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Amnesty

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Member Reviews

Series ends on a decent note with a closer focus on various interpersonal dynamics than on outright action — life after the revolution got complicated. The story tries hard to tie up all loose ends even tho conclusion is a bit too simple for such a complete showing of the mess of war/revolution.

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The last book in this series moves the quickest, takes a more clipped pace than the predecessors, has a clearer goal in mind. I don’t want to spoil too much, but we’re reunited with one main character and are left grieving the loss of another, adding more shards and splinters to the complex character dynamics between Aristide, Cyril, Lillian, Cordelia, and Jinadh.
I like the feeling of these characters together in the books. They have the kind of relationship formed only through trauma—they survived hell together, so in some weird way, they will always be connected. And now that the bombs and guns have quieted and the real mess of politics and trials will start, their loyalties are tested once more.
I was glad to be back in Amberlough City for this book. It feels like the natural setting, the one that makes the most sense for these characters, and the transformation the city went through is haunting. It’s a perfect portrait of a once-vibrant town full of culture and life turned into something cold and sterile by the ravages of war. But the characters still make sense there, and seeing them fit back into the environment is really interesting.
This feels like a natural conclusion to the series, though a bittersweet one. I liked it better than the slogging second book but not as much as the dazzling first.

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Unfortunately, I did not get. the chance to read this ARC prior to its release--I'm hoping to work through my backlist now that we're home for the coming weeks!--but we did end up buying this book for the library collection.

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Ahoy there mateys! I requested this and then went and read book one. I really enjoyed a lot of book one but realized that I had no real interest in reading more of the series. I was very sorry that I had requested a book three without reading the others. I think that is a tactic I will certainly be avoiding in the future. I am very grateful for the review copy. Happy reading and sailing!

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I liked this series. I cannot go into a lot of detail because this is the the third and final book in the series. I was underwhelmed mostly with the ending and while some people might like it I felt it was on the safer side then I wanted for this story.

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Amnesty is the final book in the queer, no-magic fantasy trilogy that started with Amberlough. I highly recommend that you read this series in order! The rest of my review will contain spoilers for the previous books.

Amnesty begins with a time-skip in which the Ospies have been overthrown and Cordelia has died. Oh, and perhaps most importantly, it opens with the news that Cyril has been found. Lillian doesn’t quite know how to deal with the reappearance of her politically inconvenient brother, and Cyril is depressed and suffering from PTSD. Aristide sees this as a chance to rekindle their relationship, but he’s also angry that Cyril never reached out to him in all these years.

Amnesty is a fitting conclusion to the trilogy, and I love the decision to skip to the aftermath of the Ospies defeat. Amnesty is a novel about recovery — both the recovery of society and personal stories of recovery. Are healing and forgiveness possible? Does Cyril deserve forgiveness for turning traitor in the first book? And what will the future look like going forward? These questions made for a compelling story. The character interactions are likewise compelling. Perhaps my favorite was the relationship between Cyril and his nephew Stephan, who he sees a lot of himself in. But the sibling relationship between Cyril and Lillian was also great.

If Donnelly ever decides to return to this world, I’ll happily read that book! But I’ll also read whatever else she decides to turn her hand to.

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I had such a hard time with this series, and after looking around on the internet, I realize it's me, not the books. I just don't like spy thrillers. I had no idea whatsoever that this was the case. The books are speedy, beautifully designed, and characterized with care, but man oh man they are not for me. I reviewed this book for Locus, likely to appear in the June edition.

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A fitting end to the Amberlough series, Amnesty defies expectations and denies easy answers. The fascist Ospies, whose rise and rule was explored in Amberlough and Armistice, respectively, have fallen, and now the De Pauls, Aristade, and their allies are trying to pick up the pieces. Fiery Cordelia has died and made into a hero of the revolution in a way that threatens to obscure her personality and actual sacrifice. Lillian De Paul is back in Amberlough with her husband and son, struggling to keep her job in the provisional government while dealing with family crises. Aristade has been hunting for Cyril for years and finally finds him broken and damaged. Cyril's return upends the life of his sister, his lover, and the city he betrayed. Heartbreaking and beautiful, Amnesty denies the reader the chance to root against the Ospies and focuses on the after: how to rebuild infrastructure and lives damaged by the war, how to make a political system less vulnerable to exploitation, how to integrate former fighters into a hopefully peaceful time. Amnesty is a challenging book, like the previous installments, but it is well worth your time. It will help you believe in love, even for the most damaged and selfish people.

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Amnesty, the final book of Lara Elena Donnelly’s Amberlough Dossier, returns to Gedda after the fall of the fascistic Ospies, picking up in that tremulous, unsure time after a revolution. In Amberlough, we watched the criminal and compromised agents of Gedda work at cross purposes to one another against a background of the rising tide of fascism. In Armistice, the centrifuge of the police state flings the major players out of the country and into various forms of exile: freedom fighter, propagandist, publicist, presumed dead. In Amnesty, they all come back to their devastated homeland to roost—a place changed by the ravages of war, and not even slightly for the better.

This novel is about that tenuous period in a country’s history when it must pick itself back up and carry on after brutal, unforgivable civic acts. It bears home the tough inexorable press of history through a series of relationships that we’ve watched bend and break throughout the earlier books. The moral ambiguity of what the country, and its people, had to do to survive an authoritarian state is front and center, but this is not some philosophical treatise nor the bloodless recounting of civic facts.

The emotional through-line of the series has been (arguably) the relationship between Cyril DePaul and Aristide Makricosta. When we met them in Amberlough, during the rise of the Ospies, Cyril was an intelligence agent (read: spy), and Aristide a stripper and drug smuggler. There you’ve got a spy and an asset, or a kingpin and a mark, depending on your point of view. Cyril and Aristide enacted a dubious affair, using their institutional reasons for keeping one another close as cover for their real affections. They were truly star-crossed lovers, separated in ways that felt permanent: Cyril presumed dead, Aristide making propaganda films in another country and working hard at drinking himself to death.

They are reunited in Amnesty, but there is no swelling music, nor a fade to black. Cyril moved from being tortured by the Ospies to being tortured by their opposition, not so much a double agent than a man with allegiances to whatever kept him from another beating. His aristocratic nose is broken beyond repair, and he compulsively pockets things—even just the butt of a half-smoked cigarette—because of years of hand to mouth living. Aristide, for his sins, is relatively flush, though the post-Ospies black market economy is changing back from gun-running to the more stable state business of drugs. His reunion with Cyril is one of the most fraught encounters I’ve ever read: they are both broken in their own ways, though some scars are more visible than others. (One scene involving a shaving razor made me want to jump out of my skin.) Their reacquaintance is just the beginning of a series of reunions, as Gedda’s lost are found again.

Cyril and Aristide travel separately to the DePaul country estate in Gedda outside of Amberlough, where Cyril was raised. The DePauls were politely wealthy; now they are living on the ragged edge of political connections and social inertia. The building, like the country, is in poor repair following the Ospie occupation, stripped of its valuables. Cyril’s sister Lillian, her foreign husband, and their disaffected teenage son are in residence. Lillian rode out the Ospies by working in a job something like public relations crossed with propaganda, and she’s trying to market those skills in the nascent post-revolution state. There’s a parliamentary election between a freedom fighter and an old school politician coming up, and she is trying (and failing) to be all things to both people.

Unfortunately, Cyril’s return to Gedda puts all of the moral ambiguity of the Ospie occupation on trial: he’s to pay for the country’s sins, a politically expedient target who will acquiesce to his own destruction. He’s eaten by survivor’s guilt and the less morally pure form of shame, and that the state would try to kill him feels just to him. The people around Cyril—his sister, his old lover—are unwilling to let this come to pass without a fight.

It’s in this conflict that we find the heart of Amnesty, a novel which is, after all, named after a political pardon. All of the principles have been changed indelibly by the occupation, but their motives are still as selfish and as personal as ever. Nothing about the ending feels inevitable, but it’s perfect in its imperfect way: an ambiguous end to an ambiguous beginning. The personal is the political, but maybe not the other way around.

Amnesty is available now.

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Amnesty is a smart mix of family drama and political prowess, detailing a world where past wars are still present in the dilapidated halls of bygone mansions. The storytelling feels old school in the best way, reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh and the early twentieth century novel. It’s a character piece at its heart, showing us snippets of the tangled past that has led to the events of this third book in the series. It’s intriguing through and through, presenting a sharp narrative amidst a compelling setting.

I’ll admit to this being my first foray into the Amberlough series. I like to get into the middle of a beloved series from time to time – it often shows how talented authors are at writing books that both accent those before and standalone as strong works. From the start, I was intrigued by the pasts swirling around this small group of characters. There’s a sense of abounding sadness at the lost state of things, harkening to brighter days when two characters were lovers, and two a part of a wealthy, respectable family. With time and war, those days are long in the past and we are met with the remains.

As a new reader, it’s fascinating to see what this world has done to these characters. We have the somewhat shady businessman profiting from war aid. It’s clear he’s aged significantly, though he remains pretty similar to his always profiting self. We have his past lover, a former spy whose longtime disappearance was assumed to be an untimely death. With his return, we catch glimpses of the horror of war and the underlying hatred for his large part in past events. We also have a woman embedded in the political scene, the only sister of the returned spy, who desperately wants to restore her family name. It’s all written expertly, with so much buried within the conversations. It makes me wish I had followed this series from the start.

I’m amazed at Connelly’s ability as a writer. Everything is interesting, from the most basic social interaction to political intrigue and business dealings. There’s never a dull moment as you flow along with the narrative.

Overall, I very much enjoyed Amnesty. It has a unique mix of intrigue and everyday life, balancing a carefully crafted character piece with the explosive events of the past two novels. It’s a compelling read for new and seasoned fans alike.

Review to be published on 5/2: https://reviewsandrobots.com/2019/05/02/amnesty-book-review

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I read this book courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for a review.

I didn't think this would happen, but at its (presumed) end, the world of Amberlough has grown on me, at long last. The third volume was the first that I really emotionally connected with.

First things first: I didn't even read the cover copy before embarking on my reading here, and I think that served me well. This novel starts several (?) years after the previous volume ended, and the world it is set in is quite different; but the story it tells this time is only marginally interested in the politics (though it very much needs them to motivate the plot) or spying and action: instead, it is an intimate story of broken people and their desperate attempts at putting themselves together. I very much admire series that switch gears mid-way, and tell a different type of story, and I think it was a good choice for Donnelly - spying pyrotechnics and intrigue were the least convincing and successful part of her writing, to me, and interpersonal interactions and personal reflection is much more where it shines. This is a novel whose plot is just a pretense for intense insight into the characters' traumas and the world they no longer understand or fit; thus, it will surely appeal to some and miss other readers. Count me mostly appealed to.

My only misgivings concern whether the narrative does enough to persuade me that the characters deserve my investment in their success - I am not quite sure it succeeds there. I feel like there are thematic aspects of this story that never find resolution - the story goes in a direction and then stops short of what would seem a logical conclusion. Still, even that has certain value - while a part of me truly wants a different ending for characters, to satisfy my desire for justice and the "right" ending, I am even more interested in engaging with the values this ending presents, discussing it with other readers, hearing their thoughts.

It was my favourite part of the trilogy, and I never would have expected that from the description. I found its mood and grittiness mesmerising. I can't wait to see what other readers think.

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I read this book then I had to go back and read the other in this series.
I think it's a great series and this is the perfect end for a great series.
I loved the characters, so well written and fleshed out, was fascinated by the plot, and found the world building amazing.
I look forward to reading other books by this author.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

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The war is finally over in Amnesty, by Lara Elena Donnelly, but peace has not yet arrived for the cast of characters. They’ve been on a long road for a decade, some literally and some figuratively. In this final entry in the Amberlough Dossier, we see Lillian DePaul, Aristide Makricosta, and Cyril DePaul on the last mile of that road. They’ve been through a hell of a lot and my heart was in my throat the whole time as I waited to see what hurdles Donnelly would put in their way.

Lillian has been home in Amberlough for some time, trying to rebuild a life as a press agent in the government of the new Prime Minister, whoever that turns out to be. It’s a challenge because of her past working for the One State Party (Ospies), who coerced her to work for them, and also because of her name. Cyril, her brother, torched the family’s good name when he turned double agent during the events of Amberlough. His actions led to the fall of independent Amberlough and the rise of the Ospies. When it turns out that Cyril didn’t die after those actions has made her life all the more complicated. Of course, however complicated Lillian’s life is, it’s no comparison to how complicated life is for Aristide. Cyril was Aristide’s lover and it was his love for the former burlesque star and smuggler that made Cyril betray his country.

The characters in the Amberlough Dossier have a very bad habit of working at cross purposes and not talking to each other. Lillian, Aristide, and Cyril have a long history of having to work on their own while very much in the shadows. This bad habit goes all the way back to the first volume in the trilogy, to catastrophic effect. The characters have learned a lot, but they still haven’t learned this lesson. While Lillian wheels and deals (and deals with a stroppy teenaged son), Cyril’s life is once more in danger from people who blame him for the war and the still unrepaired damage it caused. Aristide and Lillian do their best to try and save him one more time, but Cyril seems willing to go to the gallows for his treason. Lillian calls in a lawyer to work with the system. Aristide…very much does not…and there are more than one passage where it looks like their actions could cause everything to go to hell again.

Amnesty contains political machinations, criminal enterprises, and an imperial ton of emotional baggage—some of it utterly heartbreaking as Cyril and Aristide wrestle with their feelings for each other. While all of this torments our trio of protagonists, it makes for highly entertaining and thrilling reading. This book was a brilliant finale for a highly original trilogy. I am more than satisfied.

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Oh, this series! Breaking my heart one book at a time! Such beautiful writing about a broken world and the relationships that will us to survive. I’m not ready to say goodbye, time to read them again!

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Great ending to a great book series. The ending can be considered a happy ending as the characters are content with their lives and not going to be killed. They have to deal with the decisions they made during hard times. Now I just want to watch a show based on this series.

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Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This book does take place 8 years after book one. I believe also that this is the finale book in this series and such a great conclusion.

The world building of this series has been amazing. It highly suggest picking up this series. The writing is great and the plot was very easy to follow.

I don't want to go much into details about this book since it is book 3. I never read the synopsis when there are series because I don't even like to spoil myself. All I can say is, it is worth the read.

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It is always heartbreaking when a favourite series comes to an end and the Amberlough Dossier has been one series that I have loved since I read the first page of Amberlough. I fell hard for Aristide and Cyril and I know these characters will stay with me long after I have finished the last page of Amnesty.

We open 8 years after the end of Amberlough and five years after Armistice. The war is over and won and Arisitde gets a call that Cyril is broken, battered and bruised but alive and waiting for him at a safe house. What follows is a story of guilt, heartbreak all brilliantly portrayed in Donnelly's perfect heart-wrenching hand. I actually enjoyed Lillian's input into this novel more that I did her voice in Armistice. I believe it was because Cyril was the turning point in this book, and the way he reflects his own image onto his nephew Stephan, Lilian's Son. Thus for me Lilian became a lot more sympathetic and a strong character who understood her flaws and worked to correct them.

Aristide's perspective as always broke me. His stubborn nature and his true devotion to Cyril made me speed read this novel to see the outcome. This book had me up till 2am biting my finger nails and begging these characters to just be happy ! As Always Donnelly does a terrific job of making us extremely annoyed and absolutely besotted by her characters.

The last few chapters tie all loose ends and is the ending I was always hoping for. Having read these novels sporadically during release, I would love to sit down and re-read them one after the other. I really want to re-delve into this world as I feel I will always want more from the Amberlough Dossier.

It was a beautiful end to a truly wonderful series. I am unlikely to find a talent like Donnelly's for a while.

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Reading this makes me wish I had my hair up, lipstick on, and double martini in hand while classy music plays in the background. I am sitting on a leather sofa in the library with rain pattering on the bay windows which look onto the lush green grounds. I have a trust fund to support me for the rest of my days thanks to old money, just like a DePaul, but without the family trauma and loss of income due to political strife! Ta-da, could life get any better?

I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll continue to say it until this series gets the attention it deserves! I can’t believe this isn’t more popular. People need to read these books! Political intrigue that’s well-rounded and reflects what’s happening today? LGBTQA representation?Spies? Drinks? Beautiful clothes? Realistic portrayal of PTSD? Atmosphere? Humour? It has it all!

Amnesty is just as politically intriguing, and rich in atmosphere and setting as Amberlough, with a completely different flavour from both that first book, and Armistice. Whereas Amberlough is glitzy with the feel of vintage burlesque theatres and a dark taste of the underworld, and Armistice is warm and fast paced with its focus on character interactions and an old Hollywood atmosphere, Amnesty is darker and colder. I am a fan of these different tones, as they match the feel of the rise and fall of an age. In the beginning: whispers and panic, the middle: money money money in some pockets with chaos on the rise, and finally the end: sit-down dinners, contracts and steel conclusions (with a few explosions thrown in the mix). This series is kind of the Adult version of if The Hunger Games, Six of Crows, and The Great Gatsby had a child, and that child became entangled in espionage.

The anticipation of finally seeing Cyril again and witnessing Aristide’s reaction had me drawing the first few pages out as long as I could while simultaneously being unable to help myself from skipping over lines in excitement. Of course I wish we got the old Cyril back, slicked hair, uptown attitude and all, but that just doesn’t suit the past 8 years of his life. The portrayal of Cyril’s trauma felt very realistic, especially considering how shaken he was just by the end of Amberlough. Now after 8 years under constant threat, he is completely undone, and not in a sexy “oooooh he’s so dark and deep now!”, but in an “oh shit, he needs leagues of therapists and possibly a brain wipe”, kind of way. This is a refreshing change from what feels like the more typical use of trauma in fictional romantic relationships, where such backgrounds are often used as a foundation for gratuitous angst, and brushed aside once the kissing starts. This is not the case here; Cyril’s return is more illustrative of a soldier who after years in a war zone now has to adapt to a civilian lifestyle. Aristide on the other hand, is only doing a little bit better. The way his reaction to Cyril is handled, where Cyril sees one version while we get the other, got me right in my drama loving heart and felt so true to how people faced with such unexpected events flail around. Obviously by the end I wanted more, but everything was wrapped up so neatly, in a fashion that matched with the pacing and plot, that it wasn’t necessary.

As for the rest of the characters, a few leading members are missing, but this didn’t feel off. Amnesty is a slim volume considering the amount of info it handles, and as such, it has a fast pace with little room for taking a break and basking in everyone’s glow. Lillian, Jinadh, Stephen, and Cordelia, to name a few, are handled with grace. We have just as much as we need, everyone is three-dimensional, so there are no questions asked...but, if Donelly were ever to suddenly pull a Tolkien and rewrite these books with bundles of new info concerning every character, event, setting etc I would buy, buy, buy. Take my money. Of course, it took Tolkien roughly 30 years to get Lord of the Rings to the point it is today (this is just what I’ve been told, please don’t come after me die-hard fans), so I hope it wouldn’t take that long, but maybe if we got updates every 5 years that would be cool? Maybe?

Also, I loved the interactions between sassy uncle Cyril, Jinadh, and Stephen. I mean, poor Jinadh, the man did NOT sign up for this, but here he is harbouring an ex-spy(not sure what to call Cyril, so I’m going with this for now), who thinks it’s okay to pilfer his collection of cardigans and dismiss him at dinner, and an angsty teenage son who becomes bff’s with said uncle. What is a handsome journalist who doesn’t get paid enough supposed to do in this situation?

As with the previous books, there’s a significant time skip at the beginning, with events controlling the plot having occurred in the past. Usually, this might feel off, but as with the characters, we’re given enough info that everything flows smoothly.

Basically, if you haven’t read The Amberlough Dossier yet, you gotta get on it (please).

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Amnesty looked promising but, unfortunately, the story didn't intrest me like I thought it would. I skimmed through this one. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

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It’s always a bit sad when a series you love comes to an end. It’s hard to say goodbye to the characters you’ve formed a bond with, and a good ending will leave you nostalgic for the world as a whole.

And in my opinion, Amnesty is a good ending to the Amberlough Dossiers.

Lara Elena Donnelly has a marvelous ability to use the absence of something (or someone) to a greater effect than the presence of that same thing. We saw this in Armistice, when the absence of a certain main character from book 1 drove the story, and it’s the same sort of idea here.

There’s a significant time-skip between Armistice and Amnesty, and in that time everything that could have been considered the “overarching plot” in book 1 has now been settled. As it says in the blurb, “The revolution has come and gone, with Amberlough City striving to rebuild itself from the ashes.” And along with the revolution, another main character from the first two books is gone now, too.

Lara Elena Donnelly uses these absences — the absence of the revolution, the absence of an enemy, the absence of a friend — to explore how her characters would cope and change in the aftermath. Amberlough City is ready to move on from it’s troubles, but our characters are still living them. When the public want to use Cyril as a scapegoat for his crimes against the city in the past… well, it’s hard to blame them. But Cyril does still have people who care for him, even now, and those people are willing to fight for him.

Skipping over the revolution may be somewhat of an unorthodox decision, but while I would have loved to see these characters band together and stick it to the fascists, this fits the tone of the series so much more. These books were never about the war, they were about the characters.

And in that regard, Amnesty is much more like Armistice than Amberlough. The story is more conversational, relying more on the awkwardness of relationships and the weight of the past than on any explosions or gunshots.

It’s a bittersweet ending, but in retrospect that’s the only it could have ended.

Depending on what kind of reader you are, some of the decisions taken in this book might not be to your tastes. If you were expecting a big and explosive finale, this isn’t that. It’s smaller, more personal.

I’m glad to have read this series, and I can’t wait to see what Lara Elena Donnelly writes next.

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