Necessity is the mother of invention. In Kalyna’s case, invention takes the form of cold reading, intelligence gathering, gumption, and a fair amount of lying. The necessity comes from her family. She is the last in a long line of people gifted with the ability to see the future; Kalyna did not get this gift, though she does her damndest to make her customers believe she did. In Elijah Kinch Spector’s highly entertaining novel, Kalyna the Soothsayer, necessity strikes again when Kalyna’s gift is “requisitioned” by a nearby prince and is spirited away by the prince’s agents in the dead of night.
The world of Kalyna the Soothsayer reminds me a bit of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Although this world is not flat and does not float through space on the backs of four elephants standing on the shelf of a turtle, the ludicrous political systems of the four kingdoms of the Tetrarchy gave me the same sort of vibe. (Spector’s bibliography at the end of the book points to less fantastical inspiration, which just proves to me how daffy the Holy Roman Empire was.) Kalyna’s family have been traveling the Tetrarchy for ages and she speaks its languages and is more than familiar with a lot of the customs of the four kingdoms. Her abduction and induction into the service of Prince Friedhelm of Rotfelsen brings her into the heart of one of the weirdest kingdoms I’ve ever read about. The weirdness starts with the geography. The entire kingdom of Rotfelsen is contained within a massive, stony mesa. The royals and aristocrats live at the top. The middle class come next. The poorest live in the dark bowels of the kingdom. The weirdness continues with the presence of no fewer than four armies within the mountains, representing different powers and factions that loathe each other. Rotfelsen is a powder keg waiting for a match.
I adored the semi-plausible weirdness of Rotfelsen and the Tetrarchy but what really won my bookish heart was Kalyna’s snarky dedication to doing the right thing and the intricacy of the plot. I rushed home from work a couple of days this week just so that I could dive back into Kalyna the Soothsayer‘s pages so that I could see how our protagonist would find a way out of her situation. To complicate things even more (as if Rotfelsen needs any more complications), Kalyna’s ailing father delivered a vision that Rotfelsen would collapse into violence and fire in a few short months, right around the time when the leaders of the other three kingdoms were due to meet for the annual Council of Barbarians. If Rotfelsen falls, there’s a good chance it will take the whole country with it. Kalyna has her work cut out for her. Thankfully, all her years as a fake medium prepared her for this moment.
I hadn’t even finished Kalyna the Soothsayer before I started recommending it to people. In fact, the further I got into the book, the more I started recommending it to people. This book just kept getting better. It is one of the best—and most fun!—fantasy books I’ve read in ages. If you’re looking for escapist entertainment, entangled plots, unique characters, and one of the wildest settings this side of the Discworld, grab this book as soon as you can.