Guys, before I start, I have to provide a warning! Oftentimes when this book first came out I saw it promoted as Christian Fantasy, and because I am a glutton for punishment (or consider Christian mythology fascinating as long as I don’t have to write long papers about it) I picked it up to read. Troublesome revelation: the person in charge was confused!

I feel like someone was using the author’s work in other creative fields to promote this book, giving readers a really skewed perception of what the book might contain. I went in expecting, well Christian fantasy, although now I’m not sure what that would even be, because when I think Christian fantasy I think, I dunno, of Constantine (the comic, not the emperor, and I think most Christians might explode). I expected something dark and blatant and this book really wasn’t. Rather than religion and faith being active in this work, it informed instead, which means there are Christian undertones, symbolism, re-framing of stories, so I can’t even begin to comment on this aspect and how it might really impact the story as it’s told. Really.

I have forgotten all Sunday School lessons I ever had and suck at Christian symbolism and allegory. I am serious, there was some subtle spiritual hijinks going down in this novel. I wish I had seen them and not understood, but that would have been too easy! No, no, instead of just didn’t see them at all! I am going to own my bias and my expectation and say: I am Christian mythology dumb unless it is explicit.

I mean, this is why I was miserable in all my British literature courses, especially the pre-1800s, because man, you have to know all this stuff, about God and Jesus and—I never got it. Everyone else did, and these are the conversations I would have, three minutes before the end of class:

RENAY: But I don’t get it.
CLASS: *evil glares*
PROFESSOR: The poem is about his love of God.
RENAY: I get that, but why is he talking about flies?
PROFESSOR: The fly is the symbol of his love.
RENAY: But the fly gets SQUASHED.
PROFESSOR: God’s love is powerful; this is his attempt to show how no love is greater than God himself.
RENAY: Why the hell is God going around squashing people’s flies?!
PROFESSOR: It’s a metaphor.
RENAY: I don’t get it.
CLASS: *FUMING*
PROFESSOR: You don’t understand metaphor?!
RENAY: No, I don’t understand why God is such a cockface in all these poems.
PROFESSOR: …………class dismissed.

Basically, you shouldn’t go into an English literature program in the Deep South if you’re an atheist, because that’s pretty much how all my class periods went and guys, I am not kidding, I knew nothing that everyone else knew rote from the womb—maybe the parents piped it in? There was no way to get through these courses without knowing these things. Perhaps it is a little more clear why I ran, screaming from university into the abusive arms of $dayjob, selling popcorn to irate mothers, dirty construction workers, and apathetic mall employees.

My warning: I am going to discuss this book as a fantasy that perhaps has Christian undertones, not from my perspective as a Jesus fangirl (don’t ask, it’s a long story) but someone who can leave the rest of it behind because it doesn’t tell me why. This is not a Christian fantasy, it is just a fantasy, written by a dude who likes Jesus, and I am afraid the book which is not a bad book, might be judged on these merits and passed over by secular readers who, if they want religion hijinks can pick up some Guy Gavriel Kay and blow their minds. I might even point them out but I might be wrong, wrong, so wrong. There is the disclaimer that there are going to be things I completely miss because some things you have to sit around and study to know, and I am a bad history student and clearly a bad literature student for shunning the canon that is informed by Christianity (oh, western canon!). I am sorry to all the authors I shunned. Still, though, people marketing this book and this series! WOULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN YOURSELVES. I am so confused.

The Expanse.

The final front—okay, no, no, I’m sorry, I’ll stop.

When the Proclamation of Colors is announced, all color is removed from the populace in order to make House Abascar the best, most important House in The Expanse, to regain their honor and importance. After the proclamation is set and a promise of lifting it given, the queen who pushed for the Proclamation vanishes into the wilderness.

The colors never return.

Twenty years later, a young orphan is found by the criminals known as Gatherers that have been thrown outside House Abascar for petty crime. The Gatherers take Auralia from the footprint of a monster and raise her as their own, not knowing that she will grow up with the forbidden talent for weaving colors for her makeshift family out of nature and will set in motion a dramatic rebirth for House Abascar.

I wanted to read this novel because of the interesting idea of color. We take color for granted, the warm and the cool, bright in our eyes like the shade of the sun or a clear sky, or muted like roiling fog. The very concept that it could be taken away and people ordered to live a monochrome life intrigued me.

More than a novel about a vast political plot as I have become used to fantasy being as of late, this is a fantasy driven by people: the frustrated Prince of Abascar, the ruin of the king, a sad drunk who lost his queen and has driven the most honest people away from him, as well as the captain of the guard, Ark-robin, who I wanted to kick in the face. The ale boy, who is never named and searching and hopeful for his future and identity, and Stricia, Ark-robin’s daughter, more concerned with power (which eventually makes her crazy! HA HA). Throughout this story and between these characters, Auralia weaves her gift and her story and her power between them, moving and shifting an entire house with her colors.

Even though Auralia starts out the novel as a clearly magical orphan, I liked her as she grew up. I enjoyed how she thumbed her nose at people and culture and tradition, how she struggled with what her colors meant, her selfishness and her desire for everyone to have what was so clearly there for the taking. I doubt this novel would have worked for me if I hadn’t liked her and how she interacted with the characters she meets. She changes Abascar as the Rites of Privilege approach the Gatherers, the yearly ceremony where the Gatherers can give gifts to the king and his court for admittance back into the walls of the House, and orphans that have turned sixteen and can see if they are worthy enough to seek the same.

There are times in the story the prose gets so wrapped up in being majestic that it trips over itself, turns people and dies. It’s very lyrical and readable most of the time, and now that I’ve used the word lyrical in this review, excuse me, I have to go stab out my eyes, but I really have no other way to say that it didn’t wow me but it didn’t make me want to commit literary homicide, either. I settled, I’m cool with it.

My problem with some of the characters is that I never felt much for them besides Auralia. They’re nonentities at best or repulsive at worst. I swear, if I had to read about Ark-Robin bitching that his kid came out with a vagina instead of a penis one more time I was going to throw the book across the room. Thank the stars there was a hot mess going down in the book that rendered any more commentary of that nature out of place. So: just a warning to people who think there are rewarding parental relationships in this book! Not so much. In fact, most of the people who help each other and hold one another up are not related at all, so excellent, one of my buttons! Thank you, Overstreet, for hitting my family of choice kink so thoroughly. Awesome.

The lack of emotion from these others characters really got to me, although looking back, the one character who did seem like she felt conflicted and torn and hopeful was Auralia as she struggled to understand her colors and make others understand them as well. Perhaps this is commentary by the author, that House Abascar lost its colors through caring too much about status and appearances instead of people, so therefore they have lost a bit of the spirit—their humanity.

The sections about the Keeper really touched me. I am pretty curious to find someone who knows Christian symbolism to ask their opinion. It was interesting: a larger than life figure, a magical figure that we dream about as children but write off as adults as nothing but the childhood fantastic—and it feels like a recent event, as if they have turned away from The Keeper, and thus their House is…not cursed, but hollow.

Wow, I wonder where that train of thought leads. Not to Jesus, for I feel like Auralia is on the Christ journey, the girl who breaks into House Abascar’s defenses and changes it forever.

The second issue I have is with Stricia, Ark-Robin’s daughter who is promised to Cal-raven. Okay, straight up: it’s a fantasy novel using fantasy tropes so out come the tropes that make me want to chew on glass. She serves one purpose and it’s pathetic and it cheated her entire role in the novel. Man! She could’ve been a really interesting character. After finishing the novel, I understood more about what parallels Overstreet was drawing between the missing queen and Auralia re: Cal-raven, but it felt forced, and well, sort of stupid. Har har, the silly girl is going to get jealous! Yeah, that’s right! Girls do crazy things when they’re jealous! Give me a break. I am probably the only one that will have a problem with this because I felt it was the only thing Overstreet didn’t really connect well, and relied on tired female stereotypes to get it done (hint: I hate stereotypes used as shortcuts! DAMN YOU, writing shorthand!). It’s fantasy! Monarchy! Fathers still own their kids in this world (and bitch if they don’t have the right plumbing), so why am I surprised that most female roles generally leave me with a bad taste in my mouth, with what positive plot-impacting female characters there were (read: not enough).

Auralia, however, makes it worth it.

This is a series, and Auralia’s Colors is the first, called The Red Strand. I’m not sure this has much crossover appeal—I think the prose is readable but not very emotionally available, but the fact that Auralia is so young and flouting norms, I couldn’t resist—someone who likes YA fantasy might want to give it a shot, at the least, even though Auralia’s point of view isn’t the majority of the book.

In the end, Auralia is only the catalyst in this book, the beauty she wields exposing the greed and the lust and pride in a kingdom struck joyless by useless desires as the cause. It’s hard to say much more than that without spoiling the book, so I’ll leave it there. Interesting concept, okay execution, and weak characters in a book that was driven by them. Do with the knowledge as you will!

I still don’t think this is Christian Fantasy, though. Piggybacking at best! >>

The second book is this series, The Blue Strand Cyndere’s Midnight is out now.