Fortune's Fool
A secret affair. A disfiguring punishment. A burning need for revenge.
Kyrra d’Aliente has a bad reputation and an arm made of metal.
Cast out of the safe and luxurious world of silk to which she was born, played as a pawn in a game of feuding Houses, Kyrra navigates a dangerous world of mercenaries, spies, and smugglers while disguising herself as a man.
War destroyed her family and the man she loved.
Vengeance is within her grasp.
But is she willing to pay its price?
Title: Fortune’s Fool
Author: Angela Boord
Genre: Fantasy
Hardcover: 720 pages
Publisher: Self published
Publishing Date: 06/19/2019
Language: English
ISBN: 1073313875
ISBN-13: 9781073313877
Literary Awards: SPFBO Nominee (2019),
BookNest Award Nominee for Best Self-Published Novel (2019)
My Review
F I N I S H E D....and I'm left a wrecked mess!
An ocean of words in a tome over 700 pages long, have come together to form an awesome, in-depth built world around silk production and trade, powerhouses and family feud in the fantastical Fortune's Fool, and combined it with a character-driven plot of revenge by the underdog. It is made of all the right stuff to sink your teeth in, in a journey that takes its time and braids a narrative from different angles and two main timelines, but don’t be fooled, this novel has a strong and dangerous undercurrent that lurks behind the lingering tale told on the surface, one that took my breath and wrecked me by the end and I am grateful for it.
Kyrra d'Aliente is born into the House of Aliente on her father's side, the Householder of a vast silk production/trade empire and her mother is a Caprine, fallen obliged to certain trade limitations opposing on the Aliente's House of business. For ages, the kin of the Caprine have spun their fortunes on a thin thread of silk that could tear in an instant if it wasn't for the right alliances in Houses.
Trading partners and political games have long been a factor for the Houses and when Cassis di Prinze, son of Geoffre di Prinze, another large holding of silk comes to the House of d'Aliente, Kyrra, only just short of her eighteenth names day, is smitten with the handsome young man.
"A Prinze doesn't make gestures without a knife up his sleeve.",
her mother warns, and so, he sets his eye on Kyrra in a wild, romantic tangle, for which she ends up paying the price. Dishonored and disowned by her father, she is sentenced to lose her name and all rights to any Aliente property. Her physical punishment was the severance of her right arm above the elbow before being sent off.
A gavaro, a mercenary for hire, is to watch over Kyrra, hired by her father, while she now works physical labor on the silk farm, the kitchen, trash duty or other such work. Arsenault is the first to treat her with decency since she was ousted. A man of secrets himself, filled with the grief of murder as she finds out over time, but one who offers simple comforts and always keeps her challenged.
"I suppose you have a right to be wary of wolves, but just because you're fallen, do you think it means you have to stay down in the dirt?"
Who is this man, really? He has fought the Prinze, has a good grasp of geography and politics and he starts to teach her how to fight with one arm. Perhaps her father has an agenda and plans after all? What could be his motives?
Kyrra's story is told in two alternating timelines. One of them encompasses her story of meeting Cassis and Arsenault, her loss of the arm and her subsequent build-up that culminates in a deep connection with Arsenault and an understanding of self, coming of age and a plan of revenge.
"Kyrra, if I teach you to use a sword, will you stop wielding your words like blades?"
(I love this, btw)
The other timeline is all about that revenge, after her time with Arsenault, yet he still remains a key figure in the plot, as well as the information she learns from his diary. At this point, Kyrra has gained various contraptions as arms and is left with a fused metal one from Arsenault. She is fully aware of the way she was used as a pawn in the family feud and knows the whole truth of her parents and a mirage that has been played as a cover-up. Her revolt in seeking justice will be dangerous. A gamble with the fates, and Gods in an uphill battle.
"You're an armles girl and a gavaro's whore," she whispered. "You ought to be crawling about in the dirt."
A world of magic and dreams (and drugs) add an important component to the timeline alluring to the riddles of underlying powers and the history of important houses involved. It is within a magical bond that Arsenault and Kyrra are tormented and rewarded simultaneously while fighting the factions and in parts, each other.
"EFSAG, IRDMAR, JORN...THE STANCES SING THROUGH MY HEAD, buried in my muscles. These movements I once made with this man, the closest we ever came to dancing Efsag, irdmar, jorn...The words lose all meaning in the battering of swords. I block blows with my arm that would cleave an arm of flesh, and the sound rings out into the night and into my head.
But I am not here.
I am somewhere in the dirt, swept down the tunnels of my own veins, adrift in my own blood. I should be bleeding on the ground by now. He's a better swordsman, but he doesn't have my arm. And he doesn't fight the way I do.
It's always like this. The darkness catches me like an ocean wave and tumbles me along its bottom, scouring me in the sand I don't know where the surface is. And I awake to find myself standing on a battlefield, bodies strewn at my feet.
Arsenault was wrong when he called it battle magic. It is a madness, an infection in the mind - vengeful, mad Ires reaching out from within the earth to satisfy his rage. It seeks any available tool, and if it finds one, it swings it like a hammer.
I can hear my own lunatic laughter as if someone else is laughing. Arsenault grunts as he struggles to block the blows, I pound him with. I'm only strong when I'm fighting because it's the magic, not me. I'd be stronger if I didn't struggle against the blackness, but I bob up and down like a cork in the tide.
I think Mikelo tries to stop me, but I fling him away. I don't hear him scream, so I think he's still alive.
Kyrra, Arsenault says, stop.
I can't, I answer him.
Is it this arm he made me? did he open up this channel so that it would grow wider and wider and harder and harder to close?
Everything goes black again, and when I come up from it, I have him against a wall, pinned, with the point of my sword at his throat. He stares at me the way a man does when he knows he's about to die--except there's something else there, something quiet on his face that lets me know he's already dead."
This novel is not a sweet romance, though it offers tender moments. I enjoyed the connection between the main protagonists very much and appreciate some of the maternal touches infused into the themes. In all, the novel takes its time, foreshadowing just enough to formulate an idea about the outcome of the story, but it remains shattered by sidelining concepts that punch a reader's ideas back into place. Whereas in the first half of the book the timeline of Kyrra in her young adult years hold most of the weight, the second half of the novel is all-out a grown, battered Kyrra and a plot full of magic, power, betrayal, and revenge.
Fortune's Fool and I got on very well. I absolutely love Boord's voice, in which through artful, well thought out use of word choice and diction she has crafted some intense and intuitive passages that build in beauty and power and that left me wrecked by the end.
This debut novel is the first in the Eterean empire series and impossible to read without a pillow propped up for its sheer weight--however, so worth it and I highly recommend it.
I received a digital copy of this novel from the author in exchange for an honest review. Thank you so much.
Since I enjoy physical books most, I ordered this novel personally. All opinions are my own.
