Review by mallorypen - Phantom and Rook

mallorypen 's review for:

Phantom and Rook by Aelina Isaacs

2.75

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

While the bones of this novel were good, it needed an editor. Badly.

From a pacing perspective, there was simultaneously too much and not enough happening at once. Too much, because the details about the kinds of people, the interpersonal relationships, the game, the history of the city, the history of Arlo's personal life, etc. etc. etc. were piled on in such a way that it was genuinely hard to follow. Not enough, because at one point I was wondering when the climax of the story would arrive, and the book was almost 80% finished.

And then the climax,

when Caspian solved the game and got his wish? BIG eyeroll. A literal deus ex machina ... that somehow, though it is never mentioned anywhere else in the novel, Thatch is able to make happen with his own magic? All along, could he have been freed if someone made a wish asking for his freedom?

It's all very Genie in the lamp, and I would have liked that so much more if there were breadcrumbs leading up to it. As it stands, it feels like super lazy writing.

The interpersonal relationships were ... a lot.

Arlo is an orphan. We don't learn why he isn't with his parents, or what happened to them. By all accounts his time at the orphanage is heartwarmingly positive, and he's now a live-in adult there because of Other Traumas.
We learn that well before our story begins,
Arlo first falls in love with a fellow orphan, who then - basically out of nowhere - becomes xenophobic against magic users, except he's a magic user too? And the reader only knows this because of a handful of paragraphs. Then, ex lover tries to murder Arlo, fails at that, then becomes a power-hungry witch power-stealing murderer who then has to be killed by Arlo himself? And none of this struggle to save the city is fleshed out beyond a mentioned here and there.
That by itself is a major plot point, but given very little context or weight.
Speaking of the city and Arlo's relative importance in it: Arlo is also a super-powered witch. There's literally nothing he is asked to do that his magic can't handle, even though he's supposed to have the speciality of being able to send ghosts between worlds. I
thought that might have more meaning, given that Thatch also moves between worlds,
but that connection is never mentioned or made to be important. As for his importance to the city - I would think he'd be hounded by media,
as the savior following The Taking. Instead, he's treated as just a regular guy, who sometimes can throw his Savior card
around when he needs to talk with city officials.
Then,
Arlo is in love with Caspian, who then finds his soulmate and leaves Arlo. Arlo acknowledges in the latter half of the novel that Caspian was just bi-curious and not actually into Arlo romantically, but he was still devastated and depressed enough from two rejections that he tries to kill himself.
All of Arlo's friends had big personalities - which I don't mind - except that the big personalities took quite a bit of page time to develop, and didn't exactly add to the overarching plot beyond set dressing.

A lot of this book was just simply confusing, without a big "a-ha!" moment where everything comes together. There's no explanation as to why Thatch's existence is the way it is, or why the gods

won't allow him free will. There's a quick "the watchers taught people how to read, and therefore, no more free will!" moment,

but ... it's not explained why the gods extracted that price. Also, Leon being dead but trying to come back to cause trouble comes up as a major thing to worry about, but then we just ... didn't really hear about him again.

Other, smaller things - like the term "leva" and what it means, though it's used in important moments throughout the novel - continued to stick out as unanswered questions that make me think the author has a massive headcanon about the lore of their world, and only shared 30% of the necessary context with us via the novel.

I did like the characters, and the concept of the world even if the worldbuilding itself was a little choppy, particularly the idea of an immortal loving a place so much that they help mould the development of the society through the use of puzzles and games. I thought Arlo and Thatch were interesting and dynamic, and their relationship was very sweet (if fast, in the sense that the main plot of the novel took place over a week's time). I love

a HEA moment

, and this did deliver. These elements earned the amount of stars I gave this book.

I will not be reading more from the series, however.

Content Warnings