5/5 stars on Goodreads
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| These Shattered Spires by Cassidy Ellis Salter |
These Shattered Spires is the author’s debut novel and it’s wonderfully well-formed and mature for one. It’s not an easy read and it doesn’t aim to be one. It’s also not YA, despite the publisher advertising it as such. The main characters may be in their late teens, but the themes aren’t YA and the characters don’t behave or think of themselves as people on the cusp of adulthood. They’re survivors who know they’ll die at any moment. The atmosphere reminds me of Gormenghast, and the world that of Gideon the Ninth.
It’s seldom that a book stands so firmly on its unique world, but here it’s almost its own character. Fourspires Castle is the whole world to its residents. It has always existed at the brink of destruction by a daily apocalypse that has to be stopped with spells every morning by the four head arcanists that inhabit its four towers: black, red, green and grey, corresponding with the magic they wield: bone, blood, botany, and stone. Even with this ceaseless spellcasting, the castle slowly sinks and rots, disappearing piece by piece, diminishing the world. The rot and decay of the castle is described vividly, down to smells and tastes.
The fifth castle at the centre is occupied by the Thaumaturge, the most powerful of the arcanists. He’s centuries old, and his position is coveted by all the arcanists. Then the unthinkable happens and he’s assassinated, which triggers a battle for succession among the arcanists, the Slaughter. It’s a race to the top of the fifth tower, and as the name suggests, deadly, especially so for the familiars of the arcanists.
The familiars are humans trained to wrest, to pull arcania to power the arcanists spells. It’s incredibly painful for them and wears them out bodily. They’re treated badly (they’re not allowed to speak, they’re barely fed, and sleep on floors and filth) and used until they die, usually very young.
The main point of view characters are familiars of different disciplines. Tarenteeno (Taro) is the familiar of the bone arcanist; Nixeen (Nixie), the familiar of the botany arcanist; Elliot, the familiar of a lesser blood arcanist, and Alis/Alix, a disgraced stone familiar. Taro and Nixie have been plotting an escape, but the death of the Thaumaturge ruins their plans. The familiars are instantly marked as participants of the Slaughter and to escape is to die. To participate is to die too, because the new Thaumaturge will instantly kill all familiars but their own.
However, Taro and Nixie learn that the permanent apocalypse of their world isn’t the natural state of things and that there might be a way to stop it and flee. They can’t do it alone though, so they talk the other two into taking part. It’s not an easy alliance or an easy task to pull off, but neither is the Slaughter.
The relationships of the four are complicated. They’ve all trained at the same time in the Pit, the academy for familiars. Taro and Nixie used to date, and Taro still thinks they’re romantically involved. Nixie hates her guts for a betrayal, but is using Taro to escape. Alis used to be Nixie’s best friend before Taro showed up, so she hates Taro, but she also hates Nixie for leaving her. But she loves her too. Elliot is the odd man out, but seems to be coveted and hated in equal measures by the others for his looks.
The characters aren’t nice or easy to root for. They’re selfish and brought down by their harsh life. Elliot is suffering from a curse that makes him especially irritable, Alis is having a gender crisis, Nixie is filled with hate, and Taro isn’t entirely sane. They ally and betray each other, sometimes within the same chapter, and none of them is very likeable. But little by little, reader becomes attached to them, which isn’t wise when people casually and constantly die.
This isn’t an easy book to read. There is pain and suffering inflicted on the main characters, blood and gore, broken body parts and death. It’s not a splatter though, the narrative doesn’t dwell on the gory details, or even a grimdark as such. Suffering is a natural part of the characters’ lives and the narrative treats it so naturally that the reader doesn’t even blink an eye when a character cuts into their own flesh to power a spell. Nonetheless, it does make this a heavy read, and I had to pace myself a lot.
But there is also an undercurrent of hope for something better, an escape that is worth all the pain. This current carried the story against all odds and the harsh reality. Sometimes it paid off, sometimes it plunged the characters even deeper.
A countdown to the Slaughter at the beginning of every chapter keeps the tension rising as the four try to break the curse. And then it begins—and turns out to be something completely different from what everyone believed, as is the end of the curse. For a first book in a trilogy, the ending is fairly conclusive. It sets the stage for the next book, but the story can be left here as well. I’d read more though.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
