The Barrani would be happy to see her die. So Kaylin Neya is a bit surprised by her safe arrival in the West March. Especially when enemies new and old surround her and those she would call friends are equally dangerous…
And then the real trouble starts. Kaylin's assignment is to be a "harmoniste"—one who helps tell the truth behind a Barrani Recitation. But in a land where words are more effective than weapons, Kaylin's duties are deadly. With the wrong phrase she could tear a people further asunder. And with the right ones…well, then she might be able to heal a blight on a race.
If only she understood the story.
~~
Warning: this is NOT a stand alone novel. Period. Cast in Sorrow is the ninth novel in Michelle Sagara's Chronicles of Elantra series and at this point things are so complicated and the cast of characters so vast that even *I* have trouble remembering who everyone is. Not that that negatively impacted my enjoyment of the story, but the intricacies of the Barrani court and the history of their relationships is a vein running through everything, and keeping the other books on hand may have been a good idea, lol.
Still the best thing about the world Sagara has crafted is that while things are dense they are still incredibly interesting. Even though you know as the reader that it is highly unlikely that Kaylin is going to mess something up beyond repair, bad things do happen in her world and you can never be completely positive. It's a heavy duty to be handed, to attempt to tell the tale of an entire people, a tale that when told actually changes the people themselves, and Kaylin's understandably hesitant about it. She has to navigate the things that the Barrani won't (or can't) say, and sometimes that means that I'm as lost in the reading as Kaylin is in the living of it. But at 400+ pages Sagara had my attention pretty much the entire time and thankfully this book isn't a cliffhanger or lead in to another: the story Kaylin has to tell gets and ending and the fresh perspectives added in because of it have me excited about where this series will go from here.
Overall Feeling - B+
Series - ...7) Cast in Ruin 8) Cast in Peril 9) Cast in Sorrow
*Title requested from NetGalley*
