Review: Storm from the East

Storm from the East by Joanna Hathaway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm sure many of us remember that moment in young adulthood when you find that your parents have somehow left out important details of one sort or another about their families and lives. And in those details, one can find the complex motivations that propel adults into the decisions that form the boundaries of their lives. Storm from the East ups the level of complexity that the reader absorbed in Dark of the West, the first book in the Glass Alliance. While perhaps overly optimistic about the amount of wartime entrée a princess might be able to enjoy, what Storm from the East lays bare is how Warmachine regimes cut wide swaths of collateral damage, how demonized minorities are blamed by those seeking to seize absolute power, and how even good people are hoodwinked into terrible acts when they take orders on faith alone.

This book opens with Aurelia struggling to understand her mother, and her own fateful actions with Lark near the end of Dark of the West, while Athan is serving as part of a flight wing unit in his father's air force. Aurelia, consumed with guilt, makes a bargain with the devil (she thinks) and agrees, to her brother Reni's shock, to marry Havis if he is willing to take her to Resya so she can investigate what Lark told her about her mother's family. What she finds will shock her to the core. Athan, meanwhile, struggles with his growing realization that his brother and his father are monsters, and that his beloved sister has drunk their Kool-Aid. In poignant letters that they try unsuccessfully to exchange (they are written but largely unread until the end of the book) they confide their longing for a better world. Athan in particular struggles with the fact that Aurelia doesn't know his true identity, a Dakar. As the maelstrom of war threatens to embroil most of the Eastern territories (Landore, Saveant, Karkev) and the northern swath of the South (Resya, Thurn, Masrah) in unrelenting bloodshed, a plot against Aurelia's mother, Queen Sinora, draws tighter and tighter until she is left with only one option for escape. With an epic clash of families and former allies, Storm from the East encourages young adult readers to examine the complex motivations that lead to war, and especially those who profit from it.

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"I beg you to always look beyond what seems obvious. Create your allies, everywhere, and only make an enemy when the survival of many depends on it. Every man-made cause has both beauty and disaster built into it, my star." - Sinora Lehzar

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One of my only criticisms of the book is that with this large cast of characters and so many countries or states involved, the lack of a dramatis personae list is really frustrating at times.

I also enjoyed the audiobook version of the novel, narrated by Barrie Kreinik and Dan Bittner.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

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