The Faithless by C. L .Clark is book two in the Magic of the Lost Trilogy. You can find my review for book one, The Unbroken, here. The Faithless is out on March 7th, preorder now!! As this review will be for the sequel, I will keep spoilers from the first book at a minimum, but some spoilers are in the synopsis below so proceed with caution.
The Faithless
By C.L. Clark | Goodreads | Magic of the Lost #2
In the second installment of C.L. Clark’s Magic of the Lost trilogy, soldier Touraine and princess Luca must return to Balladaire to reclaim Luca’s throne and to face the consequences of dismantling an empire.
The rebels have won, and the empire is withdrawing from Qazal. But undoing the tangled web that binds the two nations will not be easy, and Touraine and Luca will face their greatest challenge yet.
Luca needs to oust her uncle from the Balladairan throne once and for all and take her rightful place as Queen. But he won’t let go of power so easily. When he calls for a “Trial of Competence ” and Luca’s allies start disappearing from her side, she will need to find a way to prove her might. And she knows someone who can help…
Touraine has found a home in the newly free country of Qazal. But she soon realizes that leading a country and leading a revolution are two very different tasks. And, even more importantly, if Luca’s uncle doesn’t ratify the treaty, the Qazali could end up right back where they started.
Together, the two women will have to overcome their enemies, their history, and their heartbreak in order to find a way to secure Luca’s power and Touraine’s freedom.
Review of The Faithless
Fantasy Elements
A large portion of The Unbroken was focused on the Qazali magic, and how that power gave Touraine and her people the push needed to win their rebellion. Similarly in The Faithless, magic is a central part of the book, but it becomes a goal of Luca to get to the bottom of Balladarian magic as an advantage in her bid for the throne. This trilogy so far has had minimal fantasy elements, but when magic comes, it’s serious and it has consequences. While magic may be in the background of many political plays and intrigue throughout the book, it’s ever present and lurking around where the leader may not expect to find it.
Characters
While Touraine and Luca remain the two focal points of the trilogy, there are new character points of views that expand the world and help the reader become even more invested in the storyline’s progression. First, we have Ghadin, a young Qazali page who looks up to Touraine and wants to see the world. Then, we have Fili, who shows the reader another side of Balladaire, the working class who find the imperialist politics at the top a waste of hard-earned resources and feel that doing away with a monarchy could be a possibility.
Just like the first book, The Faithless does an excellent job of providing depth to these characters and giving them agency, consequences to their choices, and realistic reactions to chances of fate that they couldn’t have anticipated. I found myself highly attached to each character and I found it so difficult to put down the book because I always wanted to know what they were up to.
Themes
Like Unbroken, a theme in this book is rebellion, except through different lenses. We see the working class Balladarians striking up a rebellion against the upper class, yet still holding onto their racist ideals against Qazali peoples. We see Qazal, a newly independent country, struggling to find agency and navigate the international sphere against the Balladarian superpower. We see Luca rebelling against her uncle in which they both have vastly different ideas for how to run their nation, and whoever wins would impact the international sphere in drastic ways.
Each of these layers upon layers of rebellion and resistance show a layered and nuanced take on colonization, loyalty, wealth, power, and the humans who make choices within those elements. With my own graduate degree in conflict studies, I found the author’s approach to the conflict in the book to be fascinating, believable, and reminiscent of real-life themes.
Setting
In the world of The Magic of the Lost Trilogy, the reader finds themselves in the middle of a fantasy continent, with many countries circling what could be compared to the Mediterranean Sea. (Orbit has a handy map here!) There are some parallels to North Africa and Europe, and that helps the world be easily digestible without much explanation. However, the world building is still expertly done in a myriad of ways, and in The Faithless, the reader gets to see cities and countries that weren’t seen in The Unbroken.
I have seen critiques of second books in trilogies– that they are only slow build ups to the conclusion, that they can be slogs to move through– etc. That could not be further from my experience with The Faithless. This book was engaging, potent, and I flew through this book in a matter of days. It expanded the world in amazing ways while also deepening the connections the reader makes in the first book. Already one of my favorite books of the year, I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good political intrigue fantasy novel.
A huge thank you to Orbit for sending me a copy of the arc in exchange for an honest review!
Cover image: Photo on Unsplash
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