Reviews tagging 'War'

Armistice by Lara Elena Donnelly

2 reviews

owenblacker's review

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adventurous dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

(This review will include spoilers for the prequel, Amberlough.)

Three years after the events of the prequel, we return to (some of) the key characters from that first part. While Amberlough, about the inevitable fall of the eponymous city to fascism, is a tough read — seeing Cyril, one of our protagonists, blackmailed into selling out his country in order to save the lives of himself and his lover before falling into the docks after being shot, while Aristide (Cyril’s lover) and his cabaret co-headliner Cordelia do what they can to impede the fash and keep themselves safe, in Aristide’s case, hoping to see Cyril meet him in the rural hinterlands so they may flee together.

In Armistice, Aristide has made it to Porachis, a North Africa analogue over the sea, where he is involved in the film industry and close friends with a rich scion of the royal family; the first chapter sees Cordelia also arrive there, having fled Gedda after co-organising the resistance against the Ospie fascists for a few years. We don’t know about Cyril’s fate, but his sister Lilian is a new major protagonist senior diplomat in Porachis, head of communications in the Geddan embassy, her cooperation guaranteed by her son, hostage to the Ospies in a prestigious boarding school back in Gedda. These 3 Geddans are joined by fascists, arms dealers and princes to bring our story through further spying and plotting while hoping to weaken the Ospies’ rule in Gedda.

While, like Reading while Queer, I was initially concerned that Porachis might become an exoticised background for the pseudo-Western adventure, it was good to see that Porachin politics and mores were no less important than the Geddan and the Porachin characters are fully realised and just as vital to the plot as the Geddan refugees. This is not the same glitz and glamour as its prequel — though also not the same sense of constantly-impending doom. While Goodreads reviews mention it suffering from “middle book syndrome”, it’s still good fun and I’m definitely looking forward to completing the trilogy with Amnesty early in 2022, not wanting both to start and to complete the Green Bone Saga and this in the same year. 
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octopus_farmer's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I was so frightened that
it would all go wrong
. I liked the mix of old and new characters, and a particular scene halfway through really made me want to finish it.
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