Hi everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I’m reviewing Pariah’s Lament by Richie Billing. For this review, I received an ARC by the author in exchange for an honest review. This book will be published March 17th, 2021. Click here for more information about this book and the author’s previous releases.
Pariah’s Lament is the story of Edvar, the young advisor of the Keeper of Yurr, who is tasked with finding out who is behind an attempt on the Keeper’s life. Pariah’s Lament is also the story of Isy, a young girl rejected both by her family and the people of her town, who finds herself helping the Amast, an ancient race of people who have been living in hiding for years but who are currently fighting for their lives in a world on the verge of war. Will Isy and Edvar both be able to help and save the Keeper and the Amast respectively as they both traverse paths that make them face their fears in a world bent on tearing them down?
I will be reviewing this book in two parts, the first where I mention the things about Pariah’s Lament that I liked the most and the second where I outline the things I did not like. This review has minor spoilers.
What I Liked:
The Characters. Pariah’s Lament is a book full of political intrigue, warfare, and action. However, it is also a book about the dispossessed and rejects of a society finding the courage in themselves to save the world that rejects them. The two main characters of this book, Edvar and Isy, are both rejects within their circles, one in his position as advisor to the Keeper of Yurr and the other in the small town of Haberdam where she lives. Edvar is rejected for his youth and lack of experience while Isy is rejected because of the birthmark on her face and the stigma and fear it inadvertently instills in the people of her town. What I liked about these two characters is seeing how they both change from being pariahs to finding a place where they belonged, as well as friendship, and love. The Amast are also part of this equation, and I found this to be a fresh take within a fantasy book. It is a book about the outcasts, and I enjoyed watching how these characters become a stronger version of themselves, something that all of us go through at some time in our lives and that anyone can easily relate to and empathize with, which is why I found both Edvar and Isy relatable and very easy to connect with.
Now, I can’t say that I liked one protagonist more than the other. However, I did connect more easily and readily with Isy than with Edvar because, for starters, like me, she is an avid lover of books. Second, she is shy and a victim of undeserved cruelty, and in a way we have all experienced that sometime in our lives, whether we have a birthmark on our faces or not. Unfortunately, being singled out and stigmatized as Isy is at the beginning of the book is still a very real and common thing in modern times, when all she really is is a lonely and frightened girl who wants to be loved and have some sense of belonging in a world that shuns her. Edvar, on the other hand, does not have a birthmark on his face but he does have a mark as well. He is forever living in the shadow of his father and being compared to him, and that weighs him down making him feel incompetent and useless. His youth and lack of experience don’t help, and after being told constantly that he isn’t as good as his father he starts to believe it. After all, how else could an assassination attempt on the Keeper’s life happen on his watch when no such thing ever occurred during his father’s tenure? Now, he is trying to make up for his mistake and prove that he can step out of his father’s shadow. Ring any bells? This too is something a lot of us have experienced during our lives, and it is because of this that Edvar is no less relatable and easy to connect with than Isy. They are just pariahs in different ways, both of them victims of the ways they stand out in society.
The third outcast in this book are the Amast. And as a group, they are the ones that are identified more easily as such. Their physical appearance, for one, is the main reason why they live in hiding. Their whole existence is anathema. And they are being hunted for it. Particularly, I found the Amast to be a very interesting addition to the world of Pariah’s Lament. More specifically, how their history in Soria relates both to the War of the Damned and to the current burgeoning war between Yurr and Karrabar. Their connection to the daggers of power, which BTW I think is one of the coolest things in this world, told me that the Amast would inevitably be an important piece of the puzzle to solve the escalating conflict between Yurr and Karrabar…
The World. Pariah’s Lament is a high fantasy novel that doesn’t shy away from describing the gritty reality of warfare, political intrigue, betrayal, assassination (attempts), death, fear, loss and grief, and other effects caused by humanity’s greed for power. The world in this book is dark, and its darkness is tangible from the very beginning. It is a world described in a stark and blunt way, which in itself describes reality as it is; things happen quickly and out of sequence. Whilst something is happening here, something else is happening there or elsewhere.
As I mentioned earlier, the politics of the world in Pariah’s Lament and the backstory behind it is one of the things in this book that I liked the most. From the very beginning, when an assassin tries to kill the Keeper of Yurr, things kick off in a whirlwind. And young Edvar, the Keeper’s advisor, must figure out who is behind the assassination attempt. War is on the horizon; the keeper is betrayed, and both he and Edvar have to run for their lives. Truth be told, all of this kept me at the edge of my seat. A lot of things happen in this part of the book, and I liked that it is also the part where Edvar and Isy’s storylines converge. It is also where the war between Yurr and Karrabar gets more momentum, and things happen at an even faster pace. None of this hinders character development and its importance for the advancement of the plot. But at the same time, I liked that the book’s worldbuilding was never set aside and that it too was center stage throughout the entirety of the book.
Unfortunately, despite how much I liked the characters and worldbuilding of this book, there are also some negatives.
What I Did Not Like:
The Pacing. I know that I said earlier that the story’s fast pacing was used to indicate how fast things in real life, or within the reality of Pariah’s Lament, occur, and that that was a good thing. And it is, it’s just that sometimes I didn’t expect them to happen so fast. For example, I didn’t think that Isy taking the Amast to Yurr would happen so soon into the plot and her storyline because when they asked her for her help, it seemed such a monumental thing for her to do…something that would inevitably help her gain the courage and confidence in herself that she needed to get out of her shell. And then, it happened. The journey, along with any obstacles they might have had along the way, and then reaching the city and meeting the Keeper…it all happened in a matter of paragraphs. I understand now that it needed to happen that way for the next big thing in the story to occur, the revolt and coup, but it was still rather sudden, and it was just something I was not expecting. Granted, what I expect and what the author has in mind don’t always match, if at all, and I get that, but it still managed to catch me unawares and pull me out of the story sometimes. The same thing happened with action scenes that occurred one after the other, or significant events for the characters’ development that I thought would occur both at a slower pace and in a subtler manner. This however did not detract me from wanting to know how the book ended, but it did take me a while to get used to it.
Writing Style. This was definitely the one thing about the book that was not for me. Honestly, it was hard for me to get into it. And I had this problem throughout the entire book. I understand, as I mention earlier, that things happen quickly in an attempt to portray the sheer reality of warfare, for instance, but I couldn’t help but feel sometimes that in some passages the story was being told to us instead of us going through the events described along with the characters. The sentence structure of some of the text, e.g., passive sentences vs. active sentences, pulled me out of the story quite often, and there were times when I had to stop reading altogether. I am not saying, however, that the writing style in this book is bad. It just wasn’t for me. The style is unique to the author, and despite loving the plot and the development of the characters within the story, I just couldn’t get past this for some reason. Perhaps if I had, I would have enjoyed the book all that much more. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
Overall, I gave this book 3.5 stars.
The pictures in this post are not mine. They were both used with permission from the author.
