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hotpinkmess's review
Given the reviews of this book, I desperately wanted to like it.
I thoroughly enjoyed the original take and strangeness on a unique magic system that I don't recall encountering quite like it, and there were moments of beautiful prose smattered here and there--but the pacing of this story was too fast for me. Characters seemed so immature and young, with stilted dialogue that didn't quite seem to fit them and their circumstances or ages. There were moments of such quicksilver emotional changes that jarred me from the story.
It wants to be a grimdark fantasy, and elements of that genre are present. Yet the quick way the book skips through everything makes it seem like an afterthought with little emotional impact on the reader.
I wasn't able to feel like I should care about anything.
And that is a shame because, again, this story has so much potential. It's so close to doing what I think it wants to do--but falls short of being emotionally impactful. I found myself skipping dialogue or skimming it when possible and realized that I was purposefully skipping pages trying to get to parts that would capture my interest.
I want to like this book, but I cannot. I am more than willing to keep giving the author's future books a try, but this one will have to go on my DNF.
I thoroughly enjoyed the original take and strangeness on a unique magic system that I don't recall encountering quite like it, and there were moments of beautiful prose smattered here and there--but the pacing of this story was too fast for me. Characters seemed so immature and young, with stilted dialogue that didn't quite seem to fit them and their circumstances or ages. There were moments of such quicksilver emotional changes that jarred me from the story.
It wants to be a grimdark fantasy, and elements of that genre are present. Yet the quick way the book skips through everything makes it seem like an afterthought with little emotional impact on the reader.
I wasn't able to feel like I should care about anything.
And that is a shame because, again, this story has so much potential. It's so close to doing what I think it wants to do--but falls short of being emotionally impactful. I found myself skipping dialogue or skimming it when possible and realized that I was purposefully skipping pages trying to get to parts that would capture my interest.
I want to like this book, but I cannot. I am more than willing to keep giving the author's future books a try, but this one will have to go on my DNF.
barb4ry1's review
4.0
Seraphina’s Lament breaks genres, conventions and taboos.
Set in a secondary world based on the Russian Revolution and the Holodomor, it gives a detailed look at a dying world.
A collectivist government controlled by an ex-revolutionary, Premier Eyad, used to have noble objectives. Things and people changed. Rulers inflict starvation, forced labour, and death on their subjects. Rampant famine forces people to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty and despair, including cannibalism. Magic leaks from the world.
Seraphina, a slave with a unique fire affinity, escapes her tormentors and joins revolutionaries. She wants Eyad dead. Her anger consumes her humanity. The same happens to other protagonists. As they head to Lord‘s Reach city to fight a corrupted government, they undergo significant changes. Some of them start to Become.
Seraphina’s Lament is a dark and unsettling book. Using elements of fantasy, horror, symbolism, magical realism and allegory, it dives into metaphysics and creation of gods.
Food, eating, and starvation represent life, death, guilt, and withheld love. Early in the book readers get to know Taub who undergoes a shocking metamorphosis. Chorn describes radical changes (mutations?) in such hallucinatory detail that I had to stop and reread chosen passages to picture them accurately. We can see protagnists’ bodily torment and share their disgust and terror when they first witness and experience it.
You’ll know early in the novel if her writing style works for you. It switches from poetic and allegorical to no-nonsense. I loved parts of it, but had to slowly reread others to see things. Some similes didn’t work for me. Others felt creative and imaginative. Chorn’s writing is dense and her story is so different from mainstream fantasy that I expect it to divide the audience.
Some will “get it”, while others will feel lost and helpless. I like allegories and Seraphina’s Lament may appeal to readers who enjoyed themes of unbecoming pictured in Dyachenko’s brilliant Vita Nostra.
Seraphina‘s Lament is a strong debut. It evokes feelings of futility, confusion, and helplessness, but I wouldn‘t call it nihilistic. It ends with a glimmer of hope.
It impressed me and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.
Set in a secondary world based on the Russian Revolution and the Holodomor, it gives a detailed look at a dying world.
A collectivist government controlled by an ex-revolutionary, Premier Eyad, used to have noble objectives. Things and people changed. Rulers inflict starvation, forced labour, and death on their subjects. Rampant famine forces people to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty and despair, including cannibalism. Magic leaks from the world.
Seraphina, a slave with a unique fire affinity, escapes her tormentors and joins revolutionaries. She wants Eyad dead. Her anger consumes her humanity. The same happens to other protagonists. As they head to Lord‘s Reach city to fight a corrupted government, they undergo significant changes. Some of them start to Become.
Seraphina’s Lament is a dark and unsettling book. Using elements of fantasy, horror, symbolism, magical realism and allegory, it dives into metaphysics and creation of gods.
Food, eating, and starvation represent life, death, guilt, and withheld love. Early in the book readers get to know Taub who undergoes a shocking metamorphosis. Chorn describes radical changes (mutations?) in such hallucinatory detail that I had to stop and reread chosen passages to picture them accurately. We can see protagnists’ bodily torment and share their disgust and terror when they first witness and experience it.
You’ll know early in the novel if her writing style works for you. It switches from poetic and allegorical to no-nonsense. I loved parts of it, but had to slowly reread others to see things. Some similes didn’t work for me. Others felt creative and imaginative. Chorn’s writing is dense and her story is so different from mainstream fantasy that I expect it to divide the audience.
Some will “get it”, while others will feel lost and helpless. I like allegories and Seraphina’s Lament may appeal to readers who enjoyed themes of unbecoming pictured in Dyachenko’s brilliant Vita Nostra.
Seraphina‘s Lament is a strong debut. It evokes feelings of futility, confusion, and helplessness, but I wouldn‘t call it nihilistic. It ends with a glimmer of hope.
It impressed me and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.
tarmunvykers's review
5.0
This book is difficult to describe, and I won't shy away from the fact it challenged me. It offers us a glimpse of an alternate-universe Russia after the fall of the last Tsar. There is a plot, of course, but what Seraphina's Lament is really giving us is the meticulously landscaped emotional interior of its characters, as they face a variety of dilemmas, both mundane and supernatural (or divine). This is a novel about feelings and ideas more than deeds, and if you can make that leap, you'll find it extremely rewarding. It is also refreshing, I must say, to depart from the more-typical fantasy settings and explore Chorn's rich setting and world-building. But be warned: this world is very grim indeed, with less joy than you might find in your average prison camp. All in all, it's a read I will not soon forget.
zefrien's review
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
yarnycharlie's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
alexkhlopenko's review
4.0
Originaly for Three Crows Magazine.
Before delving into the review, it is important to establish my bias towards the premise of “Seraphina’s Lament”. I was recommended this book because I’m a Ukrainian and the novel is based on the Soviet genocide of Ukrainians called Holodomor. I was excited and highly suspicious, and naturally so – western writers, even those diligent in their research, usually butcher any topic that is not in their high school curriculum.
Fun fact for the uninitiated – Joseph Stalin and Soviet government in 1931-1933 used artificial famine to suppress the growing unrest, labour strikes, rise of Ukrainian intellectualism, and other fun counterrevolutionary activities. They called it collectivization and used the stolen collected food supply to sell to western democracies in exchange for technologies and machinery. Thus, happened the Soviet miracle of industrialization which cost roughly 10 million lives. My grand grandfather was a head of a kolhoz and was shot for distributing grain to people. My grandmother lost four siblings to starvation and never let a bread crumb fall.
Yet, I was pleasantly surprised by how Sarah Chorn approached the issue and, not without certain reservations, executed the premise of the book.
“Seraphina’s Lament” follows a diverse cast – from a farmer who resorts to cannibalism in the face of starvation, to a group of counterrevolutionaries, to the head of revolutionary government Premier Eyad. Giving a POV to every party and strata of the conflict, not limiting it to lamentations and whining of the oppressed (the Ukrainian literary style of writing about any tragedy) or the power fantasy of the oppressor (the American way). This balanced approach lets the reader delve into the minds of everyone involved, thus blurring the lines of good and bad, further defining the grimdark genre alignment of the novel.
The plot develops in a crescendo, from the degeneration of the common folk and resorting to cannibalism, to the eventual death of the world in a blaze of glorious birth of the new gods. Literal cleansing of the world, and letting it start from scratch is a symbolic offer of a way to deal with a tragedy like that, once again, considering the premise and reality of Holodomor – the nation was not cleansed, there were no consequences for the perpetrators and not justice for the victims.
Inadvertently, Sarah Chorn assumes the role of Tolkien’s Queen of Valar – Nienna, who endlessly wept, turning the grief into wisdom.
Grimdark fantasy has been famous and often criticized for glorifying the over-the-top violence, rape, huge-ass battles, and gore overflowing the pages. It is not always entirely true, but many of the authors are sinful in this regard.
“Seraphina’s Lament” does a wonderful job of not glorifying the atrocities it is depicting, without playing the outside neutral spectator. It shows and condemns the crimes against humanity, without resorting to unnecessary apologism that can be seen in regard to real events (i.e Churchill or Stalin apologists).
Sarah Chorn doesn’t shy away from describing collectivism, enslavement, torture, and what touched me the most – children eating children (this one will stay with me for a long time), in great detail, yet in good taste.
I found Chorn’s idealistic approach to the communal understanding of the nuclear family as a cell of society curious . She turned it all the way to eleven and shown how a community of co-dependent, loving people could live together under collectivism without religious or societal dogma regarding sexuality or family values. It felt fresh and on par with the best thought experiments in science-fiction.
At the same time, from my perspective, it feels like there was a lot more to use from the premise – the period of establishment of Soviet power had much more to offer in terms of human drama, the conflict between a person and the repressive system. More than just the backdrop. And yet it is 100% more coverage and use of the underlying topic than ever before, which deserves praise and respect.
Chorn’s prose may be my biggest reservation about this book. The novel declines to fall into the general trend of using simplistic, straightforward sentences and goes all in on Proustian grandeur. Multi-layered metaphors, repetition, callbacks, and purpleness of the prose rivals that of Abercombie or even Anna Smith Spark. It works in lush descriptions of the emotional distress of the characters, the desolate landscape of the Sunset Lands and Lord’s Reach, but when the same toolkit is used in dialogues they sometimes fall flat, sounding like something written by Terry Pratchett or, god-forbid, Tommy Wiseau.
The novel signals a significant shift of interest for western English-speaking SFF writers and their audiences. Increasingly more of them turn from beating the dead horse of Tolkien’s legendarium and Arthurian mythos, to cultures and histories less explored. Sarah Chorn is maybe among the first to pay attention and depict the atrocities of Holodomor in genre literature and it warms my heart.
“Seraphina’s Lament” offers a fresh setting, interesting characters, and researches into Holodomor, an issue generally disregarded by western audiences and writers and is a precisely executed novel with a few caveats could be easily disregarded by the reader not familiar with the issue before.
Before delving into the review, it is important to establish my bias towards the premise of “Seraphina’s Lament”. I was recommended this book because I’m a Ukrainian and the novel is based on the Soviet genocide of Ukrainians called Holodomor. I was excited and highly suspicious, and naturally so – western writers, even those diligent in their research, usually butcher any topic that is not in their high school curriculum.
Fun fact for the uninitiated – Joseph Stalin and Soviet government in 1931-1933 used artificial famine to suppress the growing unrest, labour strikes, rise of Ukrainian intellectualism, and other fun counterrevolutionary activities. They called it collectivization and used the stolen collected food supply to sell to western democracies in exchange for technologies and machinery. Thus, happened the Soviet miracle of industrialization which cost roughly 10 million lives. My grand grandfather was a head of a kolhoz and was shot for distributing grain to people. My grandmother lost four siblings to starvation and never let a bread crumb fall.
Yet, I was pleasantly surprised by how Sarah Chorn approached the issue and, not without certain reservations, executed the premise of the book.
“Seraphina’s Lament” follows a diverse cast – from a farmer who resorts to cannibalism in the face of starvation, to a group of counterrevolutionaries, to the head of revolutionary government Premier Eyad. Giving a POV to every party and strata of the conflict, not limiting it to lamentations and whining of the oppressed (the Ukrainian literary style of writing about any tragedy) or the power fantasy of the oppressor (the American way). This balanced approach lets the reader delve into the minds of everyone involved, thus blurring the lines of good and bad, further defining the grimdark genre alignment of the novel.
The plot develops in a crescendo, from the degeneration of the common folk and resorting to cannibalism, to the eventual death of the world in a blaze of glorious birth of the new gods. Literal cleansing of the world, and letting it start from scratch is a symbolic offer of a way to deal with a tragedy like that, once again, considering the premise and reality of Holodomor – the nation was not cleansed, there were no consequences for the perpetrators and not justice for the victims.
Inadvertently, Sarah Chorn assumes the role of Tolkien’s Queen of Valar – Nienna, who endlessly wept, turning the grief into wisdom.
Grimdark fantasy has been famous and often criticized for glorifying the over-the-top violence, rape, huge-ass battles, and gore overflowing the pages. It is not always entirely true, but many of the authors are sinful in this regard.
“Seraphina’s Lament” does a wonderful job of not glorifying the atrocities it is depicting, without playing the outside neutral spectator. It shows and condemns the crimes against humanity, without resorting to unnecessary apologism that can be seen in regard to real events (i.e Churchill or Stalin apologists).
Sarah Chorn doesn’t shy away from describing collectivism, enslavement, torture, and what touched me the most – children eating children (this one will stay with me for a long time), in great detail, yet in good taste.
I found Chorn’s idealistic approach to the communal understanding of the nuclear family as a cell of society curious . She turned it all the way to eleven and shown how a community of co-dependent, loving people could live together under collectivism without religious or societal dogma regarding sexuality or family values. It felt fresh and on par with the best thought experiments in science-fiction.
At the same time, from my perspective, it feels like there was a lot more to use from the premise – the period of establishment of Soviet power had much more to offer in terms of human drama, the conflict between a person and the repressive system. More than just the backdrop. And yet it is 100% more coverage and use of the underlying topic than ever before, which deserves praise and respect.
Chorn’s prose may be my biggest reservation about this book. The novel declines to fall into the general trend of using simplistic, straightforward sentences and goes all in on Proustian grandeur. Multi-layered metaphors, repetition, callbacks, and purpleness of the prose rivals that of Abercombie or even Anna Smith Spark. It works in lush descriptions of the emotional distress of the characters, the desolate landscape of the Sunset Lands and Lord’s Reach, but when the same toolkit is used in dialogues they sometimes fall flat, sounding like something written by Terry Pratchett or, god-forbid, Tommy Wiseau.
The novel signals a significant shift of interest for western English-speaking SFF writers and their audiences. Increasingly more of them turn from beating the dead horse of Tolkien’s legendarium and Arthurian mythos, to cultures and histories less explored. Sarah Chorn is maybe among the first to pay attention and depict the atrocities of Holodomor in genre literature and it warms my heart.
“Seraphina’s Lament” offers a fresh setting, interesting characters, and researches into Holodomor, an issue generally disregarded by western audiences and writers and is a precisely executed novel with a few caveats could be easily disregarded by the reader not familiar with the issue before.
ctgt's review
5.0
I am jagged edges and shattered glass. I have come to break the world.
A story set in a land suffering after a bloody shift from monarchism to collectivism.
Bleak, harsh, brutal with only a few rays of hope.
Multiple separate POVs converge, drawn together by an unknown force.
To what end? Destruction? Release for those under a harsh rule? Becoming?
You are not broken, Seraphina. You are art. You are the story of every battle you have ever won.
Only the strong would survive what was happening and he wanted her to be strong. He wanted her to Become. She’d run at him like the past, and he’d come at her like the future. They’d crash together like forces of nature. Their united purpose, their similar instincts, would drive them—and wouldn’t that be magnificent.
Like singing while the world burned.
Make no mistake, this is a dark book with some graphic moments. Moments that explore the depths to which man can stoop when faced with the harsh realities of life.
For a moment, she was overwhelmed by the texture of the world. The soft, covering up all that hard. She felt like she was wearing the universe backward. She dipped her toe into the pool of infinity, took a breath, and jumped. Forever slid over her skin. Stars wove themselves into her hair. She wore the world on a string around her neck. The sun and moon, earrings.
That darkness inside of her was waking up, and when it did, she would move mountains.
What caught me by surprise was the writing. At times mundane but with instances that really spoke to me.
She felt like glass, thin and hard. Transparent. The moment stretched until she thought she could hear it screaming. She wondered if she would shatter. If she’d spray shards of herself into the ether. Perhaps all of her jagged edges would shine in the night sky like stars, glittering and beautiful, each of them a priceless jewel crafted from the fabric of her soul.
He wore his tears like trophies, jewels bedecking his cheeks. Beautiful, and so very, very broken.
She felt like this had happened before, like she was playing a part in some big game. The world was a palimpsest. History written over history, until nothing was left but echoes and ghostly marks, the footsteps of today walking across the graves of yesterday.
I wavered between 4 and 5 stars but when I went back to check my highlights I had to go with 5 stars. The combination of an unusual setting and the wonderful moments of writing sealed the deal for me.
You have stars under your skin and infinity in your eyes.
10/10
A story set in a land suffering after a bloody shift from monarchism to collectivism.
Bleak, harsh, brutal with only a few rays of hope.
Multiple separate POVs converge, drawn together by an unknown force.
To what end? Destruction? Release for those under a harsh rule? Becoming?
You are not broken, Seraphina. You are art. You are the story of every battle you have ever won.
Only the strong would survive what was happening and he wanted her to be strong. He wanted her to Become. She’d run at him like the past, and he’d come at her like the future. They’d crash together like forces of nature. Their united purpose, their similar instincts, would drive them—and wouldn’t that be magnificent.
Like singing while the world burned.
Make no mistake, this is a dark book with some graphic moments. Moments that explore the depths to which man can stoop when faced with the harsh realities of life.
For a moment, she was overwhelmed by the texture of the world. The soft, covering up all that hard. She felt like she was wearing the universe backward. She dipped her toe into the pool of infinity, took a breath, and jumped. Forever slid over her skin. Stars wove themselves into her hair. She wore the world on a string around her neck. The sun and moon, earrings.
That darkness inside of her was waking up, and when it did, she would move mountains.
What caught me by surprise was the writing. At times mundane but with instances that really spoke to me.
She felt like glass, thin and hard. Transparent. The moment stretched until she thought she could hear it screaming. She wondered if she would shatter. If she’d spray shards of herself into the ether. Perhaps all of her jagged edges would shine in the night sky like stars, glittering and beautiful, each of them a priceless jewel crafted from the fabric of her soul.
He wore his tears like trophies, jewels bedecking his cheeks. Beautiful, and so very, very broken.
She felt like this had happened before, like she was playing a part in some big game. The world was a palimpsest. History written over history, until nothing was left but echoes and ghostly marks, the footsteps of today walking across the graves of yesterday.
I wavered between 4 and 5 stars but when I went back to check my highlights I had to go with 5 stars. The combination of an unusual setting and the wonderful moments of writing sealed the deal for me.
You have stars under your skin and infinity in your eyes.
10/10
rowena_m_andrews's review
5.0
Having read this book twice in twenty-four hours I can safely say that I am in love. It's beautifully written, and both the characters and world grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. It's gloriously dark, with a tendril of hope - the promise of the future - that pulls you through that darkness; and left thinking what would I, or people that I know do if we were in that city. A brilliant, disturbing look at humanity and how far people can and will go to survive.
marktimmony's review
4.0
I must admit I found this book a little tough to start with. It is written with beautiful prose but it took me some time to connect truly connect with the characters. Maybe because it is such dark subject matter - and while I have read 'grimdark' before I don't think I've read anything as grim or as dark as this- or the Holodomor that Chorn used to anchor her world (an actual real life historical event that is appalling - check it out).
I've read Chorn mention that she deliberately chose such vibrant and beautiful language because the subject matter is disturbing and confronting. It certainly makes for a remarkable and intense foil.
But I've followed Chorn online for a very long time so I stuck it out - and I am so glad I did. When this story shifted gears, when we reached the cliff - and were pushed off - the story exploded into an epic conflagration. And I am still reeling from the shock-waves.
Seraphina’s Lament is a brilliant grimdark fantasy with lyrical prose set in a world where love is love and same sex couples not a thing, they just are; Chorn also gives voice to the many readers out there who live with a disability but never see themselves reflected in the books they read.
If you enjoy fantasy that pushes boundaries while remaining epic in scope, that delves the soul while reaching for the stars, then I highly recommend you give this book a try.
I can't wait for book two - An Elegy for Hope - when it's done.
I've read Chorn mention that she deliberately chose such vibrant and beautiful language because the subject matter is disturbing and confronting. It certainly makes for a remarkable and intense foil.
But I've followed Chorn online for a very long time so I stuck it out - and I am so glad I did. When this story shifted gears, when we reached the cliff - and were pushed off - the story exploded into an epic conflagration. And I am still reeling from the shock-waves.
Seraphina’s Lament is a brilliant grimdark fantasy with lyrical prose set in a world where love is love and same sex couples not a thing, they just are; Chorn also gives voice to the many readers out there who live with a disability but never see themselves reflected in the books they read.
If you enjoy fantasy that pushes boundaries while remaining epic in scope, that delves the soul while reaching for the stars, then I highly recommend you give this book a try.
I can't wait for book two - An Elegy for Hope - when it's done.