Kalyna the Soothsayer is a long, meaty read full of political intrigue and dry humor, with a downright cunning strong female protagonist. Kalyna is a formidable main character with smarts and no magic in a fantasy world.

THE PREMISE:

Kalyna is a fake soothsayer descended from a long line of real soothsayers. The gift of seeing the future that runs in her family seems to have skipped her. With an ailing father and abusive grandmother to support, she took to faking soothsayer abilities using observation, deduction, paid informants, and the rarely coherent prophecies of her ailing father. At 27, she’s long since developed a seasoned con artist’s eye for reading people. Her family has always been nomadic because real or fake, seers tend to get run out of town (or worse) if they stick around too long. Apparently, she got a little too good at faking it and made a bit too good of a reputation for herself in travels. One day, she gets recruited (more like drafted or kidnapped) by the Prince to use her soothsaying to stop an assasination plot against the King. That is, the King of one of the four kingdoms that make up Kalyna’s bizarre Tetrarchic country. Kalyna’s supposed to do this before the next regular meeting of the four monarchs in about three months. Unfortunately, her father’s latest prophecy foretold the bloody destruction of their country in about three months too. This leaves Kalyna trying to figure out how she can escape the country with her family before it is destroyed or prevent said destruction. She also has to keep from being revealed as a fraud (which would probably get her executed). The court is full of factions, schemers, and different armies that most certainly do not work together. Pretty soon, Kalyna begins to wonder if it’s possible to save her country or even if she somehow triggers its destruction.

THE MAIN CHARACTER:

Kalyna is a rare strong female protagonist that’s truly cunning and clever without being immoral, sadistic, selfish, or unlikeable.

She survives using her wits, guile, and trusty sickle. She’s crafty and clever and most definitely a liar. She may be a con woman, but she does it for the right reasons. She does it for the sake of her ailing father. She has a healthy sense of self-preservation and looks after her own first and foremost. And yet, she’s still empathetic.

She thinks fast in a crisis. Sometimes she talks her way out of a fight. Sometimes she talks others into a fight. Sometimes she fights for her life. When she does, she fights dirty, not very skillfully, not too incompetently, and with everything she’s got. When she spins lies to talk people into or out of a fight in order to avert catastrophe, she does it with everything she’s got.

Kalyna is cynical, pessimistic, and just a little bit petty in such a relatable and darkly funny way.

“I formulated, and discarded, a hundred different ways to take Lenz hostage, or kill him, during the Ball. None were feasible, but all were satisfying to imagine.”

Now that’s a reaction to being kidnapped and coerced that I can relate to.

Kalyna’s got a trickster’s confidence and guile, the perceptive eyes of a conwoman, the loyalty of a loving daughter, the fighting spirit of a survivor, the fear of someone who wants to live, and the dry, black humor of a cynic who half expects to die.

As a member of a nomadic family, Kalyna has ancestry all over the Tetrarchy and is seen as a foreigner everywhere. She has the empathy of an outsider and a traveler that has seen all walks of life. She’s been desperate and hungry enough of her life to empathize with those in desperate straights. She has the wisdom of someone that’s seen so much of the world, so many people, and paid attention.

She’s smart and shrewd, but not always right. She sometimes misreads people or procrastinates. She makes some things worse while trying to protect herself and her father with clever lies. She struggles with her self worth after a lifetime of abuse from her grandmother, but saving an entire nation might just do wonders for self esteem (if she succeeds). She spends half the book not knowing a character’s name because it was far too late to ask. While her motives for being a con artist are good, she’s not immune to darker impulses: anger, jealousy, spite, the power trip of manipulating others’ with expert skill, etc. She’s not perfect and definitely grows as a person in this story.

I want to see more characters like Kalyna! This story is told in first person and past tense from her POV. Since Kalyna is such an entertaining and cynical character, this book has a great, expressive narrative voice.

“There was also a vine in the center that writhed as though it were trying to escape the palace: at least this vine understood me.”

THE PLOT & WRITING:

This book is perfect if you’re looking for a substantial read full of intricacies, details, fantastic would-building, intricate plots, and mysteries to ponder between sittings. And yet, it still manages to never be confusing, far-fetched, or predictable. If you’re looking for a quick read where you don’t need to think much, this probably isn’t a good choice.

The complicated web of political plots and schemes gets quite convoluted, verging on satire. The story has an odd type of humor and a healthy dose of irony. For example, the Prince in the story goes to great efforts and scheming to stop the king from being assassinated just so he doesn’t have to become king himself and do all that tedious work that comes with the job. That’s an enormous amount of work to avoid work. The prince's specific schemes are both absolutely ridiculous and rather terrifying.

There is fantastic worldbuilding and a richly complicated political landscape and intrigue that skirts the line between realism and parody of both humanity and society. It’s never too confusing. The book is set in Rotfelsen, one of four mostly independent Kingdoms that make up one greater Tetrarchic country. Rotfelsen alone has four separate armies, which all answer to a different part of the Rotfelsen government with a different agenda. Naturally, none of these armies get along or work together peacefully. Each of the four kingdoms fancy themselves the most advanced one and the only thing standing between the Tetrarchy and doom. All of this reflects human nature quite realistically. This is done in a hyperbolically ridiculous fashion that pokes fun at human nature.

There’s a lot of brief bite-sized tangents that give you a sense of the political and cultural setting and are often amusing. These brief word-building tangents sometimes seem like weird digressions, but they’re never boring and usually turn out relevant to the plot. They occasionally slow down the pacing of the story, but only in the beginning of the book.

There’s just a smidgeon of sapphic romance for Kalyna. Blink and you might miss it. In general, this book doesn’t have much romance at all. This book has LGBTQ+ rep with some bi and gay main characters (including the Kayna).

The ending is fairly happy, but not a rose-colored glasses perfect fixall ending.

This is an adult book with adult characters making adult decisions. Well, most of them are making adult decisions, I’m not so sure about the Prince. It’s still largely PG-13 though. It touches on serious issues, like xenophobia and homophobia.

WARNINGS: Child abuse (physical and emotional), homophobia, xenophobia, violence, death, alcohol, kidnapping (but absolutely no stockholm syndrome type creepiness), blackmail

I received a free digital advanced reader copy via NetGalley. I am writing this review completely honestly and voluntarily.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book had a lot of decent world building, but the pacing in the beginning was difficult to follow at points.

Unfortunately this book was a mess of different thoughts all being tossed together without much thought in it. I wanted to love this and the premise was interesting but the pacing and writing was just not good. This needs to be looked over again for story editing. One example would be where you would be in one location then all of a sudden someone goes on an info dumping mission and talks about something that had nothing to do with anything in that chapter. I think that if this was cleaned up, tightened, and fixed this would be an amazing story.

HIGHLIGHTS
~a seer who can’t See
~a literally underground nation
~one seriously awful grandmother
~a very distressing eye

Thank the gods that’s over!

I am not kidding: after a pretty solid start, Soothsayer rapidly became my ‘knockout’ read – the book I read to cure my insomnia. It worked excellently, and even when it didn’t put me to sleep, it made me put my ereader away and close my eyes just to escape it.

It’s not that Soothsayer is an actively bad book, like, say, Silk Fire. Spector knows how to put sentences together, has a pretty engaging protagonist, and does not shove excess worldbuilding down our throats.

But it’s so freaking heavy. 464 pages felt like twice that, and for the majority of them I was bored out of my mind.

Which I will grant is odd, because Soothsayer isn’t packed full of long stretches of nothing. Something was always happening. It’s just that they tended to be meandering things, or pretty plot-irrelevant things, or things that went in circles. And I fundamentally just didn’t care about any of it. Something about this book never clicked for me, leaving me passively watching instead of actively engaged in the story.

I really, really just wanted it to be over.

I think a huge part of this was due to the setting. The Tetrarchia – four kingdoms pretending to be one – really made no sense, and Spector didn’t try to justify it – I loved Kalyna’s disgust and ambivalence about royals and nobles and the rich, but her shrugging at the stupidity of her ‘betters’ wasn’t really enough for me. I tried to think of it as being like US states calling themselves one country, but the cultures Kalyna described were so wildly different they made Texas and New York look indistinguishable. I just didn’t buy it.

But even if I accepted the Tetrarchia, I actively resented the majority of the book being set in Rotfelsen. Rotfelsen should have been incredibly weird and interesting – it’s a country that exists almost entirely underground! But Kalyna is stuck on the surface for most of the book, because that’s where all the important people live.

…Why on Earth would you create a setting as cool as an underground nation – and then barely let your protagonist into it?! We get occasional mention/speculation of giant monsters that first carved out the tunnels that later turned into Rotfelsen – which, again, so cool – but that was another detail that went nowhere, shared as historical trivia rather than leading to a reveal that these monsters are still around, or something. And the glimpses we did get of the proper underground Rotfelsen were minimal, with very little visual description and no real worldbuilding – it’s just handwaved that people live down there pretending like everything’s aboveground, rather than going into the myriad ways a culture would have to adapt to, and be shaped by, living underground.

I wanted to tear my hair out over it.

And then the other kingdoms of the Tetrarchia sounded so much more interesting that I spent the rest of the book wishing the story had been set in one of them instead.

I love political intrigue fantasy, but this just dragged on and on with minimal progress made. It wasn’t interesting to read. The factions involved seemed hugely simplistic and stupid – there are literally four armies described by their uniform colours; the Reds, Yellows, Greens, and Purples, all of whom owe allegiance to a different part of the royal court. The prince who ordered Kalyna’s kidnapping is an idiot – this is acknowledged by Kalyna and everyone around her, but it was frustrating to read, not entertaining. Everything just became more and more convoluted, not in a political-spiderweb way, but in a ‘this is ridiculous’ way, and having your main character acknowledge or call it out as ridiculous doesn’t change the reading experience.

I liked that the big bads were driven by toxic nationalism and xenophobia – more acknowledgement that these things are terrible, please – but really hated that, after so much investigation and politcking, we were told the villains’ plan, a summary of the conversation Kalyna had, rather than getting the conversation itself. And the Surprise Thing behind the visions of Rotfelsen physically falling and crumbling? …Yeah, no. You don’t get to drop something that huge in at the last second and then do nothing with it.

I reiterate: it’s not a terrible book. Kalyna was a great protagonist – I loved how brutally honest she was with herself, and how ruthless in protecting herself and her family – and the worldbuilding around languages in particular was pretty excellent. But I did not enjoy reading this, and was so, so relieved when it was finally over.

I literally had to take a nap afterwards, I was so exhausted by it.

Don’t judge this one by its cover, folx.

Thank you for an advanced galley. I found it very hard to get through this, so I advise people to look at other reviews to be able to know if this is for them.

There is a certain degree of flatness in writing that can be off putting to some but as a personal choice, it works. The book works on multitude of tropes - most old and some, a breath of fresh air. The protagonist is fairly simple and straight forward with her role in the story without any special talents (or Gifts, as its called) which should have given the plot an additional layer of complexity but unfortunately this never comes through.

Of political intrigue in a magical setting, the potential falls short of what it could have been and its quite hard not to often wonder "why not like this". With a first person narrative, the voice of Kalyna isn't fully honest and as we see the world through their eyes, it feels incomplete.

Yet, this was an entertaining read and fascinating world that the author has built.

<i>Thank you to Netgalley and Erewhon Books for providing me with a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.</i>

***Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for providing me with an electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.***

The premise of this book is so good. That's why I wanted to read this book - someone faking being a soothsayer in the midst of a dangerous court? It's sounds exactly my sort of thing.

Unfortunately, it was a very difficult book to follow and keep track of, to the point that I was so turned around and struggling to remember the various factions and names that I stopped reading.

KALYNA THE SOOTHSAYER is told through lots of short chapters - from maybe 1 kindle page to 10 or so. The issue I had was that a lot of these are world building diversions. You could be in the middle of a ball and then have a diversion into world building explaining the various different cultural attitudes of the four kingdoms towards duelling. Then it would be back to the ball for something that a one line about duels being a thing would have covered, except by now you've lost track of who was involved because of that massive information dump of unnecessary information.

It was like that the entire way through and I found it so hard to follow what was happening - let alone care - as there were continual side trips into information that wasn't necessary to me understanding. These felt like info-dumping and distracted me from what was happening until the plot became very hard to understand. It's absolutely a stylistic choice, just one that didn't work for me.

I think this book targets a younger audience than the one I belong to. I was not able to connect much to the character, but I can imagine a pre-teen or teen will enjoy this very much. Kalyna is feisty and independent. I liked that the main character has to work for their powers instead of being the "chosen one". The setting and world development was also very rich, and I enjoyed the political intrigue. There were parts that felt a little juvenile to me, but again, that could be because I was not a target audience. For improvements, I'd say the writing style can improve a little. There are some boring expositions that could have been avoided. Supporting characters and the arc of the main character could have been developed with more depth. Overall a decent read.

Great fantasy!!! Thank you so much to the publisher, always love me some Slavic inspired fantasy world setting
Can wait for more work from the author!

I enjoyed Kalyna the Soothsayer and rated it ‘very good’ (3.5 stars). As a fantasy trope, characters who lie about possessing some supernatural power (here, soothsaying) and get by instead on their own guile and cunning are fairly common. But here Kalyna manages to feel both fresh and relatable: no, she’s not a soothsayer, but she’s not cast as being inhumanly intelligent to compensate. Instead, she has a real sense of humor, which shines through with her as the book’s narrator. She spends most of the book bumbling around while trying desperately just to figure out what’s going on before she can even think about solving it. The result is amusing, but also made the book feel a little slow and almost directionless at times. While Kalyna’s mission is clear from the beginning of her story, her path to fulfilling that mission is so circuitous is sometimes feels tortured. But if you don’t mind a slower read, the journey is quite enjoyable. I think I’ve seen this compared to The Traitor Baru Cormorant, and the comparisons aren’t misplaced. But Kalyna has more in common with books two and three Baru, who is less confident (and more complex). Likewise, if you read Little Thieves and would like an adult version, Kalyna should please you!

Kalyna the Soothsayer was a very unique read. The characters in this book were interesting and I was hooked from the beginning. However, the middle of the book was quite slow to me and I didn’t love the writing style.

✿ Representation present: queer rep (two main characters are queer), disability rep, poc representation, chronic illness rep.

Kaylna is a con artist. With a degeneratively ill father and an emotionally and verbally abusive grandmother, Kaylna is the sole breadwinner for her family. The fact that she doesn't have the gift of seeing the future doesn't stop her from telling the future to unsuspecting paying customers. Too get by she makes generalisations, she pays informants for information and makes elaborate showings to pull off this long con. If it doesn't come true, then that's fine because she and her family will be gone, off to a new place, conning new people. 

Kaylna is a witty character, with a cynical pessimistic perspective. She has seen the full range of all humanity has to offer through her travels and soothsaying. People have not treated her and her family well. She is always fleeing towns and cities to avoid harassment and persecution for 'witchcraft'. She has been threatened and beaten, bullied and oppressed. Her life is always at risk.

Kaylna goes and gets herself kidnapped (or according to her handler, conscripted) by a Prince. She is tasked with ferreting out the ones looking to harm the royal family with her alleged soothsaying gift. She knows this con will be the riskiest one yet. This should be a cushy job, acting as a fake soothsayer but nothing is ever so simple and being a fake psychic is a lot more demanding especially with her family's lives held against her and the impending end of the world.

Unfortunately, Kalyna's father has also foreseen the end of everything. The four nations will buckle under this impending danger, devolving into a lawless land of destruction with no where safe from its devastation. Kalyna is stuck in a rock and hard place. All she wants is her freedom and to survive what's coming. To do that, she must play ball, act as the soothsayer for the Prince and figure out how to get her family and herself out safely of the Tetrarchia before it all goes to hell.

"What was certainly not comforting was the fact that this job for a sybaritic prince was not going to be the greatest con of my career, but a death sentence. Even without the looming end of the Tetrarchia, there was no freedom on the horizon."

People have not been kind to Kalyna and her family. They have suffered under xenophobic hands that would rather see them all dead and end their family line. Kaylna sees herself as reflected in the common people. They are the ones she is willing to save, not the oppressive upper class. The common people were her people and they didn't deserve to suffer under this impending doom. To save everyone she has to step up, uncover what this mass casualty event her father has foreseen and stop it before it happens.

"The whole Tetrarchia is my people, and I am also a foreigner here.

One of the best qualities of this book is the atmosphere of the self awareness of traditional fantasy stories, particularly political fantasies with its elaborate story lines with complex family trees, and weird name structures. The tongue-in-cheek humour presented in the outrageously long names from the official name for the Tetrarchia and the council of barbarians to the names of people at court and in the history books. This gave a levity to the dark situations Kaylna was entrenched in. Although this book does not take itself too seriously, it sometimes stumbles into its own traps becoming confusing in parts. I love a fantasy map, and this definitely would have been a great book to have not just of the Tetrarchia, but of Rotfelsen. I would have awarded this book double points if it was Kalyna's with her detailed family history on safe locations, hidden roads and campsites she frequents.

The world-building was an interesting aspect of this book as it was set within a tetrarchy - four sovereign states merging into one nation, the Tetrarchia, ruled by a council of four monarchs. It is more of a legal merger than a true unification as the four regions are still very separate, very culturally different.

What surprised me about this book was the commentary - xenophobia, gentrification, homophobia, nationalism, classism, a Manchurian candidate King, fascism and religious fanaticism. It even touches on access to medical care, medical ethics, homelessness, various forms of privilege and women's rights. These are very heavy themes that are quite relevant today's climate. Many books try and incorporate real issues within their worlds, but to do it well is hard, and can run the risk of isolating or annoying the reader. When we read, most expect a form of escapism, so when authors blend reality with their story, the blend is either seamless or can take you out and potentially ruin your experience. This book blends such important discussions while still being funny, poignant, and piercing.

The first half of this book (Parts 1, 2 and 3) was entertaining. I was entertained! I was enamoured by the political plots Kalyna was trying to navigate. The country of Rotfelsen has so many problems that any one of them could be the flashpoint that leads to the ruination of the Tetrarchia. Kalyna is the optimal person to fish out this conspiracy. She is multilingual, a great liar, an actress and has no emotional investment in the future of Rotfelsen (beside saving them all from certain doom). She was the perfect spy.

"I am a liar, after all."

Parts 4, 5 and 6 when everything was meant to come to a head. It was the crescendo of the book, and it fell flat. I was conflicted. I was absorbed with the story but I found myself repeatedly placing the book down. My expectations from the first three parts were not being met. Ultimately, I trudged my way through Part 6 with fond memories of the first half of this book, questioning where it all went wrong. Kalyna was such a great protagonist, with her conflicting relationship with the truth and with the people she learns to care about. Her frenemies relationship with Lenz was a notable highlight that was so well developed and executed faultlessly.

Unfortunately, I felt the impeding destruction was repeated ad nauseum and became somewhat tedious. I fully understood what was at stake. I understood what was at stake every step of the way. Kalyna's desperate decisions were always because of her knowledge of what the future would potentially hold. The constant repetition felt annoying at times, especially when the reminders were so close together. I was so happy when Kalyna shared her knowledge later one with certain parties, because her shouldering this burden was exhausting for her, and the reader.

Also, when the cause of this impeding destruction was revealed, I wasn't convinced. I expected something else, and the threat didn't feel as earth shattering as it was intended to be. Maybe the hype was too much to have a satisfying pay-off.

"This country will collapse in chaos and war, Kalyna"

The saddest aspect was Kalyna's internalised hatred. The emotional abuse she suffered under her grandmother and her continued inability to access her Gift have seeped in and polluted her perception of herself. The Gift that has spanned her family for generations, and her inability to be a true soothsayer like her ancestors is a constant shadow for Kalyna. She constantly admonishs herself for her supposed failure, and for being the one weighed down with the responsibility to save everyone with a gift she doesn't have. Kaylna never really lets go of this self-hatred, but eventually establishes a semblance of peace with her situation, and I think that is a more realistic depiction. I would have shunned a depiction of a full 180° attitude where she is 100% healed and is a thriving #girlboss.

"Perhaps the Gift is in me somewhere, and instead of being broken I am simply too stupid to access it."

The open ending of this story allows room for possible sequels or a companion novel and I would enjoy another story following Kalyna or the next generation of soothsayers. I wouldn't say I was happy with the way the romance was resolved or Kalyna's choice of partners. I was on board with her choice in continuing her family tradition, rather than settling down but I think either option would have been bittersweet. She would have had to compromise a part of herself either way. Ultimately, I felt the epilogue was too fast, brief, and wasn't very satisfying or worth it. I would have preferred not to have it.

The Romance (or attempt at romance)
Ah, the romance. I am partial to a good romance moment. I love an epic romance that makes me swoon and sweeps me off my feet. I even enjoy the slow understated romance that feels harmonious and serene. If the story has romance, then I am 100% here for it. My one contention is that it has to make sense with the overall story and if it doesn't, I don't want it. Kalyna the Soothsayer had the hallmark of being a great story with no romance. Just a girl conning her way around a court, trying to avoid or prevent the end of the Tetrarchia. I didn't release the was a romantic aspect until the 60% mark. Kalyna is such an eclectic character that I thought she would have possible a few romantic prospects. Was I happy with the way this sub plot was developed? Not really, but I was intrigued all the same. Her love life wasn't a part of the political conspiracy plot, which I liked, and it was just a quiet separate thing that she experienced during her time in Rotfelsen. However, like I had previously stated how her love life was resolved in the epilogue, I did not like. You win some, you lose some.

The structure
The story is told as a memoir. The events have already happened and this is a simple retelling of Kalyna's perspective and her hand in these events. The story is broken up into six parts. Each part has small sections with headings (not chapters) separating the flow of events within the parts. It's an unconventional structure, one that might be disconcerting and possibly contentious for some readers but I don't believe it takes anything away from the overarching story. It makes the story feel much bigger with only six 'chapters'.

It is never explained why Kalyna has written this memoir. Lenz, her boss/mentor/kidnapper is known (and mocked) for writing his own histories, and incorporating his own perspective and theories into these histories, so logic dictates it is a call back to Lenz and his influence. Perhaps it is because Kaylna has a hand in all the kingdom's futures and her journey is influential enough to require a detailed account. Having an explanation on why this story is told in this format and why Kaylna decieded to 'write' this memoir would have been interesting and was a missed opportunity. I would have loved fake intertextual references interspersed in, with the full titles of histories Kalyna has to read and a fake glossary of all the fake texts mentioned. Academic style with footnotes would have gone over well with me.

Despite my reservations on the second half, this book is a great witty political fantasy. The characters were fun, well developed and distinguishable and had distinct motivations that moved the story forward. The structure was unconventional but overall a non-issue. This book makes me want to read more big political fantasies. Political fantasies have a stigma of being inaccessible to people as they can be too far reaching, to complicated and to intellectual. At no point in this book did I feel too dumb or the story too complicated. I cannot wait for Elijah Kinch Spector's next novel.


Would I recommend this book?
Yes. You love political fantasies like Graceling by Kristin Cashore, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, and Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik.

Will I continue reading this series?
I don't think this is a series. If Spector writes another Kalyna book I might be interested in seeing what chaos she causes next but I think it would depend on if it's a time jump, if Kalyna is no longer a soothsayer or if it's a different (future or past) soothsayer in her family.

Will I re-read this book? 
One day maybe

I tried so hard to get into this book but it was just so boring. The premise is amazing but the storytelling just isnt there for me. The main character is so lackluster. I truly appreciate the opportunity given by Net Galley to read this as an arc but I jusr couldn't so it.

I don’t wanna say much about this because it didn’t interest me a lot and I only kept going because I didn’t wanna abandon it. I think the problem was just that I didn’t feel very invested in the characters and was bored with their trails and tribulations. I do wish the author a good luck on their debut. It just wasn’t much for me.

I appreciate that this is a debut and also what the author was aiming for. I appreciate a strong anti-hero, and enjoyed the idea of Kalyna.
However, there are a couple of things that took from this story for me, firstly, the habit of addressing the reader with a tone that at times reads as deeply condescending (example, the grandmother swearing in a language that is rarely used that translates into random words e.t.c.). These were, I suspect, moments meant to inject humour but misses with the reader. It also was unclear whether the story was unfolding or the reader was been given it as memoir, as Kalyna had a habit of breaking the fourth wall, indeed the reader is addressed as "you rots" at one point. It is also worth noting that at one point in a later chapter the Prince becomes the "I" character" (loc 11144) kindle). These are minor things but they do jar the reader out of the story.
Also this is not the longest of books but it tries to pack in far too much world building (between the various armies, countries, traditions, languages etc) this as a whole detracts from the core story, particularly as the author has a habit of telling rather than showing these dynamics. While an author certainly needs to know the details of their world sometimes sharing too much that is unnecessary detracts from the story. I would say the same of the plot as well, elements of this story would stand alone as an excellent story but weaving them together has turned the telling chaotic. Paring back the plot would serve it well. The core elements of a very solid read are there but there is too much trappings and emphasis on minutiae for it to be allowed shine.

The strengths here are the strong female character who considers herself a villain but acts heroically, and the small difference between being a soothsayer and pretending to be a soothsayer. Kalyna comes from a long line of soothsayers but unfortunately, the "gift" did not pass to her, Instead, she uses her skill of observation (and bribery) to trick customers into believing in her. She does so well, she gets tapped to use her skills in the service of a prince of the kingdom. Unfortunately, for her, everyone is scheming to kill each other and take over the kingdom. Can she be observant enough to stop the kingdom from destroying itself? There is a great deal of world building and some interesting characters, especially grandmother, who I might have tossed off a cliff if I were Kalyna. The story does lag a bit and you spend quite a bit of time waiting for something to happen.
Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

3,5 stars for this book
I almost stopped reading this book at 40%, because it was SO long, and kind of boring sometimes. However, I am glad I did not!
The story, though very complex and hard to get into, was rich and interesting. There were multiple layers to the plot, without being too difficult to comprehend. The informations on the world were explained in a very clear way, there were just too much of it that my little head had trouble remembering everything at the beginning.
But the thing I absolutely, absolutely LOVED was Kalyna, our main character. She is messy, traumatized by her grandmother that insults her, hits her and tells her everyday that she is a waste of life, but she is also brave, and fun, and kind. Her sarcasm and cynic view of life was so full of humor and refreshing, I kept reading mainly to know more about her adventures! Writing with a first person POV can be tricky, but this was handled perfectly.
The other characters are just as lovable, and the representation, both of various ethnicities, sexualities and disabilities was great.
In summary, if you are not afraid of a long and rich book full of cynical humor, I highly recommend this!

I had trouble getting into the story and eventually gave up. The writing style just wasn’t for me.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, the writing style is not for me. 3 stars, as I need to be somewhat neutral

~ I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own ~