Rainbow Reviews

BOOK BLURB:
The anticipated sequel to My Sun and Stars! Eighteen years have passed, giving rise to a new generation, and new conflicts in the struggle for the throne of Rhodeen. When Zhanil sets out on a clandestine mission into his father's homeland, now ruled by the Turyar, his actions are a catalyst, drawing him into the embrace of the Turya warrior destined to be his soul mate, and propelling him on a journey that may just fulfill an ancient prophecy.

BOOK REVIEW:
A Crown of Stars is the second in the trilogy that began with My Sun and Stars and will continue with West of the Moon. For my money, it suffers from none of the usual afflictions of a middle book. There’s a great deal of forward motion, marvelous character development, and a self-contained story arc that’s both firmly rooted in the events of the first book and strong enough to stand on its own.

My Sun and Stars was the story of Sephil, second son of the king of Rhodeen, and Adeja, his bodyguard and lover. Their story was set against the sweeping backdrop of four nations’ shifting power dynamics.

A Crown of Stars is the tale of the next generation, with Sephil’s son, Zhanil, taking center stage. The mysterious, nomadic Turyar are firmly entrenched in his ancestral homeland of Rhodeen, and Zhanil has grown up in Khalgar, the land to which Sephil fled as an exile and now lives as a priest as separately from the machinations of the powerful as he can reasonably be. Zhanil’s maternal grandfather, the Khalgari king, has ambitions for his grandson that include a return to power in Rhodeen.

Zhanil is well-drawn as a typical boy-man, restless amid the strictures of court life and parental over-protection and eager to venture into the world on his own behalf. His reckless foray with Adeja (now his bodyguard) into Rhodeen to judge the impact of a generation of Turyar rule sparks a diplomatic incident and brings him into uneasy contact with a young Turyar ambassador. The man, Kalmeki, is destined to be as important to Zhanil’s heart and destiny as Adeja was to Sephil before him. In this way, Bryce crafts a deceptively parallel structure for this follow-up to My Sun and Stars.

Where the younger generation in My Sun and Stars grappled with the rapid change wrought by invasion and occupation, the youths in A Crown of Stars wrestle against the slower-paced geopolitical maneuvers of Tajhann, Khalgar, and the Turya. The consequences of split-second decisions made by their fathers in the first book are visited upon the scion generation in the sequel. Zhanil is the main stage on which these consequences are played, but Adeja’s son Arjuna and Rhodeen traitor Dashir’s sons Ninarsha and Nurad play significant bit parts. It’s interesting to see how the circumstances of each father and grandfather bear fruit in their scions, from reactionary Ninarsha to revivalist Kargil (the son of the Turyar invader of Rhodeen), from retreatist Arjuna to Zhanil the innovator. None of the main characters in A Crown of Stars, old or young, is flawless. The prior bad acts and current foibles of each drives the plot in shifting and unpredictable directions, absorbing the reader to such an extent that the world Bryce builds seems the only real one.

Perhaps the most interesting character in the entire tale is Kalmeki, bound by circumstance and affection to Zhanil, but unbeholden to any of the rigid older men from the first book. His commitment to Zhanil is all the more fascinating because of his cultural heritage, which proscribes same-sex pairings but permits, even celebrates a soul bond called “keshkai, two halves of one spirit.”

If this all sounds terribly complicated, it is. It’s a testament to Bryce’s skill that it’s all absolutely clear. The simple clarity of her prose is a beautiful counterpoint to the huge cast of characters and their almost infinite network of relationships. Add byzantine but plausible court intrigues, rousing and convincing battle scenes, and richly varied depictions of four very different cultures, and you begin to have a picture of what a splendid accomplishment A Crown of Stars is. If Bryce takes the occasional easy way out, as she does with certain casualties of the climactic battle or with some rather rushed exposition in the dénouement, it’s easy to forgive in a work otherwise so marvelous.

Like My Sun and Stars, A Crown of Stars is not a romance. The relationship between Kalmeki and Zhanil is critical to the plot, but is not its center. At the end of the day, A Crown of Stars offers a message about the limits and follies of love, not its triumphs, and about how we all have to live with our mistakes and indiscretions, even into the next generation, who, far from correcting our errors, compound our mistakes with their own.

L.E. Bryce has woven a complex, deeply involving, and ultimately satisfying tale. She’s left plenty of foundation for the third book in the series, the forthcoming West of the Moon, without sacrificing a satisfying ending to A Crown of Stars. I highly recommend this to readers of My Sun and Stars.

Review by Lee Benoit.

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