The Councillor (E.J. Beaton, 2021)

 

It might be rather less than a surprise to anyone who reads what I have to say, but I like books that give me something to chew on, mentally.  There's a lot to be said for conspiracy themes, then; they're like a literary puzzlebox, where the clues are there if you know what to look for, but you might miss them easily.  It's the same idea as fair-play mysteries, where the reader can see all the pieces after the end, and could perhaps have figured it out before the characters do, just with rather larger stakes for the characters.

As such, it takes a deft hand to not only write a compelling conspiracy thriller, but place it in a fantasy setting that has to be built at the same time.  It says a lot for E.J. Beaton that she managed to pull this off so effectively in her debut novel, The Councillor.

The titular character is Lysande Prior, a scholar in the employ of Sarelin Brey, the Queen of Elira.  We're dealing with a generally low-fantasy setting in this book; medieval technology rules, and what fantastical creatures explicitly existed (such as the chimera seen on the front cover) are established early as having been killed off.  There are 'elementals' referenced as part of the population, who are capable of manipulating the elements at will (we see examples of wind, water, fire, and mind-control is alluded to) but this is a decidedly downtrodden group, forced to live in hiding because their mere existence is considered criminal.  Hello, civil rights issues.

Elira itself is a nation made up of five city-states, each of which has its own leader.  There are significant cultural differences between the states, but in all cases, there's a strong degree of social stratification.  The leaders of all five states are largely hereditary, with a clear aristocratic class ("silver-bloods") maintaining power over the commoners.  There is significant poverty in some parts of the nation, and vigilantism is rampant against elementals, whether or not they have done anything to deserve it, given the state-sanctioned illegal nature of their existence, regardless of whether they even choose to be that way.

The first chapter ends with the assassination of Sarelin, apparently at the whim of Mea Tacitus, the White Queen (who attempted to lead an elemental coup some twenty years prior) and the discovery that, in the event of her death, as she has no heir, she has tasked Lysande with selecting the next person to wear the crown, from among the remaining city-state rulers.  However, an important question remains before the scholar: nobody knows who was able to execute the assassination, and it's important to ensure that the new ruler won't be a puppet of the White Queen.

From there, we're introduced to the leaders of the four other city-states, and Lysande starts trying to decide who would be the best ruler.  This initially seems like it is going to be a selection of 'tests of worthiness', but when further disasters start to threaten the potential rulers (a piece of metal specifically-sized to be a choking hazard hidden in food, a vicious wolf let free in the coliseum when it's not supposed to be... yes, there are blood sports in this setting), she decides that the best option is, instead, to put off selecting a new monarch until the threat of Mea Tacitus is sorted out, placing the four leaders as a ruling council, instead.  She herself is added to the group at the urging of one of the four, as a representative of the fifth city-state, despite having no claim to any throne, and in fact being "low-born".

With this new governmental structure in place, the narrative then shifts to a larger question, that of what the apparently unprovoked attacks on trade ships and attempts on the lives of the council itself might mean.  This is complicated by the introduction of international politics to the mix; one of the two bordering kingdoms believes that their ships are being attacked by Eliran vessels and wants things to be made right, while mercenaries apparently paid by that same country are causing problems.  Lysande's knowledge serves her well, helping her to figure out what's going on, but not quite quickly enough to prevent a diplomatic incident, and not the last one in the narrative.

So, we have a book that's working on several levels.  The primary narrative deals with this conspiracy, where the question of who the traitor in the midst of the council is drives the story forward.  While this makes for the puzzlebox level of the narrative, what drew me to the book in the first place, I found that the far more interesting level was Lysande's development over the course of the work.  She starts out as a devoted servant of Sarelin, who uses the fallen queen's words as a guide for how she should act and how she should lead.  Even at the start of her time as Councillor, while she sees where social ills can be sorted out easily, she's unable to bring herself to take anything more than the smallest steps toward sorting them out.  Her background as a low-born orphan who had it drilled into her head that the appropriate way to express herself is to "restrain, constrain, subdue," anything to keep from getting too many thoughts into her head of acting above her station.  This motto or mantra appears throughout the book, as she grapples with her desire to enact real change to make the lives of all Eliran citizens better, despite her social status.  Her development over the course of the narrative into a genuine leader who is able to easily win the hearts of the populace is interesting to watch, and her slow realization that her low-born status is more a boon than she ever realized.

Definitely an interesting book, and given that the author is already working on a sequel, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.  The specific conflict that I spent much of the book expecting to see never quite materialized, but it's clearly still on the horizon, and two of the five city-states haven't been explored on a cultural level yet, so there's plenty of worldbuilding and narrative to see in the future.