Mother. Fucking. Onions.

Quintana of Charyn  - Melina Marchetta

SPOILERS FOR FROI OF THE EXILES 

”Do you love me?” he asked instead. “because if you don’t, I’d wait until you did. I’d wait weeks and months and years.”


I fell in love with that line without knowing who said them or the context of those words. 

This was such a breathtaking reminder on why I read books.

Because in the culture fostered in Goodreads, underneath the insurmountable TBR pile, the endless galleys that you burden yourself to review before their release day… it’s so easy to lose sight of that. It becomes easy to nitpick and cry stereotype at the slightest clue, critique the geo-cultural soundness of world building in high fantasy and almost reflexive to completely write-off a story that makes use of rape as a plot device. It’s like picking a string, any string to pull and you can ruin a well-crafted book for yourself.

Quintana of Charyn made it difficult for me to fall back on those patterns, seeing as how it treads in the side of wonders.

There’s a babe in my belly that whispers the valley, Froi.


The prologue starts with Quintana speaking to Froi, coming from a place that was completely out of left field. Froi, on the other hand, is with Arjuro in Sebastabol having separated form Quintana after Olivier’s betrayal outside Paladozza at the end ofFroi of the Exiles. Isaboe is with child, sending her best men and her consort Finnikin to intercept Gargarin of Abroi, the former first advisor to the Charynite king and suspected of being the hand responsible for the death of her family. Lucian, and the Monts join the Charynnites in the mourning of the death of his wife, Phaedra and their women. Together with the oppressive presence of the Street Lords of Citavita, the desertion of theprovincari of Alonso and the refusal of Isaboe to provide for them, the valley seems as desolate and abandoned as ever.

Confession: I purposely delayed reading this trilogy (which really felt like a duology to me, by the way) for more than one reasons. Having been introduced to Marchetta’s oeuvre through her contemporary work, there’s an element to her writing that makes me wary of putting that in the context of high fantasy. She doesn’t give her story easily. It takes a bit of patience and more focus than I’d usually give in fiction. Meshing that with building a world from ground up I thought would drive me up against the wall. Also the fangirling over this series was just too extreme! I might lose friends over this admission but the harder you push me to read a book with incessant gushing and fawning, the more I delay reading it.

Quintana of Charyn made me eat all of that assumptions and more.

In more ways than one, it was the reward at the end of all that tedium. All that incessant traveling, characters whose backstories you can’t seem to care about as much as you want (i.e. Lirah, Gargarin and Arjuro). It felt a lot like you’re left to marinade with all those ingredients for a good long while, simmering in low heat so that it permeates through your skin, down to the bones, until its part of who you are. This is the book where you get thrown into the fire and come out repurposed and recalibrated…

Annnnd… I just made myself hungry.

Remember that John Green quote about Imperial Affliction? How there are books that make you want to violently push down everyone’s throats and there are books that make advertising what you feel about them seem like a betrayal of sorts? This was neither for me. It’s not my Imperial Affliction yet I also refuse to embarrass it with my juvenile gushing and platitudes. But it did change me as a reader. 

What I liked most about this series was that Marchetta illustrated it best how to believably redeem a character without insulting her readers’ intelligence. The fact that the focus of the series shifts from Finnkin and Isaboe to a character as deplorable as Froi may be a prime deterrent for some. But in the hands of this author, that single act of depravity was never forgotten, both by Froi and the reader, evolving believably as a part of the character as the story progressed. It was never really an issue with me to begin with, never felt it as a gratuitous plot device and always considered it a poor excuse for giving up on this story. This series honours you with the expectation that you are a thinking reader and it deserves to be honoured back by one’s open heart and mind.

I love the way this made me fall in love with every single character. This was told in multiple POVs with Quintana the sole character given the first person perspective when she speaks to Froi in her mind. The way I am made to care about the backstory of supporting characters such as Tessadora and Perri by viewing their relationship through the eyes of Lucian or Isaboe was brilliant in its plight to make me sympathetic for everyone. Quintana was a revelation in this book, one that will stand apart from every strong heroine stereotype I’ll be coming across from hereon out. Dancing, crooked teeth notwithstanding.

”Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories, Florenza of Nebia. remember that or you’ll be vomiting for the rest of your life.”
Florenza stared up at Quintana, and something passed between them as she nodded solemnly and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“And Tippideaux of Paladozza, the provincaro De Lancey’s daughter, has the prettiest face in Charyn,” she continued to inform them all. “Not you. So don’t believe a word your mother says.”


She probably had the best lines form this book and four out of five of them are the most epic burns.

Beyond the impossibility of making Quintana fully-formed in my mind this time around, this book also made me love Phaedra and Lucian even more. To the point that I wanted to take one star away from this for not giving them the main story instead. I felt emotionally disconnected with Lirah, Arjuro and Gargarin’s side of the story in Froi of the Exiles only to be sent sobbing repeatedly whenever they turn up in this book. 

And no, I am not the sort of reader who sobs.

The series all throughout was rooted in multiple conflicts among the richly detailed history of its characters: mothers, fathers and sons, husband and wives, brothers and sisters, survivors and oppressors, a queen to another queen and so on and so forth. Outside this book, with the sheer volume of subplots, neglecting one or the other seems an inevitability. It’s often a conundrum you feel in high fantasy: choosing between the characters and the world building, their motivations, their sorrows and their joys versus the politics, the socio-cultural issues and making it relatable to current realities. This story was generous in both counts, the relationships fully-embodied and emphatic, making you clutch desperately to stay in this world just a while longer as you reach the end, wanting to know what becomes of Rafuel or Olivier… or Jasmina and Tariq.

It wasn’t perfect for me. It nearly was but despite the blitz of the overwhelming feels, the many new beloved characters that fills very crevice of my heart and the niggling desperation not to see it end yet, I found it a bit of a stretch for me to buy into the whole conflict between Froi and Quintana versus the provincati. After all that has happened, I thought as an entity, Charyn’sprovincati failed to cut across the necessary gravity for it to impose the threat it meant to cut across. 

A small imperfection that I almost missed from having my eyes constantly blurred by tears.

I’ve gone on too long yet again! It’s always the best ones that reduces me to a babbling, incoherent fool and I will hate this review soon as I put it up. Days will pass, other books will be read, stars will be handed out and the details of The Lumatere Chronicles will not be as clear to me as it is today… but no, outside of that, not to be dramatic, but nothing will be the same in the after for me.