by Destiny Soria
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 9th October 2018
spoilers? minor
Goodreads
We are not foretold.
Galley provided by publisher
Beneath the Citadel has been high on my to read shelf since pretty much the first moment I heard about it. The synopsis gives off vague Six of Crows vibes, so I'm fairly sure if you liked that, you will also like this one.
The story follows five points of view - Cassa, Evander, Newt, Alys and Vesper - five teens who are fighting against the corrupt council of the citadel itself. Cassa is the daughter of two rebels who died when the chancellor brutally put down an attempted revolution. Evander and Alys are the children of two apothecaries, who were branded rebels after healing a true rebel, while Newt is the son of a man who betrayed the rebellion. Vesper, the final character, is the grandniece of the chancellor himself.
The book opens up with Cassa, Evander, Newt and Alys being sentenced to death by the chancellor. It's definitely the kind of beginning to get you hooked quickly, and the plot is fairly rapid from thereon. In fact, the whole book only spans about five days. The POVs alternate, interspersed with occasional flashbacks into the past for exposition. I liked being able to see into all the characters' minds and everything, but occasionally it felt like having so many POVs left some plot threads underdeveloped, although that equally might have been because some of them also started in the past we did not see. Case in point: Vesper is shown within the first few chapters to have betrayed them to the council, but the only problem is, because you haven't seen how close Vesper and Cassa are, you've only been told it, there's no real emotional involvement in the betrayal. Despite that, the characters themselves were probably what carried the book along for me. Yes, the plot itself was good, but I wouldn't have cared about a lot of it if I hadn't really liked the characters. It did take a little while for Alys and Cassa both to grow on me, but by the end I liked them as much as everyone else.
One of the places this book falls down, however, is in its worldbuilding. There's an infodump right near the beginning, that includes explaining four types of powers (seers, sentients, diviners, and rooks) and bloodbonds, but I really still couldn't for the life of me tell you what the difference between seers and diviners is supposed to be. And even worse, I didn't realise that the citadel/city was even part of a country until about two thirds of the way through. Because the events happen solely enclosed within the city (which in itself seems to be somewhat insular and out of touch with the rest of the country), there was no need to really expand on the whole what's-the-rest-of-the-country-like idea. It felt instead like the city existed in a vacuum. Not to mention the fact that I can't really tell you that much distinctive about the city - there are some wards? Some tiers? Rich people live in the first ward, poor people in the lower wards? It's really not so much different from other fantasies in that respect. But like I said, I really did like the characters, and therefore the plot, so that kind of made up for any weaknesses in the worldbuilding.
Finally, I really appreciate that, in this book, a fantasy book (and a high fantasy at that), Destiny Soria chose to use the word "bisexual". Because there have been so many fantasy books I've read where such "modern" terms for sexuality have been eschewed in favour of just not giving labels. In a completely made up world, there's no reason not to use these terms. So yeah. I liked that.
And that ending. I don't want to spoil it, but I'll just say: Destiny Soria has some real guts.
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