2023 read #18: A Psalm of Storms and Silence by Roseanne A. Brown.

A Psalm of Storms and Silence by Roseanne A. Brown

551 pages

Published 2021

Read from February 5 to February 10

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Over the last couple years, I read the first book (and only the first book) of quite a few SFF series. There was A Court of Thorns and Roses. Then The City of Brass. We can’t forget Cute Mutants; The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue; The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea; Gearbreakers; The Gilded Ones; The Gilded Wolves. You get the idea. (You could even throw in Witch World, if you wanted to get silly with it.) The point is, I began a lot of series, but haven’t progressed to any of their sequels. My days of speeding through trilogies -- or even finishing them -- seem to be behind me.

I read A Song of Wraiths and Ruin just last month. Finishing the duology now feels almost timely in comparison!

Like Song, Psalm mostly hits my personal YA sweet spot: fun and engaging without resorting to the ubiquitous tics of scoffing, quippy leads with chips on their shoulders. (Karina skirts close to the line in places, but overall it avoids the worst of, say, The Hazel Wood.) The characters are a delight. The setting remains superb. The themes of abuse, trauma, and breaking generational cycles were top-notch. The world's magic system, while it falls into the common fantasy trap of being whatever it needs to be to fulfill the next plot beat, is generally imaginative and satisfying.

My only real complaint is with Psalm's pacing. In her acknowledgements, Brown mentions that Psalm is "not the story I thought it would be" when she began the series. Perhaps that's why it felt like the first third of this hefty volume was spent pivoting its storylines (particularly Karina's) away from the direction set up by Song's coda. It took a while for this book to find its own footing; that clear sense of pivot felt awkward. The middle section was excellent. But the final third or so felt overlong, building toward a clear climax before again shifting gears and sending our characters to yet another location only to spin out the dénouement that could have just as easily transpired 50 pages before. I think you could have trimmed a good 100-150 pages from this book and improved the flow considerably.

The finale is satisfying, however, and overall I loved this series. I'm happy I finally finished one!