Kalyna the Cutthroat
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The Daughters of Izdihar meets The Foxglove King: An ex-soothsayer and stranded scholar of curses upend a Utopian community that has no love for refugees.
Radiant Basket of Rainbow Shells, scholar of curses and magical history, has spent several years on a research expedition abroad in Quruscan, one of the four kingdoms of theTetrarchia. When Tetrarchia and Radiant’s home country of Loasht suddenly revoke their tenuous peace, Quruscan is no longer the safe haven for Radiant that it once was. He needs someone to help him escape: a bodyguard, perhaps, or someone with the sheer cunning to escort him to safety. The perfect candidate is Kalyna Aljosanova: a crafty, mysterious mercenary with an uncanny reputation.
But the political situation in Loasht is far more volatile and dangerous than Radiant left it; it soon becomes clear that he may never be able to return home to his family. With a little of Kalyna’s signature guile, she finds Radiant asylum in a utopian community on the border between Loasht and the Tetrarchia, and, for a moment, it seems like they might finally have a safe place to stay. But when the group’s charismatic leader grows wary of the refugees flocking to his community—and suspicious of Kalyna in particular—that sense of safety begins to unravel once more.
Kalyna the Cutthroat deftly imagines how the pressures of heroism can warp even the most unshakeable of survivors, asking what responsibilities human beings have to one another, and whether one good deed—of any magnitude—can absolve you of your past for the sake of a future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Spector shifts focus in his fascinating if somewhat bloated second Failure of Four Kingdoms fantasy (after Kalyna the Soothsayer). It's presented as the diary of Radiant Basket of Rainbow Shells, a Loashti scholar who ventured into Abathçodu to study the occult, and who's relentlessly pursued by enemies who believe he's a sorcerer. Fortunately, Dagmar Sorga, a warrior and friend of book one's protagonist, Kalyna Aljosanovna, helps him escape. Dagmar then introduces Radiant to Kalyna, who accompanies him across Tetrarchia so that he may finally return home to Loasht, where a violent leader campaigns to eradicate Indigenous culture. The tale gets off to a slow start, introducing a new lead and delineating the various cultures and politics of the many peoples in Tetrarchia. The stakes initially feel uncertain, but the action picks up as Spector delves deeper into Radiant's and the Loashti's plight, and it's a pleasure to revisit Kalyna, here scheming in the background. Though the narrative meanders, series readers will be rewarded by a satisfying payoff.
