TITLE: Evensong’s Heir (Songbirds of Valnon, Book 01)
AUTHOR: L. S. Baird
GENRE: Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 14/04/2013
RATING: ★★★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: N/A
Review: Okay, look, the first thing I’m going to tell you is: please, for the love of all the gods, ignore that travesty of a cover. Don't look at it, don't think about it, pretend it does not exist.
This is why we have e-readers: so that we can read books with covers like that and not have to wear paper bags on our heads from the shame.
Despite that cover, this has actually become one of my favourite books of all time. It is shockingly, amazingly good and I have been craving the (as yet unwritten) sequel since the moment I read the book's final words. And I strongly believe that most of you, if you give it a try, will find yourselves just as in love with it.
In the Temple of Valnon, the Lark and the Thrush – sacred castrati priests – sing to honour two of the holy trinity, the great saints for whom they are symbolic heirs. But for the first time in centuries, the Songbirds are complete – for Valnon has its third ever Dove, Willem, the heir of Saint Alveron who Sang Heaven Down and saved Valnon before it was even born. Honoured and cherished, Willem sings each day’s Evensong with all his heart, and has never considered the sacrifices of his position especially heavy. Ten years’ chastity is no price to pay when in service to your beloved saint, doing what you were born to do.
But when betrayal comes from within the temple, Willem and the other Songbirds are forced to flee for their lives. In the end, rescuing their land from those looking to destroy it may require the impossible – that Willem face the extermination of all he loves, or Sing Heaven Down to save them all.
This is a stunningly crafted book. The world-building is exquisite; my very favourite detail was how often musical metaphors have crept into the language of Valnon, music and song being so sacred to them.
When all was done, she would see the full nuance of the song, and understand that sharps and flats were needed in order to make the melody sweeter.
The music had begun; the notes could not be unsung. They were not as he had laid them down on the page, but they would do.
Baird also neatly side-steps one of the common flaws in secondary-world fantasy; that of ignoring or forgetting the lands beyond your setting’s borders. Although they are not the focus of the story, enough details are provided of Valnon’s neighbours that each one feels real and whole, an incredible accomplishment given the light hand set to the task. This is something that applies to every aspect of Evensong’s Heir; from setting to plot to characterisation the book rings true, with never a jarring note to shock the reader into disbelief or distaste. The beautiful intricacy of Valnon’s history and religion is carefully, exquisitely melded with the high-stakes adventure of Willem and the other Songbirds; the events of ages past have an immense effect on the present, in a very realistic and wonderful way. This is how countries and cultures in the real world work; religion and history drives current events in a way humans are probably never going to escape, but this is something that I see very rarely in my fantasy. Whereas Valnon feels like a real place, as messy and complicated and driven by its passions and cultural mores as any country in my atlas!
The characters, too, are wonderful. I would have preferred a few more girls, but am satisfied to have a Queen balance the all-male Temple, and the snarky knife-wielding Rekbah was great. Thankfully, none of our temple-boys were that particular kind of naïve that is so common in M/M fiction; although they have been sheltered, none of them are fainting flowers, and display fantastic grit and stubbornness when forced out of their gilded settings. Willem is loyal, determined to do justice to his saint’s legacy but afraid of failing it; Ellis provides comic relief but has within him incredible empathy; Dmitri is bitter and temperamental, but gives all of himself to the people he cares for. None of them are perfect, but all of them are human, as is Nicholas Grayson, the disgraced, outcast son of one of Valnon’s most beloved noble families, the man who guides them through their escape and subsequent adventures. As the least-sheltered among the main cast, Nicholas has a streak of realistic cynicism in him, but over the course of the book relearns his faith in both the saints and the Songbirds. It's a deftly handled arc, and a beautifully accomplished one. Then there’s the afore-mentioned Queen; a disabled young woman who nonetheless is a strong, wonderful figure, with her own story within the greater one of the novel. My only real complaint, I suppose, is that I would have loved to see more of her!
The fact is, despite the incredible characters and breath-taking world-building, what really makes Evensong’s Heir is Baird; in the hands of a lesser writer, Heir would fall apart into an overly-complex tangle of two-dimensional cliches. Baird never lets that happen, juggling the politics, schemes, adventures and trials of her cast – and three countries! – with apparent ease, and her writing! Baird’s use of language is stunning, especially when writing of the music that is so integral to her novel; I think I could happily read her grocery list.
As though in answer, from some unknown distance beneath the Temple, there came a Voice. Ghostly at first, it soared upward from the prison of the sanctuary floor, gaining strength with each measure. Already it had begun the lowest echoes, already the harmony began to vibrate the stones. It looped and rolled over on itself and its ends met, like a drizzle of pale honey pouring back and forth into a whole golden pool of unspeakable beauty and perfect clarity. It rose as the sun set in the west: St. Alveron’s hymn, the Song of Heaven, a tremendous music that grew and expanded at its singer’s will, as much as the tide swells below the beckoning moon…
Grayson’s jaded spirit made a reflexive attempt to fend off the full realization of the Dove’s power, but his defenses were shattered at once, as a shield of blown glass under the onslaught of a mace. Disarmed, he crumbled willingly before its glory. The Evensong went beyond music, beyond the flimsy enclosure of words like talent and skill. It cut through Grayson as light through a storm-driven wave, saturating him with it, and leaving him broken on an unfamiliar shore.
This is listed as an M/M novel, but the romance, while not brushed under the carpet, is far from the most integral of the book’s many threads and is treated appropriately. The brewing civil war and invasion, the assassinations and shipwrecks, are all a little more important! Honestly, this is not a romance story; it’s High Fantasy, of the highest possible order, complete with a quest to save the land and immense, terrible powers to call on and master to achieve that saving.
I loved it. It’s beautiful. I dearly, dearly hope Baird finishes Book two soon, because I desperately want to go back to this world, and its fantastic characters.
