Fortune’s Fool is an impressively large tome at 737 pages on Kindle, so it requires an investment of time to read it. It also has a complicated plot with much secretive, political manoeuvring between four major, powerful Houses, which requires a certain level of brainpower to follow. Since I had to keep putting it down to go to work and then continue later, this was at times somewhat taxing, and occasionally, I struggled to follow the details of the story well.
There are two timelines woven around one another, with mostly the same main and significant side characters featuring in both. This was at times confusing, as I tried to remember what had occurred in which timeline. The final part of the book tied up all the loose ends nicely, but there was a section in the middle where I was no longer sure who was working for whom and where all the alliances lay. I think I would have found the plot clearer had I waited until a time when I had more hours in my day to devote to purely reading. Having said all of that, I enjoyed the setting and the characters well enough to carry me through any confusion with the hope that the mysteries would become clear later, and they did!
The story follows the complicated relationship between two main characters, Kyrra di Aliente, a proud and headstrong young daughter of an important Householder and an older gavaro named Arsenault, through two timelines. Their relationship evolves from him protecting her on behalf of her father after she falls pregnant to the son of another important Householder, Cassis di Prinze. Being out of wedlock, her mother helps her to abort the baby. She is then stripped of her name and suffers having her arm cut off at her father’s behest as a result of murdering the Prinze’s heir. She also has to become a serf working in the family’s silk-producing business, unacknowledged by her family. Her headstrong determination to learn how to live with her disability immediately makes her a likeable character and impresses Arsenault, leading to the two slowly falling in love. Their conversations form the main vehicle for plot development as they discuss the political relationships between the Houses, the introduction of guns to this land and the impending war. Then Arsenault disappears for a significant amount of time, and when he reappears in the second timeline, he is a changed man and has no memory of Kyrra. In the meantime, Kyrra has begun dressing as a man and working as an assassin named Kyris after fighting in the wars between the Householders. I wanted to love these two and to revel in their relationship, but sadly, it never quite rang true for me. I felt there was a lack of romantic tension and the emotions felt by the two could have been explored more deeply.
The novel presents the events of these two timelines in the opposite order, with us first meeting Kyrra as a young male-presenting gavaro named Kyris with a metal arm and some magical skill, searching desperately for Arsenault. We then see what has led to this point in flashback.
I really enjoyed the world-building in this novel. Boord’s version of Renaissance Italy was expertly depicted along with all the political machinations between the important Houses. At times these became a little convoluted and I lost the thread of who supported whom between the Alientes, Caprines, Seers and Prinze. I found the process of mulberry-coloured silk-making, which consumed the Aliente household, to be fascinating, particularly the small details such as how the comber girls grew their fingernails to great lengths to better perform their job of combing out the silk worms’ cocoons.
Some of the side characters were mysterious to the point of making me scratch my head for most of the book. Was John Barra an ally or an enemy? His role was a mystery to Kyrra and only became clear at the end. Since we were seeing the story from Kyrra’s perspective, this made him a confusing character. The same can be said for Lobardin. At one point he seems caring and tries to give Kyrra flowers, then on another occasion he tries to rape her. Is his bad behaviour all drug-fueled? Are we supposed to forgive him when we discover he has been irretrievably damaged in captivity by the Prinze family? Was it actually the Prinze or (more likely) the evil god Erelf working through the Prinze? Nothing appears clear-cut in this novel. There are many layers to everyone’s relationships and everyone’s personalities.
The magic used by certain characters to ‘fix’ things could have been explained in more detail. Why were only some people able to wield magic? It seemed to depend on genetics. There certainly were a number of gods involved in the story, but they seemed drawn to those able to wield magic rather than their followers receiving magic from them as a boon.
I would like to return to this world as I really enjoy Boord’s prose, and hopefully, further time spent in this world will give me more clarity in the details!
