Review of The Sovereign by C.L. Clark

Um, OK. Wow. Rude. Seriously, it’s so inconsiderate of C.L. Clark to just go and write a gut-punch of a concluding volume to this incredible trilogy. This is one of my favourite modern epic fantasy series, and if you haven’t picked up The Unbroken or The Faithless yet, then run, don’t walk to your nearest indie bookshop or library because wow. I’m giving this book five stars and actually retroactively want to go back and give the others five stars (and maybe I will) because I don’t know if I’m going to adequately be able to express how much I loved this trilogy. I received an eARC from NetGalley/Orbit, but I would have read and hyped this up anyhow.

As usual, spoilers for the first two books but not this one.

The Sovereign picks up right after the end of The Faithless. Balladaire is facing another war as one of Touraine’s former Sands comrades invades with another country’s army. Touraine might be able to stop her, except that stopping her looks curiously like betraying Luca. Meanwhile, Luca has finally wrested her crown from her treacherous uncle—and with it, all the problems the Crown is responsible for solving. Facing the worst bout of the Withering in generations and an incipient uprising from the peasants, Luca is beset on all sides. Can she trust Touraine? Can the two of them find a way to square the circle and make peace? Or is war, destruction, and loss all they will ever know?

Not going to lie, for the first part of this book I was slightly let down. It felt like a painful recapitulation of the first two books, mostly in the sense that Luca and Touraine only seem to have two modes: tearing off each other’s clothes or tearing strips off one another, with zero chill in between. I was so tired of watching their recriminations. This is a part of romance and romantic relationships I don’t get (though, to be fair, they both have plenty of reasons to be upset with each other!). I really struggle understanding why two people who have hurt each other so much still feel a mutual attraction and still want to be together. Y’all allos are messy.

Anyway, thankfully, the story heats up almost as quickly as the sexytimes. Since this is the last book, Clark doesn’t pull any punches: people die. I won’t say who! But it’s heartbreaking and worth it. There’s so much payoff in this book.

Luca and Touraine are, of course, the beating heart of this series. Beyond their romance, each is an interesting case study in their own right. Luca has a history of making bad decisions in a panic, and that’s no exception in this book. What’s different here, I think, is the way she finds herself hardening as a ruler. There’s an incident early on that hints at the shape of this, but it really isn’t until the climax, where she finally puts to rest a lingering threat that has been lurking in the background, that you realize how far she has fallen from the idealist we met at the start of The Faithless. There is a desperate edge to her that makes her all the more interesting. Similarly, Touraine laments that her assignment always seems to be the same: betrayal. Yet she embraces it, is good at it. Ultimately, the only way out for her is to stop playing other people’s games and decide what she wants.

The entire Magic of the Lost trilogy has been a commentary on the colonial nature of epic fantasy. We read stories set in these medieval (or in this case, “early modern”) worlds modelled loosely after the internecine Westphalian states of Europe, and we’re supposed to cheer for one side or another even though, let’s face it, historically monarchs have generally been huge jerks at the very least and genocidal at the worst. Clark isn’t the first to want to play with this concept and critique it, of course, but she does it so well.

With Luca on the throne at the start of this book, Clark has a quandary. We’re supposed to sympathize with Luca and want her to succeed, but if success looks like Queen Luca saving Balladaire and ruling it wisely … OK that won’t happen because she’s really bad at governing and decisions in general, lol. I have never met two people more incompetent at their roles than Luca and Touraine, and that is what makes them perfect for each other, I guess. Luca is about as good at being a hero as Barry Allen in The CW Flash (fuck Barry Allen). Still, the point stands—how can this series fully inhabit is promise of a postcolonial fantasy story if the monarch wins out over the revolutionaries?

No spoilers. All I’ll say is that Clark pulls it off. I loved this ending. It’s bittersweet and humbling and powerful; it hits all the right notes. Clark acknowledges that governing is tough (which is partly why Luca sucks at it), and there’s no promising that Balladaire will continue on forever the way it is after the end of this book. All she can offer us is the hope inherent in a new direction, and the possibility for change for the better.

I gotta say, reading this against the backdrop of the rising fascism in the US was a tonic in more ways than one….

The Sovereign is such a beautiful mess in the best possible way. If you’re reading this review because you haven’t read this series, I urge you to go back and read my review of the first book. If you’re here because you want to know whether Book 3 sticks the landing, the answer is an unequivocal yes, a thousand times yes. It’s bloody and sad and refuses to wrap everything up in a happily ever after … but it is satisfying in that dissatisfaction. This is some of the smartest and most thought-provoking fantasy I have read in years.