geri_chan | Sherwood Smith; Inda review

I recently discovered that fantasy author Sherwood Smith has a blog on LJ, which has a lot of interesting meta, plus some book recommendations and personal news. Reading it has reminded me of how much I loved her books Court Duel and Crown Duel, which are about the teenage Countess Meliara becoming embroiled in court intrigue, adventure, and romance. It's been several years since I last read them, so my memory of the plot is a bit vague, but I do remember Meliara as a strong, likable female protagonist and that there was enough intrigue and danger to make the story exciting, but that it was a fun and lighthearted read compared to Inda, another book by Smith that I just finished reading.

The official summary reads as follows:

Indevan-Dal is the second son of the Prince and Princess of Choraed Elgaer, destined to become his elder brother Tanrid's Shield Arm-his military champion. Like all second sons, he is to be privately trained at home by Tanrid, the brother whose lands he will one day protect.

When the King's Voice comes to summon Inda to the Military Academy, he might well feel foreboding, or even fear-war is imminent-yet youthful Inda feels only excitement. But there are things that Tanrid hadn't prepared him for, and Inda will soon learn that the greatest threats to his safety will not come from foreign enemies, but from supposed allies within his own country.

The story is darker and much more serious than the Crown Duel books, perhaps because those were marketed as Young Adult books, while Inda is billed as Smith's "first adult fantasy novel." The worldbuilding is impressive: Smith clearly put a lot of thought into the very complex social, political, and military system that she created--for example, the strict hierarchy among the nobles, where the daughters of certain families always marry the sons of certain other families, and therefore their spouses are already chosen for them from the time of their births. The brides are sent to be fostered with their grooms' families when they are children so that they grow up together, and are usually content with, or at least resigned to their fates. Inda's world was built with so much detail that it felt real and I found myself completely immersed in it, without any of the little plot inconsistencies or contradictions that occasionally jarred me out of the Harry Potter books (although I do love the worldbuilding in that series, too).

The characters are also very complex and three-dimensional. The main character Inda is a charismatic and likable boy, as one might expect from the hero of the story. He is naive at first, but matures--sometimes through bitter experience--throughout the course of the novel. His brother Tanrid at first comes off as a bully: we're told before we even meet him that he beats Inda as part of Inda's "training," although that seems to be the standard and accepted practice for the Marlovan nobles, and even Inda does not seem to hold a grudge against Tanrid, though he doesn't enjoy the beatings. But gradually we see that while Tanrid has been hardened by his military training, he is at heart an honorable and decent young man who does care about his family, including his little brother.

Even the antagonists of the story, the Sierandael (the King's brother and Shield Arm) and the Sierlaef (the King's heir and older brother of Inda's friend Sponge) are not two-dimensional villains, even though they are conspiring to keep Inda's family and Sponge out of power. The Sierandael appears to be treacherous and ambitious at first glance, and the Sierlaef appears to be a spoiled, selfish bully--which is partly but not completely true. Both are motivated by feelings of love for the King and the desire to impress him, and their insecurities and jealousy over those who rival them (at least in their own minds) for the King's affections, which includes Inda's father and Sponge respectively. I hated the Sierlaef at first for having his own brother beaten and bullied, but couldn't help feeling sympathy for him when we find out that he cannot read (in our modern world, he would probably have been diagnosed with some kind of learning disability) and see how inadequate and jealous he feels when he sees his clever brother Sponge bonding with their father over scholarly texts. There are a few times when the Sierlaef has a stirring of conscience and has a chance to make things right, but he and his uncle let those chances slip by and continue to make the wrong choices. Even as we see them moving beyond redemption, we understand how and why they came to this point.

It was an enthralling story and very well written, and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys fantasy stories with a lot of political intrigue and/or military history. But at the same time, it's not the sort of story I would enjoy reading over again, like the Court Duel books. A lot of bad things happen to good people (particularly Inda, who becomes the victim of the Sierlaef's plotting), and at times the unfairness of it all can be difficult to read--especially when you think things can't get any worse for Inda and his friends and family, and then something even worse does happen. Also, the first book ends in a cliffhanger, although since there are three sequels, we know that things will eventually get better for our hero. I just picked up the second book in the series, and am looking forward to seeing how things turn out for Inda.