Reading: The Unspoken Name

A.K. Larkwood's debut novel, The Unspoken Name, is basically an epic space opera set in a sword and sorcery fantasy world. Instead of space ships, there are sailing ships which can also fly; instead of hyperspace, there's the Maze, a labyrinthine landscape of jumbled rocks and deep gorges, punctuated with gates to different worlds; instead of aliens, there are orcs, with grey skin, yellow eyes and tusks; giant serpent people; human-like people with curly hair and tall pointed ears, and many others. Larkwood's heroine, Csorwe, is an orc. Brought up in a remote priory as the Chosen Bride of the Unspoken Name, she is doomed to die on her fourteenth birthday; instead, she finds herself leaving behind everything she has ever known to become a swordswoman, serving the wizard Sethennai, exiled Chancellor of another land.

The Unspoken Name is a complicated, twisty novel. The opening reminded me strongly of The Tombs of Atuan; later, as Csorwe becomes more skilled and more cynical, she reminded me of Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth; by the end, I decided that more than anything else it reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones, but it is also entirely its own thing and I really enjoyed it. There is quite a lot of violence, including a couple of torture scenes which may be a bit much for some people, but although it's dark in places it's very much not grimdark. It also suffers a bit from the problem of having lots of complicated made-up names, and I'm not entirely sure including a pronunciation guide helped that much as I kept worrying about whether I was managing to stress things in the right places. Overall, though, I thought this was fantastic; the sequel comes out this month (which is what made me think about picking it up) and I have preordered it and am really looking forward to reading about Csorwe's further adventures.