Obsidian: Awakening (Book one of Obsidian Series)

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The only reason I didn’t read the entire book sooner (I finished yesterday) was because I follow Sienna on X and she keeps implying she puts her characters through hell with a purpose. The sexual and non-sexual relationships in Obsidian are as satisfyingly complicated as the political ones and are usually intertwined with them and the geopolitical landscape. I don’t think this series will conclude with “and they all lived happily ever after” and I don’t need to be an oracle like one of the characters to have the foresight to know this story is going to break many of the characters.

He tells his men they won’t keep him from the streets, from trying to rescue his wife, and if they wish to, he’ll kill them. Overall, I found this read very enjoyable and I will be looking forward to continuing this series in the future. Lots of maneuvering and politics, making you wonder what will happen next or what is really going on and what everyone's motivations really are. The number of people who would need to know roughly where Citara was (and roughly is enough because you would be able to see it from ten miles off) means that the location just couldn’t be kept secret. And I prolonged the enjoyable torture of wanting to find out what happens, restraining myself from galloping through the book like a Valerian stallion.None of them are pure hero or pure villain (apart from one nasty, pathetic misogynist) and that is one of the many strengths of Obsidian. Admittedly, I did feel less interested in some of the main POVs, who had some interesting elements but ultimately had lower journeys. For Hasheem, life has been a serious of circumstances that force him into situations where he is offered the choice to die or give up more of his freedom, and he keeps on giving up more of his freedom, not because he is a coward, and he always wonders how he will regret his decision. Not because it's hard to follow, but because there are so many details sprinkled in that will be relevant later in the series.

In fact, it’s taken me a few weeks to fully absorb everything I loved about the book so I can attempt to condense it into a review. That’s because everything about this magnificent book makes it a fertile oasis for waxing lyrical about it. Raised from birth as the chosen one to end the centuries-long war between her people and an empire, Djari drags him screaming into the blood sport of war and politics, guided by the schemes of her oracle brother who continues to withhold the most important part of his vision. One highlight is a randomly deadly hunting scene where horse archers gallop, shooting arrows, into a stampede of gazelles - the trick being not to shoot each other for fear of an insult to honour. Each one of these characters, even in their darkest moments, screams the need for acceptance and love, for a world that will beckon them into being who they’re meant to be, who they are in the deepest part of them, instead of dragging them into a quagmire where they twist themselves out of all recognition into the torment of hell.A tale of humanity’s deadliest weapon that drives us all to do the unthinkable, written in the blood of its heroes, the scorching sands of the desert, and the fires of war that never leave anyone without scars. It had slipped out of him before he could stop himself, the words he’d been trying to hold back for her sake, words he might have still been able to swallow had he not been so drunk, so tired from the climb. But I never really understood how living in a desert - vs - living in a city gave the people of the White Desert and Rashawri such similar martial cultures and outlooks.

It’s hard to describe the exact plot, largely because it’s mostly setting up the multiple character arcs for future books. And even with me hyping it up so much in my head, it still managed to completely blow all my expectations out of the water. Sienna Frost is a mother, a wife, and a traveler who has spent a good ten years writing to entertain only herself and the next two decades sharing her stories online for free. She’d stopped thinking of it as a privilege after that, and had always tried to forgive him afterward when he refused to share those visions with her. Somehow, even if they only met up occasionally to exchange bodily fluids, they would have made some progress with this shit.It came up out of her without thinking, thrown together by the shame of having allowed herself to be played by her enemy––the response she would have considered unwise had she been more calm and composed, only now she found she couldn’t stop, “You are just as foul and as despicable as your men, that is what I think of you. Im going into spoilers straight away below, but if you love epic fantasy and great writing, pick this up immediately. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The storytelling is impressively bold, unconventional and intricate, which is exactly what makes this book stand out from the crowd. These themes are explored through the characters and the personal and political wars they wage, the oaths they take, the betrayals they face, and the pride, devotion, retribution, anger, guilt and shame which drives them.