Title: The Unspoken Name
Author: A.K. Larkwood
Publication Date: February 11, 2020
Publisher: Tor
Format: Physical ARC

Many thanks to Tor for an ARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased opinion. Quotes are taken from an unfinished version and may differ from the final product.

I was looking forward to this book even before it started getting a lot of hype because vengeful gods? Forsaking destiny? Um, yes. Where do I sign up?

I actually ended up being kind of low-key disappointed with this book? It just wasn’t quite what I’d expected, and I struggled a lot to get into it, nearly DNFing it several times.

The Unspoken Name takes the reader to sweeping, foreboding worlds with a plethora of interesting gods, a slow burn romance, and one of my new favorite characters ever.

I’m clearly in the minority here, because it seems like the book is well loved, and I’m glad for that. It just wasn’t it for me, unfortunately. Although, as I said, I’ve met my newest favorite character (or one of them, anyway) in the form of Tal. You should really meet him. You probably won’t regret it?

When all is said and done, will I read the sequel? Probably. Larkwood is obviously a talented author, and parts three and four of this book were packed with action and character growth, which makes me think book two will be everything I was hoping for book one and then some.

❧ Larkwood crafts a world that is sweeping and gorgeous, while simultaneously dark and foreboding.

It was quite the combination. The very first world we see, outside of the Shrine of the Unnamed God, was this vast, dead world, littered with giant carcasses of snakes, but also a vast, impressive library. Oh my, it sounded terrible and lovely all at once, and I just really would like to move there for a while to study it, please?

Larkwood fills the book with some of the loveliest descriptions of not only the world but also magic, and it was delightful to read.

I wish there were more details about some of the places they visited (especially Sethennai’s home city itself), but I really enjoyed the little bits we did get to see.

There are also three races in the world, so Csorwe is an orc protagonist, which is pretty cool. Except … it didn’t actually mean much in terms of the story?

This is one part of the world I would’ve wanted to explore a bit more, honestly. There are orcs, elves, and humans, except they’re never called that. Orcs are apparently humanoid with tusks and odd-colored skin. Elves are humanoid with magic and pointy ears. And humans are … well, we’re incorrigible, we all know that already.

I think whether this is good or bad depends on your preference. For me, I want there to be differences between the races other than cosmetic and cultural difference (although, obviously, there should be those, too). Except we get no real indication that’s the case. The focus is solely on the cultural difference. So if you’re more into culture, that’ll probably work for you.

❧ In the last part of the book, Csorwe has a wonderful arc, where she really grows into her own.

This is going to be a bit of a mixed bag, because I had hoped that we might have seen a little more of her transformation. The beginning skips a lot of her supposed growth, and in part two, she just shows up sort of … changed. For the better, I think. It’s really parts two through four where her growth occurs, and I enjoyed the journey.

All her life, Csorwe has been nothing but a tool for someone else: first, a sacrificial lamb led to slaughter, and then a weapon for a powerful wizard. But no more, you hear me?!

It starts as just a little bit of niggling doubt … but doubt can be insidious, right? Little by little, the lack of personality that I felt so strongly in the first part fell away, and she actually found a goal in life, or something that she decided was worth pursuing. The transformation in Csorwe was brilliant and well earned, but came a little too late to save this book for me, in particular. I do look forward to where her character is heading in the series as a whole, though.

❧ Tal is an absolutely freaking trip, and I fell in love with him the moment he appeared on the page.

He’s coarse. He swears a lot. He sleeps around with a lot of people. He unapologetically knows what he wants in life and how to get it (even if that’s not dying, and therefore running from danger). In other words, he’s absolutely freaking perfect. He was definitely the comic humor for this book, but it worked so well because it was a dark, sarcastic type of humor.

Whereas I felt Csorwe’s narrative and parts were sort of dry and lacking character, from Tal’s very first perspective chapter, I knew he was going to be The One.

The one character that I would root for, no matter what, because he just had IT. Whatever IT is (other than a homicidal clown, although that probably would’ve come in handy to have, now that I think about it). His narrative was filled with personal reflection, humor, sarcasm, and just voicy. They were a pleasure to read. His sections really made the entire book for me, and I would love to see his point of view player a bigger role in the second book.

Also, when you add Csorwe plus Tal? Pure magic. Enemies forced to work together is one of my all-time favorite tropes, and oh gosh, I just loved it so much here.

❧ Shuthmili’s arc is my favorite in this book, and mirrors Csorwe’s in a lot of ways, which I found interesting.

I assume the parallels were intentional, because they were pretty blatant, and this makes me all the more curious about what will happen in the next book. Shuthmili, like Csorwe, is destined for a specific goal chosen by her people (albeit a slightly less grim one). I actually can’t really say more than that without getting awfully close to spoiler territory, but when you read Csorwe’s initial arc in the first chapter … that’s Shuthmili’s struggle throughout the entire book, except spread out and slowed down so the reader can actually appreciate it. And that I did.

❧ There’s a great F/F slow burn romance that I was totally on board for.

I won’t say who, because spoilers. But suffice it to say, it’s there! And it was lovely. It starts as mere attraction. Mix that with some really confusing, conflicting emotions that the characters aren’t sure what to make of, and you’ve got the budding of an interesting romance! I enjoyed the characters’ realizations of their feelings, because feelings are hard. Sometimes it takes time to understand.

There’s some M/M romance going on, but it’s … not a healthy one? But not in a fun way. I actually rooted for it to split, because the one guy deserved so much better.

❧ This book tackles a lot of really powerful themes.

For the most part, I thought they were handled really well. And these were some deep themes, so I was impressed by how many appeared here and how well they were explored.

Here’s just a taste of some of the themes tackled in this book:

✿ Destiny vs. agency
✿ Sacrifice
✿ The “greater good”
✿ Mortality vs. immortality
✿ Having purpose in life
✿ Gods and religion

The gods and religion, in particular, was a nice touch, because there was so much diversity of it, and all the gods were different and handled as such.

❧ The beginning was so slow that I considered DNFing this several times.

The only thing that saved me, I think, was that this was a buddy read and I don’t like to DNF buddy reads. Also, I read a review that said it picked up in the later parts, so I hung in there, and I do agree that the last two parts held my attention much better (even though I confess to also skimming those). My trouble was sort of a mixture of things that I bring up in other points, but I did end up just skimming the majority of this book and didn’t really get into it until closer to the end.

❧ The timeline is really weird and awkward and hard to follow.

I didn’t realize, going in, that it was told in four parts, and the earlier parts don’t necessarily jive with the later parts, partly because of the really weird time skips that take place, especially early on. In chapter two, for example, there’s a two-year time jump over the course of, like, three pages. It’s like this happened, this happened, and now Csorwe’s 16. Important stuff happens during this, too. Like Csorwe learning about the world outside her shrine, learning to fight, making friends, coming to grips with living in the city, and getting to know this mysterious wizard who just showed up out of the blue and spared her from sacrifice. These things feel … kind of important? The whole book actually spans about nine or ten years of Csorwe’s life, which was a lot for not that many pages, especially given how she grows and changes in that time.

I wish this had been split into two different books, with part one broken off from the rest, because it honestly felt like two different books.

Part one was painfully rushed, and we zip through something like three or four years. Goals are chased and achieved. It ends with a nice wrap. The most important thing is that we miss Csorwe’s development. She goes from someone who’s never left the Shrine and never done anything for herself to being a warrior, and we see none of that. It could’ve been a whole book on its own, especially since the Big Overarching Plot of part one just didn’t mesh into the other parts and felt like a random aside tacked on just to introduce us to the actual world and characters. It felt like a prologue that was both too long and not long enough at the same time.

❧ The narration is just so dry and distant. It’s very telling rather than showing.

Actually, it’s this weird mix. There are some great descriptions of the setting and some gorgeous phrases for describing the world. But for the characters’ actions? It struck me as very tell-y. This is going to be particularly true in part one, where it felt more like a hoppy list of events sandwiched between some beautiful scenery. The world felt wonderfully shown, but when it came to the characters, it felt telling, and I just didn’t feel like I was experiencing the story with them.

❧ I didn’t connect to hardly any of the characters (with the exception of Tal and Shuthmili). Csorwe, in particular, didn’t have much of a personality.

This, like many of the problems, is one that mostly pertains to the first two parts of the book. Csorwe was just … bland. Instead of feeling like a real person, she struck me more as an empty vessel in which to pour plot into. She was, in essence, whatever she had to be for that point in the book and nothing more. She had no wants or desires or actual thoughts aside from serving Sethennai. And for what? Okay, guy’s sexy, I get that. He helped her. Yeah, I get that, too. But it’s not like he rode in on a gilded steed of black and challenged a dragon for her honor, slayed the horrid beast, and stole her away. He literally is like, “Heeey, how about you not let this god devour you, yeah?” And then we see no further interaction between them that would have me believing he warrants such blind loyalty.

In fact, until part three, I felt like Csorwe didn’t have any personality to speak of, I knew nothing at all about Sethennai, and I knew even less about Oranna. Which made parts one and two super hard to get through, because why should I care about these characters and this random quest?

I will say that midway through part two, Csorwe felt like she had more personality, and by part three, these problems had mostly resolved themselves. The writing felt much more accessible and enjoyable, and I actually liked Csorwe’s personality at that point. But it was a bit of a slog to get to that point.

If you could choose, would you be an orc, an elf, or a human?