In this third installment of the only series I seem able to actually keep up with on this blog (you can catch up on the others here), I’ll be sharing my thoughts for the first time on a recently published work. As part of my continuing effort to immerse myself in the genre I intend to write in, I’ve been actively seeking out newer material, and for the month of December I read The Unspoken Name by debut author A.K. Larkwood.

Overview

The Unspoken Name is a multi-POV fantasy novel with a single dominant main character. I would call it high fantasy, with an epic fantasy backdrop but perhaps not the personal stakes that would normally go with that sub-genre. While there are gods and ancient wizards who might possess the power to annihilate whole worlds, those elements are truly more of a stage setting for the actual story.

The Story

A young Oshaaru girl is plucked from her destiny to be consumed by the Unspoken One, and finds herself becoming the impressionable lackey to her savior, an ancient wizard going by the name Belthandros Sethennai. Over the next eight years, she becomes his assassin and right hand, but never truly finds the respect and recognition she craves from her master. Finally, estranged by his careless disregard for her service, she chooses love over service and betrays him.

What’s an Oshaaru, you might ask?

We don’t quite know, and that’s a first look at the intriguing style of worldbuilding Larkwood uses throughout the novel.

Oshaaru are introduced very much as if you already know what they are. The fact that Csorwe has tusks is casually dropped into the narrative, much the same as a description of the Tlaanthothe wizard’s ears. Later, the existence of airships powered by magic are introduced just as matter-of-factly. There is very little to no exposition, and no excuses made to work it into the narrative.

The result is that you discover the world as you read, and at times are left guessing (or imagining) the details. This approach is intentional, and generally effective. The focus is kept tightly on the characters and story, with elements of the world only introduced when and as they become relevant to those characters — an approach that feels very in keeping with the no-nonsense worldview of Csorwe herself.

Pacing

The paperback version I read comes in at 557 pages, and a lot happens in those pages. The narrative has a couple of big jumps, clearly indicated by breaks in the novel, where a lot of time passes all at once. We see Csorwe go from a 13-year old acolyte, to a gung-ho teenager, to a (still young) veteran operator and killer, and finally to a disillusioned young woman. Certainly, there’s no question of an inflated page count. A lot is going on here.

At times, it feels like a little too much is going on here. But generally, I would give the pacing a high grade. I’ve read far too many works of fantasy where it feels like half the pages could be cut without harm to complain about one that actually keeps the plot tight.

Speaking of the plot…

For the first one or two hundred pages, I did find myself wondering how everything was going to tie itself back together, and whether Csorwe’s backstory was going to remain just an interesting way to establish the character. Full credit to Larkwood, that’s not the case, and the narrative does a good job of gathering all the loose ends together and braiding them into one cohesive whole.

The plot flows perfectly within the pages of the novel. I was left with one nagging question about how exactly events before the novel make sense, however, which casts a puzzling shadow over the whole book upon reflection.

(major spoilers ahead!)

Csorwe’s boss, the wizard Belthandros Sethennai, is searching for an artifact known as the Reliquary of Pentravasse. It’s introduced as something of a MacGuffin: everyone wants it because of the power it holds, believed to be knowledge of how Pentravasse somehow went beyond other mages and linked himself more purely to the power of his patron goddess. A major part of the narrative is spent questing for the Reliquary.

Eventually, Csorwe gets the Reliquary and returns it to her boss. It sits on the narrative shelf for a little while, but finally near the end it’s revealed that Sethennai actually is Pentravasse; he never died, just somehow lost his memory and forgot who he was and why he wanted the Reliquary until it was returned to him.

This part of the plot didn’t really make sense to me, and at the remove of a few weeks it still doesn’t. It isn’t properly explained (to me, at least) why Pentravasse had to give up his Reliquary in the first place, or why he lost his memory of it. Additionally, after regaining it, he doesn’t really do anything with it – he becomes more powerful, but that’s about it. The narrative is shifting at this point away from him anyway, but it left me somewhat unsatisfied with the whole top-level plot arc.

Conclusion

Overall, I liked the book. Csorwe is an interesting and unusual protagonist, the writing is quick and clever, and there are some compelling ideas sprinkled throughout and left tantalizingly hanging. A sequel is apparently in the works, and when it comes out I’ll probably get it.

If the focus is more on Csorwe and less on the more confusing elements of the backstory, all the better.