Book Review: The Unspoken Name
Tor promoted the heck out of The Unspoken Name in the lead-up to its release and to be honest, it worked. I read the first few chapters online, and it was enough for me to know that I definitely wanted to read this one. “Hot lady sword orcs” was really all I needed to know, but then I found out there’s a death god and necromancers so here we are.
Csorwe has grown up knowing how she would die — a sacrifice to the Nameless One, the god of her people. Then the wizard Bethandros Sethennai shows up on the eve of her sacrifice and offers her a new path: a life, with him, helping him regain his position and search for a powerful artifact known as the Reliquary of Pentravesse. Csorwe becomes his swordswoman and loyally sets out to hunt the Reliquary, but she can’t run from her failed obligation to her god forever, and she’ll be lucky if she can keep the woman she loves alive.
Let’s talk about the world first, because HOOOOO. I love this world so much. Larkwood said in a recent AMA that she wanted to create a world where humanity was not the default, and I love that choice. Cswore and her people are quite obviously orcs or orc analogs, with tusks, and Sethennai’s people are clearly elves with pointy ears, but they’re never called out as such in the text. It’s a nice way of establishing that all races are really, more or less, the same — we all eat, love, hurt, and die in the same way.
All of this is set in a sort of portal universe, many worlds connected by something called the maze. Various gates and portals offer travel between different worlds; some worlds are living and active, others are dead and quiet. The dead worlds are slowly cannibalized to become part of whatever underlies the maze. We see plenty of all this as we follow Csorwe around on her adventures.
Stack on top of this the magic system, which relies heavily on deities. Essentially, in this universe, all magic users are somewhere between a D&D cleric and a warlock. Each one relies on a deity for their power, and the magic corrupts the body and reduces their lifespan. The deities have specific power sets they grant, and opinions on deities range from reverence (Csorwe’s people, the Oshaaru) to a more business-like relationship (Sethennai and the Siren) to the downright hostile (the Qarzahi and their chaos goddess). With the latter, wizards are highly restricted and monitored; there’s some moderately horrifying worldbuilding there which I don’t want to spoil.
Into all this, we drop Csorwe, and I’d just like to say that I stan one (1) good orc girl caught between two wildly powerful wizards. Csorwe feels indebted to Sethennai for rescuing her from her death, and she grows up unsure how to discharge that obligation. She loves him for saving her and believes he will continue to protect her. Oranna knows Csorwe’s past and understands it, which also gives her a hold on Csorwe. At the same time, our hero is captivated by her introduction to Shuthmili, a Qarzahi wizard and scholar, and their budding relationship opens up a whole new world of options.
I mentioned two powerful wizards - that would be Sethennai, who I’ve mentioned before, and Oranna, the former librarian at the temple of the Nameless One. Sethennai is charismatic and charming and manipulative and basically just a lot of fun to read. He was formerly the ruler of his home city of Tlaanthothei, and he has a very clear action plan for power and happiness: 1) become ruler again and 2) find the legendary reliquary.
Oranna, meanwhile, is a bit of a mystery. She too is searching for the reliquary, but her motives are less clear for most of the novel. She’s also a necromancer (the fastest way to my heart, apparently, given this book and Gideon the Ninth). She’s got some of the best lines in the novel, and she’s clever and pragmatic to the core.
There’s a bunch more interesting characters as well. Tal is the nephew of Sethennai’s former enemy, now taken under Sethennai’s wing and partnered reluctantly with Csorwe. Tal is out mostly for himself (though he struggles with his feelings toward Sethennai), and his roguish qualities make for fun POV interludes. All the Qarzahi characters are wildly interesting and terrifying in almost equal measure.
It’s good that the characters are strong, because they cover up small weaknesses in the plot. It’s not that the plot is bad, but the plot is weird. The opening chapters will make you think that most of the book revolves around Csorwe and Sethennai retaking Tlaanthothei, and I am here to tell you that that is only part one. What could have honestly been an entire book by itself is over in a few chapters.
Most of the book is instead focused on Csorwe’s search for the reliquary, hampered by Oranna and trying desperately to save her new crush. It feels like an almost entirely separate novel — but a really good one, if a little predictable. The action setpieces are utterly wild, especially when the characters cluster together in confrontation. My personal favorite is a bit on a dying world in a creepy underground temple with a sleeping god (shocker). I’d really love to see some of those sequences on the big screen someday.
But the quiet moments are equally, if not more, interesting. Larkwood takes the time to put unlikely scene partners together (like Tal and Oranna, which results in one of my favorite scenes), and there’s a strong thread of unfolding mystery running throughout the novel as we work through Sethennai and Oranna’s motivations. There’s f/f romance here too, a nice slow burn that ramps up and provides the novel’s climax.
And there’s some deep themes at play about debt and oaths and what we owe to others. Csorwe is the deepest embodiment of this, torn between Sethennai and Oranna/the Nameless One, but it’s there in other characters too. Tal struggles with it; so does Oranna. Where does your obligation to someone end? How do you repay a broken oath? Is it OK to let someone keep a promise, even if it means the end of their existence as they currently know it?
At the end of the day, I burned through this book incredibly fast and had a blast doing so. It’s a series, so I have more to look forward to, even though I’m not quite sure where Larkwood is going. That’s OK though — I like surprises.
Grade: 4.5/5 stars
Memorable Quote:
“Nobody had ever accused Tal of knowing when to stop. He was still holding the knife, so he went for her again. The same thing happened.
Oranna looked down at him through heavy-lidded eyes, disappointed but unsurprised.
”Your body is a grave, as all bodies are,” she said, in impeccable Tlaanthothei. “There is plenty of dead matter inside you. More than enough to choke on. It would be more sensible to stay on your knees.””
