REVIEW: BLOOD OVER BRIGHT HAVEN

God's Bounty...

After falling in love with THE SWORD OF KAIGEN, I was very curious to see what Wang's next big novel would be like. The reviews for this one are pretty mixed, so I was curious to see what my own thoughts would be on it.  

HOW I RATED IT 

4/5 While I don't think this is quite on the same level as THE SWORD OF KAIGEN, I still found myself just as engrossed and, at times, just as heartbroken as when I read Wang's breakout hit. 

CHARACTERS

As with Wang's previous book, the main cast is fairly small, with us mainly following the perspective of Sciona, an up-and-coming mage who's trying to break through the glass ceiling - in both a literal and figurative sense it would seem. She's spent the better part of two decades training relentlessly to do what no other woman has done before her and enter the High Ministry - a role which women are commonly considered too soft for. Thomil is our second main character and although we occasionally will have a chapter that follows him directly, we mostly get to know him through his time with Sciona. Though Sciona is trying to make it in a man's world, Thomil isn't part of that world. He's a Kwen who has found refuge in the city from a threat known only as "blight." At first, it almost sounded as though the Kwen were racially different from Sciona's people (the Tiranish) based on some early commentary about how they have some visually distinct facial traits and the fact that everyone can easily identify a Kwen on sight. Although there were some moments and themes distinctly reminiscent of different civil rights movements from American history, I ended up realizing that the prejudices against the Kwen could be better compared to what the Irish people first experienced when they immigrated to the United States. If it wasn't already clear, one of the central points of conflict in this book is how both of these characters must grapple with different forms of social injustice. While I will speak more on this in relation to the worldbuilding, I guess I will just say that there is a distinct lack of subtlety in how these themes are handled, but they are integral to the way these characters develop and how they engaged with different forms of prejudice and persecution ultimately proved to be quite compelling. 

Sciona and Thomil cross paths in a rather unexpected way early on in the story. The way they are paired up as High Mage and Assistant was initially meant as a slight to both of them and I really enjoyed how they each responded to that tense situation. The way that their relationship evolves from there continued to be one of the main highlights of the story. There's certainly a bit of a vague romance angle at play, but their relationship is far more complicated and messy than your typical, "rich girl meets poor boy and butterflies ensue," sort of setup. Instead, you have a woman who has dedicated her entire life to achieving something that she's not supposed to have, much less want, and is summarily shunned by the men who should be her peers. She finds that her only ally in the entire building is a man who belongs to a people who are widely considered unintelligent and generally less-than-human. They have no concept of what the other has been through and the way that they slowly build up an understanding of each other's life experiences could be really heartwarming in some cases and rather devastating in others. Even when the ways in which the themes were handled felt overly cartoonish, it was these interactions between the two characters that helped the story feel grounded and true. The way each of them interact with their families further brought things home and I appreciated how much those side interactions added to their characters. I also greatly enjoyed how much both grow by the end of the story.

PLOT/TONE

Things kick off with a harrowing prologue sequence in which the last remnants of Thomil's tribe desperately race for the safety of Tiran's barrier. It's crazy to me that Wang's writing can be both so emotionally rich and also so horrifyingly gruesome at the same time. Needless to say, Thomil makes it to safety, but the cost is high. Years later, we see Sciona entering into her exam for the High Magistry as she is accompanied by her cousin, who is really more like her sister since Sciona was effectively orphaned and left in the care of her aunt. The test serves as a bit of a "tutorial" for us to ease into the magic system of this world, which will play a central part in the events to come. Sciona explains each step of the process to her cousin as others come up to take their exam before her and then we get to follow her own stream of consciousness as she steps up for her own test. The magic system in question is a "hard" one that has a lot of rules that make it feel a more scientific in nature. Thankfully, it unfolds in a way that felt seamless to the main plot. Yes, I suppose you could argue that Wang deliberately set things up in a certain way that made it make sense for Sciona to spend so much time explaining things to us through her conversations with other characters, but I much prefer that over a dry exposition dump that I'm likely to forget about half of within minutes after reading. 

The worldbuilding and character development is similarly well-paced. In parallel with Sciona's work, there's a sense of building dread as clues to a mystery we didn't initially know was there are dropped. When the big reveal hits, it changes everything. Even though I could kind of guess at the twist before it happened, I felt just as shaken by it as if it hit me from out of nowhere, perhaps, in part, thanks to the way that the main characters responded to the discovery. Similar to the way in which THE SWORD OF KAIGEN hit a huge peak before settling into a dark valley that slowly build back up to another climax, this story follows a similar-ish pattern. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that things get absolutely insane. There are so many wild and unhinged developments that hit me one after another in relentless succession until the book's final moments. Through it all, the way that people responded to everything happening around them felt tragically believable. I will also say that I would have liked for the story's ending to feel a little more conclusive. Wang seems to like to leave things somewhat open-ended it seems, but after everything that had just happened, I think I would have appreciated an epilogue or something to offer a tiny bit of closure as opposed to the narrative simply ending abruptly, especially since this book is being dubbed as a standalone, so there are presumably no plans to expand upon where things left off. 

SETTING/WORLD

The vast majority of the story takes place within the confines of Tiran, which is protected by a massive, magical barrier that keeps the mysterious blight from affecting the citizens within. The Tiranish people consider their home to be a sort of promised land provided by their god through some legendary men who introduced magic to the world. As I mentioned before, the magic itself is incredibly intricate. Though it may not be a particularly accurate comparison, the way it all worked felt sort of like computer programming, where the mages write a two-part spell into a magical typewriter that sources energy from specific coordinates and then uses that energy to affect some kind of change in the world, like powering a home or propelling a train forward. There's a really cool sort of magical revolution vibe to the world that makes it feel almost like it's an alternate version of our own. Unfortunately, a lot of our real-world problems also crop up in this one. As much as our human nature drives us to want love and community, we have quite a long history of choosing instead to create divides among one another. It's these biases, social hierarchies, and acts of outright cruelty that form up a big part of where the setting and the plot intersect. 

Themes of inequality and going up against the world's preordained roles for specific groups of people is something that Wang has explored previously and I personally think stories feel a lot more compelling when an author writes about things that matter to them as these themes clearly do to Wang. With that said, I do think that THE SWORD OF KAIGEN tackled these ideas with a lot more grace than BLOOD OVER BRIGHT HAVEN managed to. It almost felt like the author wanted to take extra care in this one to make sure we "got it." That's a common trap for writers to fall into, but it's one I'm surprised Wang succumbed to given how subtly she's managed to execute on this in the past. The end result is something that tackles important topics, but cheapens the discourse that readers can have with them by opting to portray the themes in overt and somewhat extreme contexts. While there are certainly people out there who spew out every stupid, insensitive, and unenlightened thought that crosses their mind, I think most people tend to keep their biases a little closer to the chest. Now, I do think Wang is drawing inspiration from earlier points in our country's history where prejudices were expressed a bit more openly than they are today, but because the issues are still somewhat topical, it's hard not to engage with these themes through a more modern lens. Those issues aside, the way things ultimately escalate once certain truths about this world are brought to light really tied everything together. Wang's view of humanity and its social constructs tends to not be a particularly flattering one, but the way her characters play the hands their world dealt them is always deeply satisfying in one way or another. 

AUDIOBOOK

I'd decided to go with audio initially for the very petty reason of not liking the cover for this book. After having enjoyed the story, I can say that the cover is very fitting, but I still don't like it enough to want to own it physically. With that said, the audible credit was well spent here. The narrator does a fantastic job of pulling us in and guiding us through the horrific prologue and then easing us into the book's main setting. I wouldn't say this was necessarily a standout performance in any way, but it was solid the whole way through and did justice to the story being told. 

CONCLUSION

Though it's not quite as strong as THE SWORD OF KAIGEN, I think anyone who enjoyed that book should absolutely read this one too. If you haven't read either yet, I think KAIGEN is a much better entry point to Wang's writing. 

(+) Sciona and Thomil are both fantastic, flawed, and deeply layered characters 

(+) The interactions between the main characters kept me constantly engaged in their story

(+) A fascinatingly complex magic system which never felt overwhelming in spite of its intricacies

(+) The big twist and the finales that follow it shook me to my core

(+) An interesting world with some very dark secrets

(+) The audio performance serviced the story perfectly

(-) A distinct lack of subtlety which resulted in a sometimes cartoonish portrayal of key social issues

(-) I would have preferred a little more closure at the story's end