Whitley’s review of Song of Blood and Stone (Earthsinger Chronicles #1) by L. Penelope.
Between love and duty lies destiny
Orphaned and alone, Jasminda is an outcast in her homeland of Elsira, where she is feared for both the shade of her skin and her magical abilities. When ruthless soldiers seek refuge in her isolated cabin, they bring with them a captive – an injured spy who steals her heart.
Jack’s mission behind enemy lines nearly cost him his life but he is saved by the healing power of a mysterious young woman. Together they embark on a perilous journey straight into the heart of a centuries-old conflict.
Thrust into a hostile society, Jasminda and Jack must rely on one another even as secrets jeopardize their bond. As an ancient evil gains power, Jasminda races to unlock a mystery that promises salvation.
The fates of two nations hang in the balance as Jasminda and Jack must choose between love and duty to fulfill their destinies and end the war.
Whoa, boy. Where do I even with this book? For every thing I like in it, there’s another thing I don’t like and two more things that are just plain strange.
The idea behind this book was solid. The setting is a 1920’s esque fantasy world, with magic users and non-magic users strictly separated into two countries and kept apart by a magical border. The non-magic users had advanced technically to a post-WWI era level, and the magic users were being systematically abused by their tyrannical leader who refused to die. Every random number of years, the barrier between the two countries breaks a little, allowing the magic users to try and an invade the non-magic users, because their country is more not-a-desert-wasteland, but then the barrier rights itself and any combatants stuck on the wrong side are out of luck. That is a set up rife with potential, and the book makes use of plenty of it. There’s action and politics and machinations and intrigue. It’s fine.
The main character is the daughter of a magic user that got stuck on the non-magic side and a non-magic user woman. As a half-and-half, she faces a lot of racial prejudice and anger from her countrymen. When she meets up with people from the magic-user side, they don’t trust her either, and she’s left out of both worlds because of her mixed parentage. All she wants throughout the novel is to go back to her little valley farm and live by herself, where it was peaceful. That’s pretty awesome, in the sense that it’s supposed to be a horrible situation and is well-displayed as such.
However, the book invoked racial issues when it started with that, and it made the magic users black and the non magic users white. And then I’m not happy. Because while Jessminda’s personal situation is really heartbreaking, everything around it when looked at through a lense of racial commentary makes me…really uncomfortable. The “black” country is the bad guys. The “white” country is the…well, morally-grey-but-still-ultimately-protagonist guys. They’re complex, and they have most of the active roles in the book. The black characters are all either evil or sad victims, which strikes me as being very similar to the white-savior propaganda about Africa that paints the whole continent as full of starving poor backwater waifs. The treatment of black refugees in the white country is painted in very stark terms, and we learn very little about said refugees except that they apparently just sit around a lot and take handouts. (Did none of them try and set up self-sufficient communities? Jessminda’s father did; what stopped the rest? And, no, I’m really asking, because governments can make policies that literally stop that, so is that what happened here? What’s going on?) Jessminda is depicted as being unique for her mixed heritage, but I would like to counter with literally all of history saying that would not be the case. So much of the racial tensions were painted over and simplified and the role of the black characters was diminished in favor of the white (and half-white) characters as if the refugees could not take part in their own story. There were a lot of little things like that which just made me sad given the main character is a POC with such a delicate situation. There were some attempts to shake up the status quo at the end which I appreciated, but it was too little too late.
While the first 30% or so of the novel was a rollickin’ adventure with good pacing and action, once the travel portion was over, things started to drag interminably. Suddenly romance and politics were at the forefront, and the politics had much the same problems as the race subplot. Things were glanced over and simplified, and heavy topics were bandied about without enough context to make sense. Everyone is unhappy that the refugees are sucking up resources? There’s a couple hundred of them (so far as we know…I think) and then halfway through this we find out that the white country is actually bankrupt…when did that happen? We didn’t get to see much of the ‘normal’ parts of the country so it’s hard to tell the true extent of their problems (especially when this ‘national crisis’ is only brought up as an excuse to not feed the black people, and yeah, you can really trust politicians when they say that). So, it’s a lot of talking about a pet issue and not enough talking about the big picture, since there’s supposed to be a gearing-up for a war going on. (Either that or too much talking in general and not enough focus on Jessminda mucking about in the magical side of the plot. I would be fine with all the politics being a footnote and bringing the whole “we have a magical artifact to study and history to uncover” more to the forefront.)
And the romance became…very loquacious. It was always on the insta-love side, but once they had a chance to settle into comfortable surroundings, our two leads just went on and on about their feelings in pages of narration. I can handle insta-love around a bunch of action, because at least it’s a fleeting thing. But when I have to read through long passages about passion for a guy you met last week? Also, there were some pretty graphic sex scenes. Full-on porn quality. I (obviously) have nothing against sex in a YA novel and nothing against explicit smut in general, but it was shocking and uncomfortable to find that in something billed to me as YA and without any warning. In certain genres explicit sex is expected and accepted, but when it pops up so unexpectedly in genres that aren’t known to include it…it’s a little off-putting. Nothing would have been lost with a well-timed fade to black.
Still, for all the issues I had with this novel, I’d actually still recommend it. It’s got a solid plot when it remembers to focus on it, it brings up some challenging topics to think about, and it’s got a fresh enough setting to keep up my interest. I’d like to see more books that continue in this vein.
Rating: 3 out of 5
This title is available from Heartspell Media. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.