Review: The Phoenix Empress, by K Arsenault Rivera

[Russ Allbery]

The Phoenix Empress
by K Arsenault Rivera

Series:    Their Bright Ascendancy #2
Publisher: Tor
Copyright: October 2018
ISBN:      0-7653-9256-9
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     544

This is a direct sequel to The Tiger's Daughter and entirely pointless
to read if you haven't read the previous book. This is not a series
that one can start in the middle.

The Tiger's Daughter was one of my favorite novels of 2017, so I've
been waiting eagerly for this book for nearly a year. I had no idea
where Rivera would go next with the story after the glorious triumph at
the end of the last book, but I was hoping for more of the same.
Unfortunately, The Phoenix Empress was something a bit different, at
least for me; while some of the elements I loved are still there,
Rivera went in a somewhat different direction in the series than I was
hoping.

The character names mentioned below are arguably spoilers of a sort
below for the end of The Tiger's Daughter, although I don't think it's
knowledge that would come as a surprise.

The Tiger's Daughter was mostly a letter written from Shefali to
Shizuka, telling the story of their past and occasionally embedding in
it letters in the other direction so that one gets a bit of Shizuka's
voice. In The Phoenix Empress, Shizuka tells a story to Shefali,
intermixed with more conventional narration (from Shefali's
perspective) of ongoing events. It retains a bit of the same structure,
but it's a story of a time when Shizuka was alone, so it misses the
delightful and shameless drama of the pair's mutual love and devotion.

The story is also dark, depressing, full of dread at the knowledge that
it's going to get even worse, and the source of Shizuka's drinking and
(although the term isn't used in the story) PTSD. It also contains some
horrific demons and a bit of maiming (which bothered me way more than I
had expected it to).

The Tiger's Daughter had some of these elements as well, but it coupled
them with a furiously optimistic tone and a sense that the characters
would defeat any horror through overwhelming love and sheer audacity.
With this book as contrast, I see that was a huge part of what I loved
about it. It was aggressively, unapologetically melodramatic, and the
result is glorious. The Phoenix Empress is mostly just melancholy, and
is often painful to read.

The parts outside of Shizuka's story are a bit better, but sadly not
that much. The parts of the previous book I liked least were the
near-hopeless struggles against demonic infection, which is most of the
companion narrative here. Rivera also has the two main characters
struggle to talk to each other and be honest with each other, and while
they're mostly not idiots about it (and Rivera writes it well), this is
my least favorite trope in romance and reliably makes me grumbly. The
story felt like a holding pattern: by the end of this book, we know a
lot more about Shizuka, the arch-villain of the series, and the
political changes that happened during the frame story of the previous
book, but the overall plot has barely advanced from the end of The
Tiger's Daughter.

This is rather negative, so I should note there are some parts of this
I really liked. Shizuka and Shefali together continue to be a delight;
they're so very different, yet fit together so well and support each
other's weaknesses. They're also passionately in love with each other
through good times and bad, in a way that makes me smile to read about.
And several of the supporting characters are great, particularly
Sakura, who is probably the highlight of this book. There wasn't much
in Shizuka's story that I enjoyed, mostly due to the ever-present sense
of creeping dread, but I still love Shefali's voice, her persistence
and practicality, and the way she brings out the best in Shizuka.

The very end of The Phoenix Empress does promise something better to
come, and succeeded in getting me excited for the next book in the
series.

As much as I loved the melodrama of The Tiger's Daughter, Shizuka
probably did need to grow up and stop being quite so eager to rush into
anything. This was a hard and painful lesson for the reader to read
through, at least for me, but I can see where Rivera is going in the
deepening and strengthening of both characters. I just want her to get
there already, since the road along the way is painful and depressing,
and I was reading this series for the glorious confidence and sense of
invincibility.

There will certainly be a sequel to this, since it ends on a sort of
cliffhanger, but the next book has not been announced at the time of
this review.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Reviewed: 2018-12-21

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>