Passion Play (River Of Souls, #1)ARC (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
When Passion Play was first released in hardcover back in 2010, it had a far more accurate cover art than this mass market paperback reissue. This particular cover indicates an action heroine in the usual "stare at my butt while I wield a dagger and glare angrily at you for staring at my butt" cover, when the heroine is less... exertive.Therez Zalina is the daughter of an iron-willed and ruthless merchant who learns shortly after the story begins that she is to be married off to a guy that she finds unpleasant. She suspects that he has a cruel streak. Since his father rules the family, she has no support from her mother and her brother, while her beloved grandmother is dying. So she runs away. Anything and everything horrible that can befall a sheltered sixteen-year old girl on her own happens on our heroine, but she eventually stumbles into the care of our hero, Raul Kosenmark.That's when Therez, who calls herself Ilse now, starts to reveal her awesomeness. Despite being new at everything, she excels in those everything until those other bitches are either jealous or in awe. Despite having a boyfriend, Raul is so mesmerized by Ilse's awesome hoochie and, of course, her spirit and intelligence until they both boink and, occasionally, spare a guilty thought for that boyfriend but not that it matters, since he's not awesome like Ilse. Ilse discovers that she is awesome at being Raul's sidekick in intrigue too - at least, Raul seems to think so despite her having no experience in it - and, eventually, she's on her way up just like Luke Skywalker's extending lightsaber.Passion Play is a fantasy story in a Renaissance Europe-like setting, and for the most part, there is a somewhat interesting story here, even if it's one that doesn't break new grounds. But it's hard for me to get fully involved in this story because of several things.This is basically a zero-to-hero kind of story, with me supposed to root for the heroine as she overcomes various adversities to emerge triumphant. Oh, and she gets the man too. But Ilse here ends up more like a sponge. She feels guilt, horror, and other emotions only for as long as the sentence lasts. Her emotions rarely linger over a realistic length of time no matter what kind of traumatic event befalls her, and there are many such traumatic events here. As a result, I never once feel that Ilse is a believable character. She's more like a cartoon heroine, and that may have worked well in another story. This story, however, is centered around the heroine, and as such, the heroine should feel real enough to engage my emotions. Ilse isn't that heroine. Because she shows little believable emotion, I never feel that there is any instance where she would fail or die. She gets raped, shot... whatever. It's hard to care when the writing makes Ilse such a deadpan monotonous character.The romance isn't bad, but I end up feeling more sorry for that other guy than anything else. Then again, it could be because Ilse is such a wooden plank of a character, and Raul's falling in love with her seems more like a plot fixture than an organic development in the story.The setting is also quite vague, and this is an issue because when the political intrigue elements come into play, I find it hard to understand why these things happen and why I should care. The world building is flimsy, with the author throwing things into the scenery without making these things come together to form a coherent idea of the whole setting. Most of the pivotal scenes take place off-stage, which only make things worse. At the end of the day, the whole drama boils down to, simply, Raul has ambitions, crap happens, but he and Ilse come out on top, yay - the end. The problem here is that the author throws exotic made-up names and such all over the place, but I never get the feel of the setting other than it's vaguely historical, so to speak.Of course there is a sequel, but after reading this book, I find myself in no hurry to read that one. I wonder why. What a terrible cover for such an excellent book.So, the plot basics. It starts with what looks like a fairly standard fantasy trope: a young woman of a wealthy family runs away from an arranged marriage. But "running away" turns out to be much more complicated than it seems, and then it turns out that the story isn't really about the arranged marriage at all; that's merely the impetus for a whole cascade of complex events, in which our protagonist tumbles into, and then seriously starts acting proactively within, a much larger story. Politics abound; there is some magic, and some combat, but a great deal of this is highly plausible political work behind the scenes, where there's more paperwork and planning than sneaking and stabbing.My caveats first: I found the politics confusing and difficult to follow, because I'm terrible at remembering names. This did, alas, occasionally leave me going "What? Who?" at some dramatic revelations, because I just didn't remember who the named people were. But that's my own poor memory for names, and shouldn't be taken as a criticism of the book itself. The book ends, if not on a cliffhanger, at least on what's clearly the close of one act in a play: the biggest plot threads are all deferred for later resolution. There was also some serious, horrible rape within the book, which I did not know going in, and which was an unpleasant shock when it arrived.But this is the best handling I've ever seen of rape in a work of fiction. (An awkward sort of sentence to write, but it's true.) There is no glamorizing, no dwelling on the details, no quick fixes, no cheap tropes for rescue or revenge that Solve The Problem. Horrible things happen, and they matter a great deal, but they do not define the protagonist.Which gets to the heart of this book's strengths. Every character, however briefly appearing, is clearly a complex person with their own motivations, no matter how Good or Evil by the standards of the reader or the protagonist. The entire book deals with emotions and relationships--and the amazingly complex tangles they get into--with an unusual, breathtaking sensitivity and grace. Even the family relationships, which are so front-and-center in the first few chapters, and then off-screen for much of the rest of the story, are dealt with in a way that shows it's never so simple as the Cruel Parent and Nice Parent, or the Breach Of Family Trust, or...well, any of those usual cheap solutions.I occasionally thought that this book was going to pull in one of the tired standard cliches. About recovery from rape, about the love of a good man, about showing up those who didn't believe in you, about revenge, about redemption. It did not. It has emotional depth that I cannot praise highly enough.
What do You think about Passion Play (River Of Souls, #1)ARC (2000)?
I loved this book!! Can't waite for the next one to be here!
—James2017
Great new series! I can't wait to read the next book.
—Tasha
Just won this from a giveaway...anxiously awaiting.
—izumi
Not my cup of tea at all. So slow moving, too.
—nidhi2111
