Reviews

The Broken Crown by Michelle West

jackshaftoe21's review against another edition

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5.0

I discovered Michelle West a few months ago. I started with The Hidden City which was an incredibly gripping, very personal, story. The next two volumes of the House War series increased the scope of the story but I found them a little too long and the action scenes somewhat difficult to follow. Still, I wanted to keep reading the larger Essalieyan series because I enjoy the author's approach to characterization very much. I decided to leave The Sacred Hunt duology for later because apparently lots of its plot developments are shown in the House War series anyway.

So I started reading The Broken Crown thinking it might take me a while to get used to the new cast and wondering when I will get back to Jewel and company. I was wrong. Michelle West has the marvelous ability to put you "in the head", so to speak, of every character. From the start I was enthralled by Teresa, Diora, Sendari and the rest. Everyone has a radically different point of view, everyone's actions make total sense from their perspective, everyone has flaws. Some of the bad guys commit monstrous acts but you catch yourself feeling bad for them from time to time. Just wonderful characterization with some really tragic moments that will hit you hard if you like certain characters.

The worldbuilding is interesting - the country where most of the action takes place is basically a mixture of Arabia and Japan - there is a huge emphasis on honor and combat prowess and strict segregation of sexes. But unlike most stories with similar settings where female characters can only shine if they openly defy the sexist system, here we have the likes of Teresa and Diora working from within. Instead of hating all other inhabitants of the harems where they live and vying for the men's attention, they cherish the bonds they create with the lower ranked women in these harems. But while they are mostly sympathetic, they still abuse their serfs occasionally and don't fully realize own privilege.

The contrast with the neighboring Essalieyan empire is also interesting. Essalieyan is a lot more egalitarian but hardly a paradise, either, especially for the poor. There is a long history of enmity between the two countries and it seems like the main challenge in the series will be finding a way of uniting their forces to face their common enemy.

The main plot hinges on intrigues. Lots and lots of intrigues. Demons plot against humanity. Humans plot against other humans with the help of demons. Nobles plot against their rulers and against each other. Priests clash with secular authorities. Intricate plans upon intricate plans, plots within plots.

If Goodreads allowed it, my rating would be 4.5 stars rather than 5 because West seems to have the tendency to show some really important scenes only in dialogue after they have occurred or in short flashbacks - after spending lots and lots of pages meticulously setting up these same scenes. Sure, sometimes less is more but not always. Also, the use of seer abilities for driving the plot forward can feel a little too convenient sometimes.

All in all, an underrated book. If you are a fan of Robin Hobb, Lois Bujold, Kate Elliott or character-driven fantasy in general this might be right up your alley.

el_reads17's review against another edition

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Dropped at 48%

mxsallybend's review against another edition

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3.0

This was a good read, at times a great one, but I struggled with all the names and titles. I'm all for immersive world-building, but as we began shifting between North and South, between different societies, each with their own politics and mythologies, I found myself getting lost. Additionally, I chafed against the (at times) glacial pacing, with the book getting bogged down just as it seems to be moving forward, time and time again.

All that said, I'm still interested in seeing how it all plays out, curious how the subtle power of women like Diora & Teresa gets developed. I may be rushing to pick up the second but, at some time, I'm confident it'll find its way into my hands.

blodeuedd's review against another edition

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*yawns* I have the worst of luck. This one, bleh from the start. I made it to page 50 and did not even bother to skim the rest cos it was too bloody long and boring to skim.

I was confused, wtf was the book even about?

winterreader40's review against another edition

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4.0

This book picks up 1 year after the previous book and it's a rough start as the prologue is a kidnapping and rape, the rape isn't on page and the injury description is extremely vague. The point of this is that the lord of the hells wants a godborn child and only a healer born would be able to survive the event long enough to give it to him, her name is Kiriel.
Most of the story takes place in the Dominion a place where a woman's only job is to be graceful, lovely and quiet. Teresa and her niece Diora are these things but they also have the bardic voice which has ruined Teresa's life as her family never let her leave so she hides Diora's talent so that she can have a normal life. She is married to the heir of the highest clan in the land but it all ends in heartbreak when her father and his friend decide to wipe out the line and take their place as the leaders of the country.
This series is also extremely dense with a huge cast of characters including Valedan(the lone surviving Leonne heir) and Kiriel(daughter of darkness)and we see Jewel, now 32 in Essalieyan. While a good portion of the MC's are are in their late teens, they never feel that young.

siavahda's review against another edition

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4.0

HIGHLIGHTS
~you don’t have to be the serpent under ’t to be badass as a flower
~the Dark Chosen One is feral
~don’t fuck with Ospreys
~the sun sword is not a metaphor
~you should be very afraid of three rings

I love the idea of Epic Fantasy – of big, sprawling stories where the fate of all-and-everything is at stake, rich with magic and adventures and people fighting in whatever way they can so others who will never know their names might be able to live in a world with at least a little less suffering in it. But for a long time, I thought I didn’t enjoy Epic Fantasy, since pretty much every title that got recced to me was strongly Do Not Want.

Then someone suggested I try Epic Fantasy that wasn’t written by cishet white guys, and you know what??? That did the trick. (If you love Epic Fantasy but haven’t yet read Kate Elliott’s Crown of Star series??? You need to go read that.)

The Sun Sword series has been on my TBR list for a very long time – years and years – but I kept bouncing off it. In fact, I bounced off it five times. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get past the first few chapters – after an incredible prologue, the first chapters were slow and heavy and very far away from the places and people I was now interested in. But I wanted to read – and like! – this book so badly that I came back for a sixth shot this year, and for whatever reason, this time something clicked. And once I was in, I was completely swept away by the truly epic (in scope and in execution) story West has written here.

In the prologue, a woman with the magical ability to heal is kidnapped and raped to bear the child of the darkest of gods – a pregnancy she doesn’t abort (which her powers would allow her to do) because of a promise that her child might tip the balance in a war that’s coming; the vibe I got was of a dark Chosen One type of thing going on, which definitely got my attention.

But we don’t get to see that child for a while: the first chapter opens in the Dominion, a hot desert land with a, I must be honest, boringly patriarchal society. Women have no legal rights here, men take multiple wives and concubines, and the worth of a man is his worth as a warrior. Etc. That’s not to say there’s nothing original about the worldbuilding here, because there is, but I am capital-t Tired of this kind of nonsense. Which is probably why I struggled with it all those other times I tried to read this book.

The Broken Crown is very much a book about feminine strength – not female strength, feminine strength. The kind of strength that lies in being meek and quiet and biddable and pleasant, and preferably beautiful. The kind that has nothing to do with swords and horses and war. The kind that is often overlooked and almost always undervalued. This isn’t at all the only kind of female strength we see – outside the Dominion, women can be House Lords, warriors, queens, priestesses, and around the halfway mark of Broken Crown we do start to spend some time in these not-so-distant lands with their very different culture. We see a good number of women who are very impressive with swords and soldiers indeed. And they’re important too.

But there’s something very subversive about writing an Epic Fantasy that, at its heart, revolves around the actions of women everyone believes have no power to act. Especially, I think, in 1997, which is when The Broken Crown was first published.

Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!

charlotekerstenauthor's review against another edition

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“Be careful, Na’dio,” Serena said softly. “Remember that the heart is a dangerous land, and there is not one more painful to have to leave once it is full entered.”

This discussion will feature a discussion of sexual violence as well as spoilers.

So What’s It About?

The Dominion, once divided by savage clan wars, has kept an uneasy peace within its border since that long-ago time when the clan Leonne was gifted with the magic of the Sun Sword and was raised up to reign over the five noble clans. But now treachery strikes at the very heart of the Dominion as two never meant to rule–one a highly skilled General, the other a master of the magical arts–seek to seize the crown by slaughtering all of clan Leonne blood

What I Thought

You guys! I fucking made it through this book, and I want that to go on both my gravestone and my resume because it quite possibly the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life. I ended up struggling with it so much that I winnowed away at it over the course of several months, but I DID IT.

I didn’t hate it, but it happens to be the most willfully obtuse, irritatingly intricate epic fantasy I’ve ever read. And y’all know that I’m already at something of a Brain Disadvantage with epic fantasies – I just don’t have a good head for keeping track of thousands of interchangeable nobles who all hate each other for various reasons that are mentioned once and then never again. It felt like there were literally 7,000 various interchangeable men with names like Tyr Fileppo kai di’Ramero wandering around making Portentous Statements at each other, and 90% of my mental faculties were occupied with trying to keep them straight.

It also doesn’t help that I am simply not a fan of West’s writing style. There is intricate language, there is purple prose, and then there is whatever you would call her style of writing. The best word I can find to describe it is “ponderous” in the extreme. There is just so much to wade through, and the writing alone causes the pace to slow to an absolute crawl. What’s more, people constantly talk circles around each other, making these vague and weighty statements and leaving you to sift through the dialogue to figure out what’s actually going on. Between the writing style, the pacing and the massive number of boring characters and shifting allegiances to keep track of I found that I could only read a little bit of the book at a time without getting overwhelmed.

It’s a shame that I found so many things about the book offputting, because I do genuinely believe West has a great, compelling to story to tell here! It just gets lost in the way that it is conveyed. This is very much a story of direct power vs. indirect power in a richly-realized non-Western fantasy setting, and it discusses the ways that power is masculinized and feminized. In the Dominion, women are little more than ornamental sex objects to collect and have decorate your harem, and West has many interesting reflections to offer on what it would be like for a woman to exist within such a powerless position but nevertheless continue to fight and find meaning in her life where she can. This is essentially Diora’s story – she is told again and again that she should not develop any kind of attachments because they will simply be turned against her and used against her in the ruthless political landscape of the Dominion, where a woman is a disposable object and may be set aside or killed on a whim:

The desire to be loved—it is a false desire, a madness, a weakness. If you let it, it will control your life, and it will lead you down roads, in the end, that even the damned don’t travel.

Sold away to an influential but brutal husband, Diora nevertheless opens her heart to the women of her harem and finds love, meaning and sisterhood with them. To be honest this is the only happy part of the book and it is quickly ripped away when Diora’s father murders the husband’s entire household in a coup. Diora, possessing only indirect power, has no way of stopping this from happening and must find out how to live in the world after losing the only people who loved her and treated her with goodness – especially now that she must return to the household of the man who stole everything away from her. She must not grieve, cannot show that she has been wounded, is mandated to continue being the perfect, beautiful woman that she always has been. But beneath the still waters she has decided that she will use her position of visibility to make a statement to the men who think they can take whatever they want with no repercussions. She is not a warrior, and most would consider her little more than a pretty ornament, but she nevertheless devotes the rest of her life to fighting back against the men who view women’s lives as entirely disposable in their pursuit of power:

Threaten things loved, and a woman might buckle in terror, fold, and give in to any demand until such a time as she might come upon the means to end the threat permanently. But destroy those things, and you destroyed the life, if not the living, of the woman who so loved. Living ghosts were always dangerous.

I have seen other readers argue that this book is simply too full of violence against women and that only Diora is exempt from it because she is the special protagonist, and I can understand that perspective. A shocking number of women die and experience sexual violence in this book, and I do certainly object to lots of violence against women in fantasy novels, but much more so if the author uses it cheaply and exploitatively. In this case I do think that the violence happens because West has something meaningful to say about the functions and mores of power and oppression and how people may try to find agency within those functions and mores. That doesn’t necessarily make it easier to read, however!

There are other parts to the story, certainly, as it is a sprawling epic fantasy – the demons are plotting something, and demonspawn Kiriel appears to be central to their nefarious goals, while the coup in the Dominion may be only the beginning of the blood shed over the throne. However I’d argue that Diora’s story is truly what is at the heart of this book, and that’s why I’ve given it the most attention here. If I knew what I was getting myself into with this book from the start I might honestly not have read it, but I’m pretty proud that I did and I don’t exactly regret it either.

eososray's review against another edition

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2.0

This book seemed to take so long to finish. It was complicated and I have to admit to not being that interested in the story or the characters. Thankfully I persisted and I continued with the series. It gets so much better and the slog through the first book is worth every minute just to get to the rest.
The easiest way to consider this book is that it's the set up to the rest of the series. You meet the characters, you start to understand the storyline, the cites and people and it's just enough to propel you into the next book.
So my advise is to read on, it gets so very much better.

spiringempress's review against another edition

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4.0

In the morning, she would wake, and she would plan. Because she had declared war, and now she must fight it. Nothing else was left her. Nothing at all.

West's The Broken Crown is completely unique and unlike any fantasy book that I have ever come across before. The closest comparison is ASOIAF and only because the book contains a cast of characters with their individual agendas and goals, as well as, establishing a foundation for an epic and drawn out story. However, it is not a true comparison and no one should expect this series to be anything like ASOIAF because it is wholly original with some standout characters.

The story starts in one place and then continues with a set of characters in the Dominion of Annagar, where the clan Tor Leonne reigns dominant. It focuses on the clan Marano that consists of two brothers, Sendari and Adano, who vie for control of the indomitable Serra Theresa, who possesses the gift of the voice. The voice is hinted to be the ability to control the actions of other people, as well as, read the intention behind people's words. Serra Theresa has spent her entire life behind the closed doors of the clan Marano. She also promised to take care of her brother and his late wife's daughter, Diora, who also possesses the voice.

Overall, the story is split between Diora's childhood and her venture into womanhood. In the first part, West establishes the history of the clan Marano and the various relationships between Serra Theresa and her brothers. Adano is a talented military man while Sendari has always favored scholarly pursuits and desires to become Widan, a type of wise man who learns to perform magic. He was also married to Alora, who died giving birth to Diora. Both Serra Theresa and Sendari hold Alora in esteem and made individual promises to keep Diora safe.

Diora's hand is eventually promised to the rising heir within the clan of Tor Leonne. Unbeknownst to her, Sendari along with his friend General Alesso are planning to root out the clan and take over the seat of power. This, of course, leads to a lot of political machinations and an exploration of the system present in the Dominion, which must be carefully maneuvered for Sendair and Alesso to be successful. However, what they fail to take into account is the wrath of a scorned woman, who has made a promise to her sisters by marriage.

This is not an easy book to read. If you think George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan are detailed-oriented and love to expand on the smallest detail of their book, character, or plot then you'll be impressed that West takes it to another level. Therefore, this is not the book/series for everyone. West explores her characters in-depth and the plots that they become involved in by looking at their daily activities and exchanges. It, therefore, will not appeal to someone, who likes fast-paced fantasy or traditional storylines in this genre.

My only criticism has to do with the cast of characters and how they are featured. The book opens with a healer from the isle of Averalaan Aramarelas, who is abducted by a man named Isladar. It is hinted that he serves a Lord, who is evil. Part of this involves the healer, Askeyia, who is sexually assaulted and becomes pregnant with a child named Kiriel, who can turn the tides of the war against the Lord of Hell. The book also introduces another woman, who goes to take care of Kiriel. However, the next part switches to the characters in Tor Leonne and Kiriel resurfaces later as the political landscape unfolds. It is a weird transition and while the beginning communicated Kiriel's importance, the rest of the book fails to extol on this. However, I am sure that the sequel will explore this more in-depth


pemdas97's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0