This was so full of satisfying politics and intrigue! Once I was in the swing of things (took me a bit), I really enjoyed this story.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book.

This took me a bit to get into but once I did I was hooked! Its definitely a long, complicated story that is a little bit of a slow burn at times but so worth it. I will be interested in reading more in this world!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Erewon Books for the gifted e-book ❤️ #gifted. My review is comprised of my honest thoughts.

This was confusing and difficult for me to follow. It's very long. I think it had potential, but overall, it just wasn't for me.

A frank portrayal of the cruelty of class inequality and the poisonous allure of belief in destiny.

The world of Elijah Kinch Spector's debut novel Kalyna the Soothsayer isn't a nice one. The royals are more concerned with their banquets and opera galas than in protecting the commonfolk. What nominal justice there is cannot thwart the rule of whoever can hire the most mercenaries. The unstable regime of the Tetrarchia, a federation of four perpetually quarreling kingdoms not quite held together with spit and prayers, hasn't managed to overcome xenophobic prejudice. For Kalyna, the daughter of a penniless family of nomadic fortune-tellers, life is an unceasing barrage of persecution, neglect, abuse, and hunger. Generations of her ancestors have subsisted by using their divinatory powers to help ordinary people improve their sad fortunes a little, and that's the only trade Kalyna knows how to do.

Except Kalyna was born without magic. Unable to see the future, she gets her job done by gossip, hearsay, acute observation, and plain guile. She's a fraud, and her family's precarious livelihood depends on her keeping the pretense that she's an accurate clairvoyant. By paying close attention to the important details, connecting the dots, and making likely guesses, she awes her clientele with her ability to predict what is totally predictable, just unnoticed. So far, these sketchy methods have sufficed to put just enough food on the table for herself, her disabled father, and her violently hostile grandmother. But when a prince from the kingdom of Rotfelsen snatches her from her family and demands predictions of the nation's future, she has to quickly become even more resourceful and conniving to stay in business—and stay alive.

Despite her finely honed talent for careful observation and deduction, Kalyna can't imagine the voracious whirlwind of intrigue, betrayal, hipocrisy, fanaticism, divided loyalties, and decadence she's been thrown into. She's barely prepared for the immensely rich and crafty schemers she's going to have to outwit, but they're no more prepared for the fierceness with which she's willing to oppose rabid nationalism and stand for the masses of low-born. The safety of the four kingdoms is now in the hands of a professional liar set against an entire aristocracy made of liars.

Kalyna the Soothsayer is clear-eyed about the effect that relentless oppression can have on otherwise decent people. This protagonist is still fundamentally well-intentioned, but the brutal harshness of life in the Tetrarchia has forced her to learn to play dirty. Although her conscience is torn by all the tactics of manipulation she's had to rely on to make a living, she can still effortlessly weave more and more lies each time. She doesn't hesitate to use her allies as tools, withhold crucial facts, ruin reputations, threaten, blackmail, and burn bridges to sustain the farce that she has prophetic visions. While she loves her father tenderly and feels sympathy for the plight of the poorest, she's had to navigate the world with a self-imposed indifference to the consequences of her deception.

What these intersecting conditions produce is a brilliantly constructed character, endlessly multilayered and relatably conflicted, with a scarred interior that nonetheless perseveres by sheer survival instinct. Kalyna's inner monologue is a delicious parade of sharp political commentary, pragmatic callousness, reluctant hope, internalized self-loathing, wounded desire, the driest sense of gallows humor, and a drive to independence made of the hardest bedrock. It's an engrossing experience to feel the author lure the reader into rooting for a shameless charlatan, and the key to this trick is in the push and pull of battling impulses in Kalyna's mind. In her impossible situation, she doesn't cease to wish there were a right thing to do, and much of the enjoyment of this novel comes from watching her rationalize which of all the wrong choices is the least catastrophic.

By placing a powerless person at a position of influence among ruthless masterminds, the author also offers a harsh critique of the inner workings of centralized power. The plot threads related to resurgent hyperpatriotism, national mythbuilding, and raw ambition couldn't be more resonant to today's readers. Despite its everyday complications, diverse government comes out victorious, but the story makes a forceful point about the delicate work needed to preserve a civic community built from the strength of the many.

In a setting shaped by magical lineages, ancient mysteries, forgotten world-shaking beasts, and secrets that sleep under the earth, the use of a completely ordinary human as the central focus of the narrative serves to highlight the value of mundane life. Pomp and glory and patriotic pride are mercilessly denounced as the ridiculous folly they are, a fraud more outrageous than Kalyna's daily machinations. Even more than the gift of seeing the coming events, it's fatally dangerous to trust those with absolute power with the gift of believing that fortune smiles upon them.


Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

A lonnng 😏 fantasy novel that occasionally lost me… BUT I am happy I finished it.

My title: Frustrating Kalyna
Fav character: Dugmush 🤣
Readability: Slow
Type: Book
4/5

🌱THE EXCELLENT
~ Straightforward character voice and personality
~ Adult fantasy (she is 27)
~ Attention to detail in developing the world
~ Unfolding court mysteries with sabotage
~ Survival over sense 😬💁
~ Told with a series of short stories that pepper the main story

Kalyna, bane of her grandmother’s existence, caretaker of her father and fake soothsayer, has been trying her best to provide for her family. Unable to foresee the future like her addled father and vindictive grandmother, she runs cons based on probabilities and dropped hints by her father - but her cons have managed to entangle her in dangerous political Rotfelsenisch intrigue.

Now she must use all of her manipulative abilities, lies, killing off other people, insensitiveness & spite, to get others killed before her family is murdered & the unknown dangers of the land shatter this four pronged Tetrararticia (or however it is spelt) 🫣

This was almost a DNF, but given a few months and my belief in @erewhonbooks, I decided to press forward and wrap this one up. It ended up being a good story, although I fervently disliked Kalyna & was utterly annoyed by her existence… I found myself commiserating with the grandmother 😵‍💫 & enjoying most of the outcome.

✨Give it a read.

🌱THE MEH
~ Kalyna 😬
~ Certain parts were a bit long-winded & frustrating, especially being in the the MCs head & viewing her thinking process 😬
~ 🤔 It confuses me when women are written in adventure/fantasy & there is no mention of their periods (having or not having)
~ No mention of MC bathing (yes, this bothers me)
~ An overabundance of ‘filler’ short stories
~ A soothsayer’s daughter who doesn’t seem to believe in soothsayers

♡🌱 But that’s just me ;)

*I received a copy of this eBook in exchange for an honest review*
This was such a strain to read. I felt like I was trudging through treacle to get involved in this at all. I tried so hard but unfortunately i couldn't finish it.

This premise to the novel sounded intriguing. However, it fell below my expectations. The story moved at a very slow pace and not much happened in the novel. I also found the plot at bit confusing at times. Still, I like the world-building. It seemed to be very creative and well-developed. Thus, it still has potential to be a great series.

This debut fantasy novel centers around the titular character who supports herself, her ailing father and bitterly vicious grandmother as a traveling fortune teller. But unlike her family, Kalyna doesn't have the Gift - she's a fraud who must rely on her own powers of observation, tipsters and sometimes her own schemes to guarantee customer satisfaction across the four kingdoms that make up Tetrarchia. But word of Kalyna's "powers" reach royal ears and soon she is forced to use her skills in royal court- for higher stakes than ever.

The world-building is certainly thoroughly detailed here - though sometimes things are dumped more than woven into the narrative. I think that it Spector returns to this world for a second volume, then maybe less of the explanations will be required that so slowed down the pacing here. The machinations of the politics and plot certainly are complex with a country divided into kingdoms and those kingdoms having further splintered within themselves. But the landscape certainly feels unique and while some of the author's inspirations are straightforward, there are still new elements throughout. The relationships and the characters really do come to life and though the intricacies of the politics weights down the pacing, it is still interesting.

In some ways, this reminds me of the kind of fantasy novels that I devoured in the '90s. I love detailed world-building like this, but I just wish that there had been the same level of detail spent in developing the characters, and making the pacing more consistent. I did enjoy the book, though I did read it rather slowly. I enjoyed the setting and the diverse characters enough to always keep going, even if the pacing didn't make me urgently pick it back up as soon as I could. I wonder if Spector will continue Kalyna's adventures - I would be interested to see what happens next for her.

This book just didn't hold my attention as firmly as I wanted it to However, the level and complexity of world-building was amazing, and I do think this will be a real favourite for readers who gel a little better with the story.

Amusing and light fantasy about Kalyna, who pretends she can see the future. After being kidnapped, she gets caught in a web of spymasters, cults, kings, soldiers, and many many lies. She might even be able to save her country’s government from imploding, even though her fellow countrymen have ever only treated her as an outsider.

Loved the world building, especially the differences in languages. Also has Queer characters, no sexytimes, some trope inversions.

This is not a cozy story for readers who want to feel like a kid again, with innocent dreams of magic. But it goes to some really great places and has more heart than many stories with this cynical of a protagonist.

For such an electrifying concept, boy did this move slowly! The pacing was a shame because I greatly enjoyed the protagonist: Kalyna was cunning and irreverent and sarcastic, typically everything I love in a leading lady. I loved seeing her contort the truth and weave a legend around herself even as she scrambled to stay afloat amidst court intrigue and political machinations. I also really liked the world-building: The Tetrachia was fascinating, and very well-established. The concept of one of the four nations existing almost entirely underground was very cool and allowed for a unique setting for the first part of the book. However, all of this was overshadowed by the snail's pace at which the plot moved. It felt like the entire novel was made of tangents which, while sometimes informative, often felt discursive and frustrating. The author could have done a better job overall of striking a balance between telling and showing. It was always better to learn about the world through Kalyna's eyes than it was to learn through an unrelated explanation.

Kalyna the Soothsayer is the debut novel of author Elijah Kinch Spector, and is a fantasy example of a pretty classic genre: the fake psychic story (think Psych or The Mentalist), where a character pretends to have visions of the future and instead relies upon intuition or incredible observation skills to make it work for whatever purposes. In this case, unlike the usual story, Kalyna is the story of a girl in an actual soothsayer (future teller) family, where she's the first one to not have the gift of foresight, to the embarrassment of her grandmother and to her own internal shame. Naturally this doesn't stop her from getting involved in a fantasy tale filled with court intrigue, as she gets forcibly drafted to the service of a Prince in a Kingdom cracking at the seems...both politically and perhaps in reality as well.

And despite Kalyna the Soothsayer featuring an absurd satirical narrative about its ridiculous kingdom setting - something that tends to get on my nerves more than make me chuckle - I found it to be highly enjoyable by the end, as its tale featured a number of enjoyable characters, surprises, and a protagonist in Kalyna who very much does not make the traditional choices you expect along the way. It's probably a bit too long - the book is listed at 400 pages but shows up in my eReader as something closer to 500 - but by the book's last act I was eagerly turning the pages to see how it would all wind up, and while some things are resolved a bit easily, it all fits and winds up in a really satisfying ending. A very interesting debut novel.



--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Kalyna's family has made its living for generations using their unique family Gift - the Gift of being able to see the future. And now it's Kalyna's turn to perform the family task (with her father overtaken by foresight and too ill as a result to be productive) to earn money for the family as they travel the four kingdoms of the Tetrarchia. There's just one problem: Kalyna doesn't have the Gift at all...the first member of her family in generations to be without it.

And so, to her angry screeching grandmother's dismay, Kalyna fakes it - using context and spying to make it so her prophecies seem more plausible to their paying listeners. And after all, it's not as if the future can't be changed as a result of people acting on genuine foresight, so all Kalyna has to do is to take action - sometimes violently - to make sure her own prophecies can always be acted upon to keep the con going.

Unfortunately, Kalyna's reputation becomes good enough that she attracts the wrong type of attention - that of a Prince in the underground Kingdom of Rotfelsen. Soon she finds herself kidnapped by the Prince's spymaster and tasked with helping the Prince stop the constant plots against his brother the King. To keep her secret - as well as he head - Kalyna will have to continue the con on a whole new level...and to make matters worse, her father had a genuine prophecy of the Tetrarchia apocalyptically falling apart, a prophecy clearly connected to her new role. Kalyna will thus be forced to decipher a strange land, with strange cultures and multiple strange factions and armies, all of which seem to be plotting against each other, all for the sake of not just protecting her own secret....but the lives of all its people as well....
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Kalyna the Soothsayer is told entirely from the first person perspective of its protagonist, who narrates the story seemingly as if she's telling it from a bit in the future, as if the things she's talking about are in the past (with her giving hints at things to come at ends of chapters, for examples). It's also a narrative that's incredibly matter of fact about the absurd things that Kalyna encounters, and this book is basically a satire at times of dysfunctional ruling societies, so there are a lot of utterly absurd things: a kingdom with a Prince who will plot to ensure he doesn't get to rule even though the ruling King is basically just a figurehead, four armies following four rulers each with their own different philosophies and agendas that never really make any sense (one army is dedicated to the Court Philosopher of all things). And the various peoples and Kingdoms, and even the peoples within the kingdoms have even more different views on how the world should work, such as different roles for women (can they duel? can they fight? etc. etc.) even as non-hetero relationships are in some places largely accepted (our protagonist is interested in both women and men). And then there's the extreme ridiculous segregation of roles in the bureaucracy, such as one eccentric man whose job is entirely about the picking of fruit for the Royalty's events, or another who has a hereditary role as an ethicist, etc.

It's a type of ridiculousness that I sometimes find hard to read, and don't really love whenever it's not super pointed in its political commentary. But it works here mainly due to Kalyna, who is a really great character, with so so much depth. Kalyna is a girl who is good-hearted really, who wants to help her family....really her father, but also doesn't want to harm people with her prophecies if she can avoid it...even to the extent of getting dirty with a weapon to ensure that certain bad actors don't ruin them in murderous ways. She gets close to various people - the aforementioned Master of Fruit, whose simplicity and earnest mindedness really appeals to her; a noble man who tries overly hard to charm her; a bartender who she tries trolling for information; and even one of the Prince's soldiers, an attractive and incredibly dry-witted women - and well, despite running a con wants to try and do the right thing....and finds herself haunted not just by the prophecy of doom, but also what could happen if she guesses the wrong thing.

And these morals, even as she is perfectly willing to lie, steal, and cheat to get her way, make her react in some really surprising ways that will keep you guessing and keep this from being the normal "fake psychic saves the day through observation" type story. And with everyone and their factions trying to plot and anticipate her and the others in ways that lead to gambit pile ups among gambit pile ups (to say nothing of the Prince, who so badly doesn't want a job that he's basically doing it anyway...even as the role itself is so much less serious than he actually thinks), that the story went from a grating style to one that is absolutely charming in the end, as things come to a head in what is a little bit abrupt (how they avert the apocalypse is a bit of a let-down) but is still incredibly satisfying.

And hell, the book even plays with genuine prophecies by having them not necessarily come true, especially with regards to Kalyna's future, leading to some personal choices near the end that just mad me really fall in love with her as a character. And that brings this book up a level to where I wound up enjoying it more than I thought I would. If only it was about 100 pages less it'd probably be really good, but you still can't go too wrong giving this one a try.

I have two words for this book: Palace. Intrigue!

(Ok, I have more words for this book.)

Kalyna is an absolute delight from cover to cover. Intricate, not dense but full--full of plots and twists and reversals, full of dry humor and wit, full of intrigue that keeps you guessing until it all comes together at the end. Kalyna herself is possibly one of my favorite characters ever: a manipulative jerk with a heart of such pure gold, who thinks she's a bad person even as she tries to save the world.

Have you ever finished a book, sat back and wondered what on earth you have just read? That was me after I had finished Kalyna the Soothsayer by Elijah Kinch Spector. There was something about this one that kept me hooked even when I kept looking at the percentage read and realised that what I thought was a huge chunk read was only a measly 20 percent!

I have to admit I went into Kalyna the Soothsayer expecting there to be a point where the main character, Kalyna was revealed to have real soothsaying powers or some other gift. At some points it felt as though that was where Spector was heading, and I thought I read a few hints dropped to that extent. I’m not quite sure if I’m glad that I was wrong about the direction Spector took the book in or not, because while I think that route would have been interesting it was also refreshing to have a protagonist who didn’t have any powers. As a result, Kalyna the Soothsayer is more fantasy with a spy and thriller twist than your usual epic fantasy and I think that is what kept me hooked. I had to know what was going to happen, how things would turn out.

As a main character Kalyna is probably not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Anyone who read Throne of Glass and complained that Celaena was bratty should give this a miss, especially because they missed the fact that Celaena had been through traumatic experiences and was dealing with PTSD. The world of Kalyna the Soothsayer is divided into four kingdoms which eventually banded together to form a “gigantic country” called the Tetrarchia. Kalyna and her family are travelling soothsayers, and as she tells people multiple times throughout the book, she’s not “foreign”; she belongs to every country.

“I have got something from everywhere, and I am exotic to all” is how she explains, “It is useful for business, and also for being dragged out by a mob to be throttled”.

Her grandmother is an extremely toxic person who told her as a child that she killed her mother (she died in childbirth), and has been emotionally abusing her since it became obvious that Kalyna had not inherited their family gift. Being forced into a coach and taken to one of the kingdoms to act as a soothsayer in a prince’s mad scheme is just another traumatic event in a long line for this young woman. Spector does a great job of walking that fine line between exploring Kalyna’s feelings of imprisonment, anxiety of being found out as a fraud, worry about her disabled father while feeling guilty for enjoying luxuries that she has never had before.

I found her likeable and relatable, and a lot of that was to do with Spector’s narrative voice. At one point during Kalyna the Soothsayer a character introduces herself while eating something and Kalyna is too embarrassed to ask her to repeat it because she likes her. She spends an awfully long time calling this woman a random misheard name until someone finally says her name properly, and it was just so relatable. It also brought the whole situation and the character down to earth. She’s running around trying not to get caught, up to her neck in the middle of political conspiracies, risking certain death and there she is worried about embarrassing herself in front of a pretty girl!

While there was enough to keep me hooked, the massive downfall of the Kalyna the Soothsayer is its length. There is just so much waffling on which just isn’t needed. I don’t know whether a map is included in the final edition (there’s no preview available on Amazon and no information on the author’s website), but this is one of those books where one is sorely needed. From the way the kingdoms are described and the etymology of the names Spector has used I would guess that this is one of those fantasy worlds stylised on real world locations and cultures. Sometimes that can be done very well, and sometimes it can feel like I’m reading historical fiction rather than fantasy. In this case, it wasn’t done well. When Kalyna is reading through her captor’s tireless and boring notes, the reader does not need to know all those details as well, for example.

Some things were well done, and it was good to see a disabled character and lots of LGBT representation in a fantasy novel without any negative connotations attached to either. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for what Elijah Kinch Spector does next, but Kalyna the Soothsayer just wasn’t quite the right fit for me.

I found Kalyna the Soothsayer absolutely fascinating. What the reader will first notice is the choice of structure Spector has chosen to write in. The book is broken up into parts and each part is broken up into small, bite-size sections that have section headers. Think of the Parts like seasons and the Sections like episodes (sometimes with a telenovela cliffhanger that’s addressed in the next section immediately) and you’ll get a sense of how Spector approached this story.

There are parts that either become heavy with dialogue or heavy with exposition and it does seem like the author struggled to find a balance there - but there are so many hidden gems of writing that it truly ended up not bothering me as a reader.

This book is heavy on the politics but Kalyna was a very interesting protagonist to follow, especially when she gets into her banter. She has such a dry wit that is just so fun to read. There is also one person I love especially when she banters with, and I won’t say who, but there’s a very good reason why their banter is so good - and it was a fist pump moment when it’s revealed.

I do sincerely hope that Kalyna the Soothsayer finds its audience because I do worry that the structure will discourage some readers from trying it or recommending it and that shouldn’t be the case.

If the premise sounds interesting, and you don’t mind a little challenge in writing style - I recommend this book.


*I received an eARC from Erewhon Books & NetGalley in exchange for my honest review*

Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for providing an eARC to review!

I will say that (unintentionally) the last three books I have read (including this one) have all been seer-based, so maybe I was a little tired of the concept. I did find the take on soothsaying this presents is a unique one, and I really liked the idea of not being able to see the futures of those you're close to because you're so rooted in their present. I also enjoyed Kalyna's way of getting around her lack of Gift, especially in her small town where people were unlikely to catch on.

However, as soon as we got to the palace, I didn't really understand what made her different from just a regular spy-type, apart from her making some quite bold assumptions and then being able to blame the vagueness of her gift? I felt her having to get 'context' for her visions, even if she had the Gift, would make soothsaying pretty useless, especially if you wouldn't be able to place your vision until you're seeing it played out. I don't know if this was meant to be the point, but I felt this book quickly devolved into Kalyna just going around asking people what they were up to, and then basically reporting back and just saying it was prophecy.

I also didn't really like the way this book was formatted - which I know is a bit petty - but I found the headings and sections that gave us kind of an encyclopaedic overview of the world pulled me out of Kalyna's story, and there was just way too much detail. The author has obviously thought a lot about this world, but I felt there wasn't enough left up to the imagination to allow me to really feel immersed in the story. The opposite, interestingly, I felt was true of Kalyna. I felt like I didn't know much about her apart from 1) she wanted to protect her father, 2) she hated her Grandmother and 3) she wanted to escape. And especially as that last one never really felt like something she was ever going to try to do, Kalyna fell a little flat for me. I think I needed a bit more street smarts, survivalist cunning about her, but instead at times she just felt snarky and childish.

I think this had a lot of potential, but just needed some tightening up to make the story more immersive. I needed a bit more showing rather than telling, for the world-building to be a bit better incorporated into the story, and for Kalyna to be a bit more of a character I could root for. I think if you're looking for something with similar themes, The Wolf and the Woodsman or The Poppy War would do the job very nicely.

I loved the premise of this book and was so excited to dive into the story. But instead of being greeting by a fast paced fantasy adventure I found myself slogging through a very slow story struggling to decipher which rabbit trails of history that the narrator kept veering down were relevant to the plot and which were just for the sake of world building.
I like Kalyna as a character, her tenacity and constant plotting and scheming were fun, but even though the whole premise of the story is about her faking it as a soothsayer we don't actually get to see her doing all that much.

Spector has written a remarkably interesting tale of deceit and deception.
Our tale has us follow Kalyna. A non-magical, conniving, con artist, and thief. Kalyna however is very smart, yet she also not deceived by false hope.
Kalyna’s world centers around her abusive grandmother and her extremely ill father, who also have the gift of soothsaying. However, Kalyna does not have the gift, so she must use deceit instead of soothsaying.
Kalyna ends up getting kidnapped by the prince and is told to find out who the people are with intentions to hurt the royal family. She knows however, how bad the assignment can be in finding anyone who wants the hurt royal family.
However! This should also be the easiest assignment of a true soothsayer. Keep in mind, Kaylna is a fraud. So, this ends up not being what she predicted and not being as easy as she had thought. Being a fraud is not all that she had thought it would be, especially when the lives of the ones she loves are on the line.
Kalyna has to perform her best acting ever. She must save her people from the impending doom her father prophesied to happen to Tetrachia. Her ability to be multilingual adds a great deal of who she is, her ability to be cunning makes her a perfect spy.
Spector amasses many genres including the LGBTQIA+ within Kaylna who is bisexual, has a transexual ancestor and a gay character within the novel.
I particularly liked the fact that Spector added the disability representation element. As a Spinal Cord Injuries and Disorder Nurse, the father as a double amputee, reminds me of my patients. The fact that he is a loved character of the book is a refreshing quality in the book. Kudos for that aspect alone.
Kalyna is actually a product of her environment, due to that environment and the stressors that are reigned upon her it is no wonder Kalyna has had to become the person she is.
She has had to suffer the abuse at the hands of her grandmother who blames her for very existence, because she blames her mother’s death since she died while giving birth to Kalyna.
She carries the weight of her father debilitating mind damage by taking on most of the burdens and supporting.
But most of all she carries guilt, the guilt that she does not carry the gift of being a soothsayer, that she has not been able to access the gifts. However, Kalyna does form some type of acceptance.
Spector does leave the book open ended which gives room for another novel, which would be ideal. It would be nice to see if Kalyna’s ancestral line will actually end the soothsayers for good. Overall Spector did a respectable job with this book!
Well Done
Thank you NetGalley, Elijah Kinch Spector and Erewhon Books for this free eArc, This review is of my own volition.