The Court War

 

The Court War (The Godstone #2)- Violette Malan

DAW/Penguin Group

Release Date: July 25, 2023

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: The second book in this epic fantasy saga spins a tale of magic and danger, as a healer finds herself pulled deeper into a web of secrets and world-ending magic.

With innovative worldbuilding, witty banter, and world-ending magic, The Court War is epic fantasy at its best and most compelling.

Fenra Lowens, with her partner Elvanyn Karamisk, has already faced the Godstone. Now she has a different, simpler getting the stick-in-the-mud practitioners of the White Court to return to the old ways of practice, the ways that keep the World healthy.

But before she has a chance to present her case, the uneasy balance of power between the practitioners of the White Court and the mundanes of the Red Court—in existence since the World itself began—suddenly erupts into open warfare.

Fenra is torn between helping her friends and fellow practitioners and moving ahead with the demands of an increasingly impatient World. Though she has help from unexpected allies, Fenra begins to suspect that this conflict isn't just about politics. The hand of an old enemy may be at work here....

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After the events of The Godstone, Fenra Lowens goes to the council of the White Court of magic practitioners to encourage them to return to the old ways, when practitioners traveled through the different Modes and kept the World healthy. But the council is set in its ways and sees its job as keeping power for themselves at the expense of others- and is happy to make Fenra the scapegoat when things start to go wrong. When the Red Court nonmagical council declares war on the White Court to try and take the White's power for itself, chaos descends. The average people are the ones in danger. The World is not happy and is ready to create chaos to prove it. And Fenra is caught in the middle of all of the battles.

Fenra is in the unenviable position of knowing how to save the World and has pretty much no one in power who is willing to listen. Fortunately, she's incredibly stubborn and determined and has the dogged instincts of a healer who will fight to the end for her patient. And her allies are as stubborn as she is, particularly Elva. I quite liked that about both of them. It was never a question of "if" something could be done with them, but "how". They were also smart enough to question who they could trust, but once someone had earned their trust they would do whatever it took to rescue them if needed. Which happened often because there were plenty of backstabbing politicians and others out only for themselves!

Once again, Violette Malan shows her incredible talent as a world-builder in The Court War. She builds not one world but multiple ones (personally, I hope we get to spend more time exploring the New Zone if there's a third book- there sounds like a lot that could be done with a world and different magic there!) as well as the sentient World itself; there are a variety of belief systems that fit together; magic with carefully constructed rules that we never feel we're being lectured over but discover in often unique ways. From the very food and drink to the clothes and architecture around our heroes, Malan seems to effortlessly create her wonderful worlds. Yet she never forgets that the most important thing, perhaps the most grounding thing, of the story are the human beings. Humans in all their extremes, both good and bad, are what make the world go round, and that is certainly true here.

I definitely recommend reading The Godstone before reading The Court War, since the events of book 1 lead directly to book 2. You can start with book 2 and catch up, but you'll enjoy it more reading them in order. 

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review