Published: March 22, 2022
Publisher: Tor Books
Series: Standalone
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 432 (Hardcover)
My Rating: 4.5/5.0
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis:
Charm is a witch, and she is alone. The last of a line of conquered necromantic workers, now confined within the yard of regrown bone trees at Orchard House, and the secrets of their marrow.
Charm is a prisoner, and a survivor. Charm tends the trees and their clattering fruit for the sake of her children, painstakingly grown and regrown with its fruit: Shame, Justice, Desire, Pride, and Pain.
Charm is a whore, and a madam. The wealthy and powerful of Borenguard come to her house to buy time with the girls who aren’t real.
Except on Tuesdays, which is when the Emperor himself lays claim to his mistress, Charm herself.
But now—Charm is also the only person who can keep an empire together, as the Emperor summons her to his deathbed, and charges her with choosing which of his awful, faithless sons will carry on the empire— by discovering which one is responsible for his own murder.
If she does this last thing, she will finally have what has been denied her since the fall of Inshil—her freedom. But she will also be betraying the ghosts past and present that live on within her heart.
Charm must choose. Her dead Emperor’s will or the whispers of her own ghosts. Justice for the empire or her own revenge.
From the synopsis this sounds like a fairly normal fantasy-murder mystery hybrid – the emperor summons his mistress to his deathbed and charges her with figuring out which of his sons is responsible for his death. Oh, how wrong you are in assuming it would be “normal”! And honestly, the fact that it’s not what I expected was one of the best parts about this.
Mistress Charm, the madam of Orchard House, is an eccentric woman who wears only black and regularly dyes her hair all shades of the rainbow. She has a garden full of trees which bear fruit of bones that she uses to grow things. Usually small creatures like birds, but when she gathers enough human bones, she grows new girls to staff her house and take away the aspects of herself she can no longer tolerate. She has boneghost girls named Justice, Desire, Shame, Pain, and Pride. Even Charm herself is only a façade for the one they call the Lady. Charm’s duty is to bear the mindlock – the magical device the emperor implanted in her temple to prevent her magic from driving her mad. It also grants the emperor an unparalleled degree of control over any who bear the mindlock, and forcefully going against the commands can kill a mage who fights it too hard. When the emperor set this final task to Charm, he made it so that once it was complete Charm would be free.
This is truly an impressive debut novel, if for nothing other than the sheer volume of PLOT. It’s a symphony of plot lines and the execution is beautiful. Charm is managing Orchard House, solving the murder of the emperor, staying alive as she defends herself and her girls from two of the more sadistic princes, and meddling in politics. Of all the boneghosts, Pain is the most autonomous and regularly runs errands away from Orchard House and she has a strong connection to the Firedrinkers – the mindlocked police force within the city of Borenguard. Pain’s connection to the Firedrinkers is both unusual and imminently important, as they never let anyone see their faces or know their former identities but she knows who they are. Charm and Pain are the two most prominent characters, but there are numerous others who make essential appearances. There are politicians hoping to overthrow the princes, the princes themselves (who are all monstrous in their own ways), the empress… you get it – so many essential characters to keep track of! Pain was probably my favorite because I loved her determination to be her own person and her intimate connection to the Firedrinkers (particularly Captain Oram). Charm was obviously a close second and I appreciated that she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty and do whatever it took to survive, even if that meant becoming the mistress of the man who destroyed her home country.
The world itself is not incredibly well fleshed out since this is almost entirely located within the city of Borenguard, but as the story goes along we get more details about Charm’s home country Inshil. I don’t feel that the lack of detail about the other locations mentioned detracted in any way. In fact, I think too much detail would have been confusing and unnecessary. This is all about character and plot! And oh, how I enjoyed it!
Overall, this was a weird and wonderful book that defied my initial expectations in the very best of ways. I didn’t even begin to get into the story in all of what I’ve written here because it’s so detailed. The short of it is that I’ll be thinking about this book for quite some time to come and I absolutely cannot wait to see what Sara Mueller has in store for future novels!
Powder & Page 