of other POC through the book –
police and Lupi both include Black and Latino characters albeit not in any
major presence. We do have Hardy, a Black character. On the one hand he is
honoured because he is ultimately put on an incredibly high pedestal. But, at
the same time, he is sacrificed, he is there for his random woo-woo and there’s
no real characterisation or even meaningful development of him. We also have
Benedict and Nettie Two-Horses both of which are extremely meaningful characters
in the greater series
And I would definitely like to see more of Rule’s interaction
with Nettie which, in turn, excellently helps put a new lens on the way women
are treated in this society which started out so poorly. That ability,
determination to challenge the male characters makes them an integral authority.
The way she even resists the subtle claiming of Rule and the Lupi.
This book hasn’t put its LGBT characters back into the
plot box – but has kept them marginal. Li Qin and Madame Yu are there but not a
huge part of the book (and it seems any book where it is referenced is one where
they won’t play more than a supporting role). Lily and Rule’s minor gay
relatives continued to be minor characters. They’re there and not invisible
which is an improvement on every book but the last one – but nor is it
something I would say is particularly notable either.
I have to return again to the world, development and the
sheer creativity of this book. From the call back to Nathan and Kai and the
Sidhe Queens that have been nicely, subtly built up over the series – we have
this excellent growing world with more and more of the magic, the different
realms, the philosophy and rules along with the characters and history all
excellently moving all mixed with enough character development and awesome
action to keep it exciting. I love this series.
