TBR Challenge: Ilana C. Meyer - Last Song Before Night

A high fantasy following a young woman's defiance of her culture as she undertakes a dangerous quest to restore her world's lost magic in Ilana C. Myer's Last Song Before Night.
Her name was Kimbralin Amaristoth: sister to a cruel brother, daughter of a hateful family. But that name she has forsworn, and now she is simply Lin, a musician and lyricist of uncommon ability in a land where women are forbidden to answer such callings-a fugitive who must conceal her identity or risk imprisonment and even death.
On the eve of a great festival, Lin learns that an ancient scourge has returned to the land of Eivar, a pandemic both deadly and unnatural. Its resurgence brings with it the memory of an apocalypse that transformed half a continent. Long ago, magic was everywhere, rising from artistic expression-from song, from verse, from stories. But in Eivar, where poets once wove enchantments from their words and harps, the power was lost. Forbidden experiments in blood divination unleashed the plague that is remembered as the Red Death, killing thousands before it was stopped, and Eivar's connection to the Otherworld from which all enchantment flowed, broken.
The Red Death's return can mean only one thing: someone is spilling innocent blood in order to master dark magic. Now poets who thought only to gain fame for their songs face a challenge much greater: galvanized by Valanir Ocune, greatest Seer of the age, Lin and several others set out to reclaim their legacy and reopen the way to the Otherworld-a quest that will test their deepest desires, imperil their lives, and decide the future.

Comment: It's September, Autumn is finally around the corner after a hot Summer and it's time for another TBR post. For this month the theme is "new author" which must be one of the easiest themes of the year, for me. I could have picked anything but I've settled for a fantasy story which I have no idea, at all, on how it ended up in the pile, obviously by an author I also haven't heard of before.

In this story, set in a world where music is considered to be the highest form of art, mainly music done by poets who even have the possibility to reach higher in their skill by studying in a special academy, things start to go wrong when an important competition, honored by royal decree, is in jeopardy after a terrible discovery. It seems someone is using dark magic and wants to go back to the old ways when poets/musicians had the power to manipulate or magically affect others with their songs. Someone wants this power but there is a cast of characters who will try to find the Path, the righteousness of the art of music, to fight against this evil, but will they succeed?

As a fantasy and as a story whose aim is to portray the eternal battle of evil vs good, at the same time a central character (Lin) comes out of obscurity to become a revered figure, this certainly accomplished the necessary to be successful. The issue, for me, was the sequence of information and how some of the fantasy elements weren't very clear to follow.

When the story begins, we follow a few characters, mostly the poets who are getting ready for an important competition at a festival, and of them, whoever wins the prize will be considered a great poet and have some social/financial benefits. Poet here might be compared to bard, for there is both music and poetry involved. The main characters aren't only the poets, but others somehow connected to them, such as the benefactors of the arts and others. I've started to feel lost when several characters were presented and some just seemed to be there for some indistinct reason which never went anywhere understandable.

In a way, this story could be seen as a way to highlight the need for the arts but mainly the need for the continuous sharing of the verbal speech, how much is contained in orality and performance and how the audiences are affected by that in relation to simply knowing or hearing about something written. But I think, or perhaps I should say I got the impression, that the goal was more on Lin's role as a woman and, therefore by the laws of this world, on her not being a true Poet. Clearly then, she was meant to show everyone she is, indeed talented, and how any woman like her could do it too.

After the initial impressions, the plot starts to fall into magical issues, and weird behaviors from the main characters, situations I could not really understand and I started to be a little annoyed at the amount of detail to bear in mind without any real pay off. I wondered why would we need to see so many details which ended up not being that important and then there are things happening without evident reason and I must conclude the author wanted to show a lot without a specific sequence, which made the story convoluted and too busy for far too long.

Since this is the first book by this author I try, the writing felt consistent, true, but the plot not always easy to follow. A lot of the story from a certain point on is heavily set on dreams or dream sequences or flashbacks and I confess I wish the graphic text had been obvious in dividing the plot sequences or the change from what was reality and dream. My interest was waning and, to make it even less appealing, the "hardships" in the characters' paths kept happening and got to terrible moments, which made me think, as this is the first of a trilogy, that the reward of investing in this would take quite a while.

Added to these writing issues, we have the amount of characters to follow to to have to consider and it got a little tiring to keep track. Then the names didn't help, we had a girl Rianna, a boy Rayen, Lin who is Kimbralin, then Darien and someone or some place Edrien, it can be a little confusing for certain. I also think the author wanted to slot these people into specific roles, and some are so cliched that I fail to see where is the depth and interest in knowing what happens next to them. 

The magical elements, which are only alluded at first, also don't seem very logical once things start to become more complex, as if it was handy some things were placed in convenient moments but were no longer vital in others. I think I'd have liked if this book has a more obvious narrative and cohesion in the elements. It does feel as if the author wanted to say so much so quickly that many things were misused, such as the use of magic being only bad? I can't tell if that was the goal anyway...

All things considered, this had interesting elements, especially in the beginning, but the narrative disappointed me, the plot was very confusing and I've finished the book knowing there were sacrifices and "lessons learned" and that Lin will go on to become as special as she might hoped for, but I'll admit I don't feel the need to know more about this world.

Grade: 5/10