Book Recommendation: Skullsworn

This post may end up being a long one…

This book has quickly made its way into one of my top five books I’ve ever read. It is a prequel set in the same world as Stavely’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series, but the book itself is stand alone (I’ve not read the other books in that series, but after this book, they have definitely moved their way up in the never-ending TBR pile). This book is a masterclass in world-building, character development, and just brilliant, well-written storytelling in general.

I actually started off reading this book and was very hesitant. The prologue starts in first-person, past-tense, which is almost an immediate turn off for me. I always feel like the tension decreases dramatically because you know that the POV character–the main character whose head and thoughts you become intimately familiar with and experience the book through–is going to survive, regardless of what the author throws at them.

The first line is: “This is a story I never intended to tell.” Therefore, not only was it first-person past tense, it was also being told to an additional unnamed character. Typically, these books fall flat for me, and nine times out of ten, become DNRs. In fact, one of the only stories I like that is framed this way is The Name of the Wind, and I feel like that only works because plot events are occurring in the “present” and in the “past” of the story. However, this book was highly recommended by my writing group, and we were all reading it at the same time. Since others were screaming about how great it was, I decided to push through. And AM SO GLAD I DID.

The book follows Pyrre, a soon-to-be priestess of Ananshael, the God of Death, on her initiation mission. She has fourteen days to kill the seven people enumerated in a song, a mission that would not be daunting save for the last death: the one who made your mind and body sing with love / who will not come again. Killing is easy for Pyrre; she’s been around death her entire life, starting with her parents’ deaths at her hands when she was a child. But love is tricky. Pyrre is not sure she’s ever been in love–and honestly, even at the end of the book I’m not sure I ever really believe she was–but she is determined to find someone who ignites that passion or else she risks her own life. Pyrre is not afraid to die. In fact, it is an honor to give oneself to the God of Death. But Pyrre hates failure, and how can she be a true offering to her god if she’s never really lived? She returns to her hometown of Dombâng on a quest to find–and kill–her love.

— SPOILERS AHEAD —

“Love is not some eternal state, but a delight in the paradise of the imperfect. The holding of a thing is inextricable from the letting go, and to love, you must learn both.”

SETTING:

“Hidden city, Goc My’s Marvel, Labyrinth of Lanterns–the city bore a dozen names, each one true in the right light, each one a lie. The maze of canals, barges, and floating markets had, indeed, remained hidden for centuries, millennia, but it was hidden no longer, the bonds of causeway and channel shackling her to the world. Goc My had, in fact, worked a marvel centuries earlier, starting the transformation of a small fishing hamlet into the greatest city of the south. On the other hand, Goc My was long dead, and his city had fallen to a greater, less miraculous power two hundred years earlier. The truest name was the last: Dombâng was still a labyrinth–a place of canals and causeways, bridges and barges, passing ropes strung between the tops of buildings, ladders everywhere, ten thousand alleys and backwaters where a woman could get lost, where she could lose herself.”

The book begins on Rassambur, the island where the priests and priestesses of Ananshael live. It is here that Pyrre considers home, but she was born in Dombâng, and that is where she returns to complete her quest. Dombâng is partly Asian-inspired, and so full of history and culture that it feels like a character in its own right. Stavely’s descriptions are so well-done that I can feel the claustrophobic city streets, smell the fish and close-bodies, and see the red fish-scale lanterns. The city itself feels almost haunting, and you can feel the brimming tension, the distrust for the empire that conquered it, that is just waiting for a spark to ignite into rebellion–a spark Pyrre is happy to provide.

The city is situated on the Shirvian delta, and the people who live there pray in secret to the three gods who saved them from the unfeeling, immortal Csestriim. Their gods–Sinn, Hang Loc, and Kem Anh–who still require sacrifice to protect them from conquest and the horrors (snakes, crocs, qirna) of the delta itself, fell out of fashion to the Annurian gods when the Empire invaded. Now the city is more of a cultural mixing pot, but the three gods of the delta still have their followers, who still make sacrifices in their names.

The city’s guard, the Greenshirts, work to keep the old religion what they believe it is: a story. It is a crime to worship the old gods, to sing the old songs that praise them. But predictions were made that these gods would come again, that ten thousand bloody hands would tear the city down, vipers of the water would gorge on the hearts of foreign soldiers, and a thousand skulls with their eyes filled with mud to plant the delta flowers would herald their return. A prophecy that Pyrre intends to bring to life in an attempt to grow closer with the Greenshirt leader: Ruc Lan Lac.

CHARACTERS:

This book is absolutely a character-driven fantasy, and each of the characters is so well-developed and flushed out that it doesn’t matter that the book is a prequel origin story for one of the characters in the series; it can be read completely stand alone and still be enjoyed immensely.

Pyrre is pretty much the definition of a bad ass. “I grew up in a place where women wear vests ribbed with stilettos, where each priest has a dozen knives, steel traps, needles so fine you can slide them beside the eye into the brain and out again without leaving a mark.” The idea of death doesn’t even make her blink an eye, in fact, she sees it as a religious offering. She is not yet a priestess of Ananshael, only an acolyte, but one who is determined to pass her initiation. She is accompanied by two witnesses: Ela and Kossal who are such well-developed side characters that I would absolutely read a prequel to the prequel if it was on their past adventures. Ela is charming and addicted to sex, but also one of the most deadly priestesses Ananshael has ever had. Kossal is seasoned, and blunt, and absolutely devoted to his God. But he also has a soft spot for Ela (because who doesn’t) that makes his gruffness endearing.

Ruc Lan Lac is the leader of the Greenshirts, and addicted to fighting. Pyrre might be his perfect match–and certainly their sexual tension and bantering may be some of the best I’ve ever read.

“He was still ten paces off when he spoke, his voice low and level. ‘You owe me a bottle of quey.’
Six years. Six years since I’d walked out of him in the middle of the night, slipping away from the room we shared without warning or explanation–six years in which, for all I knew, he could have thought I was dead–and instead of any shock, any expression of surprise or disbelief, this was what he had to say.
‘I suppose,’ he went on, drawing closer to me, ‘you didn’t bring it with you.’
‘As I recall,’ I replied, matching his lazy drawl, ‘the bottle was already half empty when I finished it. We split the first half before you unchivalrously fell asleep.’
‘Half a bottle of quey then.’
I smiled. ‘I’d be happy to. Name the place and time.’
‘Here,’ he replied. ‘Now.’
‘You just got here.’
‘And I already found what I’m looking for. How exceptionally fortunate.’”

And this is just their FIRST meeting up again, after six years of not seeing eachother, IN A PUBLIC BATH. So please keep in mind, they are completely naked. And honestly, the tension only gets better from there.

In fact, Mr. Stavely spent the entire book making me fall in love with these two, ONLY FOR PYRRE TO LOVE ELA IN THE END. Which I mean, fine, but I think I deserved a more rigid definition of what love was supposed to mean for her. And this is my only complaint with this book: I wanted to sob at the end. I wanted to be so in love with who Pyrre killed that I was gut-wrenchingly sobbing. But I didn’t get that, because it went for the twist instead. And I have still yet to decide if I find this unbelievably frustrating or brilliant. Probably both.

I could go on and on about this book, but it is only 300-400 pages which is relatively short for most epic fantasy novels, so I truly think you would be better served by just going to read the story yourself. However, I cannot stress enough how beautifully written this story is. Stavely has a way of making grimdark feel elegant and some of the prose is on par with how I felt about The Name of the Wind in its seemingly simple complexity.

Here are some of those beautiful words for your enjoyment:

“… we are all dying, all the time. Being born is stepping from the cliff’s edge. The only question is what to do while falling.”

“Our human flesh is better than most things at keeping pace with its own decay, and yet it takes so little—a tiny knife dragged across the windpipe, a dropped roof tile, a puddle three inches deep—to unmake a man or woman. It’s amazing, given everything’s fragility, that we don’t live in a smashed world, all order and structure utterly undone, the whole land heaped with bone, charred wood, carelessly shattered glass. It amazes me sometimes that anything is still standing.”

“It takes work to keep the world whole. A simple thing like a cup needs to be cleaned each day, placed carefully back on the shelf, not dropped. A city, in its own way, is every bit as delicate. People move over the causeways, ply the canals with their oars, go between their markets and their homes, buy and barter, swindle and sell, and all the while, mostly unknowingly, they are holding that city together. Each civil word is a stitch knitting it tight. Every law observed, willingly or grudgingly, helps to bind the whole. Every tradition, every social more, every act of neighborly goodwill is a stay against chaos. So many souls, so much effort, so difficult to create and so simple to shatter.”

Please read it! Will further update when I read the rest of the series if it has any effect on how I view the prequel (the prequel was written after, and I’m not sure if I want it to feel intrinsic to the rest of the series or not–though I’m sure it will help with some of the world building since this was only one small slice of the rest of the world).