Review of "The Thousand Eyes" by A.K. Larkwood

I received an ARC of this book from Tor in exchange for an honest review.

The Unspoken Name, the first book in this series, was saddled with comparisons to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan, and instead told a story that was drastically different in tone. Free of such comparisons, The Thousand Eyes takes those characters much further and, with liberal use of time-skips, allows them to grow into their own. Having left Belthandros Sethennai enthroned, Csorwe and Shuthmilli have become itinerant adventurers, a lifestyle that leaves plenty of opportunity for banter and encounters with the grumpy but ultimately supportive Tal. The first third of the book unfolds much like the second half of The Unspoken Name, as our protagonists search out powerful relics while trying to stay one step ahead of the mysterious forces behind the search. Already, having less need to establish characters allows these experiences to feel more realistic and vivid, without the need to acquaint the reader with each person's key traits. However, Larkwood produces a truly shocking twist midway through that dramatically changes the tenor of the book and elevates it far beyond the previous entry in the series. To say any more would be a tremendous spoiler, so I'll save more detailed discussion for the corresponding section of the review. As if that weren't enough, there is a second change of pace to come that again pushes the story in a new direction, essentially giving us three books for the price of one. While the significant gaps in time may be disorienting at first, they serve as a great example of ending scenes as soon as their relevance to plot and character has been achieved, rather than dwelling in a particular moment or setting for continuity purposes alone. I found the choice to skip ahead original and captivating, contributing to the lived-in feel of the book that made it much more gripping than its predecessor. As with The Unspoken Name, the conclusion to The Thousand Eyes leaves room for Larkwood to continue exploring the setting, albeit with major changes to its characters. However, it still has the same satisfying stand-alone qualities of the first book and wraps up the character arcs it introduced. Not doing so, and simply setting the stage for another installment, has become a pet peeve, and I am glad to see that recent trend broken here. 

Four and a half out of five stars. Larkwood really finds a stronger authorial voice and improves significantly on the already-good The Unspoken Name. 

Some spoilers follow! This also includes spoilers for The Lion King (yes, really) and discussion of Seth Dickinson's Baru Cormorant books (perennial favorites of mine). Read no further unless you are prepared.

I once read that, despite the obvious similarities in plot, The Lion King is not Hamlet, because the key moments in Hamlet all take place during the growing-up montage when Simba is singing with Timon and Pumba. The interesting part of Hamlet is not who lives and who dies, but how the death of Hamlet's father shapes him as a person. After the time-skip revealed Shuthmilli's rise to Hand of the Empress, I had a similar feeling about The Thousand Eyes and the Baru Cormorant books. The latter take place entirely within the fourteen-year time-skip that is the most striking choice in The Thousand Eyes, detailing with excruciating intensity the kind of sacrifices that must be made to attain exaltation within an empire you hate. But while there are strong parallels between the situations (like Baru, Shuthmilli is a savant in ways of power, trained from a young age to master arcane skills, who makes a tremendous sacrifice to preserve the memory and possibly the life of her beloved, taken in untimely fashion by the inexorable engine of empire), The Thousand Eyes is concerned with what happens after, rather than with the process. This is not to say that the quality of the book suffers; to the contrary, the story of Shuthmilli's corruption is not the story Larkwood wants to tell, and implying it is in this case a more powerful tool than revealing it. It just seemed a perfectly apt description that highlights how many stories can be told around the same basic plot.