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Jun. 15th, 2019 10:59 amI had deeply mixed feelings about Lara Elena Donnelly's Amberlough, the first book in the Amberlough Dossier trilogy, when I read it two years ago; now the trilogy is finished and I have read the whole thing, most of it twice, and I still can't quite sort out how I feel about it. But on the other hand, I did read both Amberlough and middle book Armistice twice ...
It's relatively easy to find stories about revolutions (and you all know that I love stories about revolutions), but the Amberlough Dossier leaves the actual central revolution almost entirely offscreen to focus on the messy and complicated parts at the edges. Amberlough is about the rise of a fascist government; Armistice focuses on the machinations of expatriates and exiles while the fascist government is in power; Amnesty, the final book, picks up after the revolution has succeeded and the fascist government has fallen, leaving a deeply scarred country attempting to rebuild. Central characters include Cyril DePaul, a compromised gay spy; Aristide Makricosta, a stripper/emcee/smuggler and the star-crossed love of Cyril's life; Lillian DePaul, Cyril's stressed-out foreign diplomat sister; and Cordelia Lehane, Aristide's stage partner, stripper, petty criminal, eventual revolutionary heroine.
I like the complexity of the trilogy; I appreciate its ambition, and how determined it is to avoid easy stories and easy answers. I admire the emotional tension -- how the real world comes to bear on the sacrifices that people make for love, how the different relationships break down and come back together again, fragile but generally worth fighting for. I think I like the worldbuilding, which pulls from real-world elements while doing a careful dance to avoid mapping anything too directly (though I would love to see somebody else talk about Porashtu, the technically-neutral nation where the second book takes place, which is heavily South Asian influenced but reverses several gender norms; also I have some geographical questions about a world in which cultures as variant as the ones displayed in Gedda and Porashtu and Liso all seem to have developed just a few hundred miles away from each other.) I LOVE the revolutionary organization made up of former stagefolk, called the Catwalk because they walk in the shadows and light things up bright, and the entire plotline in Armistice about using Bollywood films as cover for revolutionary arms dealing, and the big awkward theatrical dinner party full of dramatic backstory revelations. (Armistice is my favorite of the books for a reason.) I like the questions, overall, that the series is asking...
But I don't know how I feel about the answers. I spent a lot of time while reading the trilogy thinking about what actions in a protagonist are unforgivable to me as a reader.
( Cool motive, still collaborating with fascists )
Anyway, tl;dr, the short version is that I definitely want to fight with the books but they're for sure really interesting and I'm going to be thinking about them for a long time, which almost certainly makes them worth reading. Again: I did it twice!
Also, if you want to talk to me in comments about what protagonist crimes you find unforgivable, or, alternately, things you would generally find unforgivable but that particularly skilled authors have nonetheless sold you on, I would be interested to hear it!
It's relatively easy to find stories about revolutions (and you all know that I love stories about revolutions), but the Amberlough Dossier leaves the actual central revolution almost entirely offscreen to focus on the messy and complicated parts at the edges. Amberlough is about the rise of a fascist government; Armistice focuses on the machinations of expatriates and exiles while the fascist government is in power; Amnesty, the final book, picks up after the revolution has succeeded and the fascist government has fallen, leaving a deeply scarred country attempting to rebuild. Central characters include Cyril DePaul, a compromised gay spy; Aristide Makricosta, a stripper/emcee/smuggler and the star-crossed love of Cyril's life; Lillian DePaul, Cyril's stressed-out foreign diplomat sister; and Cordelia Lehane, Aristide's stage partner, stripper, petty criminal, eventual revolutionary heroine.
I like the complexity of the trilogy; I appreciate its ambition, and how determined it is to avoid easy stories and easy answers. I admire the emotional tension -- how the real world comes to bear on the sacrifices that people make for love, how the different relationships break down and come back together again, fragile but generally worth fighting for. I think I like the worldbuilding, which pulls from real-world elements while doing a careful dance to avoid mapping anything too directly (though I would love to see somebody else talk about Porashtu, the technically-neutral nation where the second book takes place, which is heavily South Asian influenced but reverses several gender norms; also I have some geographical questions about a world in which cultures as variant as the ones displayed in Gedda and Porashtu and Liso all seem to have developed just a few hundred miles away from each other.) I LOVE the revolutionary organization made up of former stagefolk, called the Catwalk because they walk in the shadows and light things up bright, and the entire plotline in Armistice about using Bollywood films as cover for revolutionary arms dealing, and the big awkward theatrical dinner party full of dramatic backstory revelations. (Armistice is my favorite of the books for a reason.) I like the questions, overall, that the series is asking...
But I don't know how I feel about the answers. I spent a lot of time while reading the trilogy thinking about what actions in a protagonist are unforgivable to me as a reader.
( Cool motive, still collaborating with fascists )Anyway, tl;dr, the short version is that I definitely want to fight with the books but they're for sure really interesting and I'm going to be thinking about them for a long time, which almost certainly makes them worth reading. Again: I did it twice!
Also, if you want to talk to me in comments about what protagonist crimes you find unforgivable, or, alternately, things you would generally find unforgivable but that particularly skilled authors have nonetheless sold you on, I would be interested to hear it!
