Tarashana (Tuyo #3) by Rachel Neumeier
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy
Representation: Major brown characters
PoV: 1st-person, past-tense
ISBN: B08YNY7NLZ
Goodreads

A year and a half ago, Ryo and Aras defeated their enemy, ending the conflict between the winter country and the summer lands. But with all his important secrets revealed in that struggle, Lord Aras now faces a new challenge in dealing with his own countrymen.

Then a message arrives from Ryo’s people: A woman of the Tarashana has come to them from the starlit lands beyond their northern border. Though she plainly needs their help, she is mute. She cannot explain what happened to her people or describe what enemy drove them from their lands. No Ugaro can speak to her — but Aras might. Will he come, and by his arts help Tarashana and Ugaro understand one another?

Intrigued by this problem, and with every reason to leave his own country for some time, Aras agrees. But the journey upon which he and Ryo embark will be far longer and far more challenging than either of them imagine …

Highlights

~when mercy is shown you, pass it on
~what lies beyond the stars?
~linear distance is for wimps
~beware invisible tigers
~and all other tigers, honestly

I THINK THIS IS KIND OF A MASTERPIECE??? ACTUALLY???

Look, I have a complicated relationship with Neuemeier’s writing, as I have mentioned before; I am either in the mood for Neuemeier And Nothing Else or I can’t read her stuff at all, and I get no warning before the switch is flipped in my brain. One day I’m not up to reading her books; the next I’m devouring them. I don’t get it either! It’s just a thing! My brain is weird, no one should be surprised by this at this point.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, Tuyo, but did not have much to say about it other than how I really, really liked how the focus was the development of a very strong platonic relationship. We don’t get to see that in Fantasy nearly as often as I would like.

Then I skipped book two, because that is actually set before Tuyo (the publication order of this series and the internal chronology do not match up, please be aware of this before you dive in) and focused on a character I wasn’t so interested in. So I jumped right into Tarashana instead.

And OH MY FREAKING GODS.

Tarashana is a beast of a book; on my Kindle, it clocked in at just under 700 pages. (I assume the paperback must have very small font because otherwise surely no one could afford to print it, the economics of the paper market being what they are right now.) And a great deal of that page count is taken up by introspection; this is not a book for those who need action to be happening all the time. I mean, stuff is always happening, and Neuemeier is great at not dragging out the parts where characters are travelling from one place to another place (which, thank you, because I generally hate that), but it is not a fast-paced book.

It is an extremely high-ANXIETY book, especially in the second half – so much tension!!! such high stakes!!! so many people doing desperate things for good reasons but ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! – but it is not fast. Neuemeier has always shone in her characters and the relationships between them, and now that she is self-publishing she is absolutely indulgent re diving into all the nuances and growth and challenges and ethos’ and reasoning that goes on between and within all those characters. And I’m not using indulgent here as an insult; it is EXTREMELY GREAT. I am the one being indulged, here. I love it. It is spoiling me absolutely rotten. I will eat it up with a spoon and come back for seconds, every time. But yes, we must be honest that a lot of the pagecount goes towards not-action. Or, sometimes, a kind of dreamy, languid sort of action???

It’s very hard to explain.

BUT WHAT IS THE BOOK ACTUALLY ABOUT, SIA?! I hear you yelling. Which, fair.

The thing is, this is also really hard to explain! Because my jaw DROPPED when Ryo and Aras made it to the Tarashana woman mentioned in the blurb, and finally found out what was going on (this takes place maybe a third of the way through the book)! And I don’t really want to take that revelatory feeling away from anyone else by spoilering it for you!

Is it enough if I say that a real, properly magical quest is required? That Neuemeier’s worldbuilding once again knocks it out of the park, and she’s created some of the scariest bad guys I’ve ever seen for this book? Their GOAL, folx. The villains’ ENDGAME! It’s – look, Thanos has nothing on these assholes, okay??? They were legit terrifying, and I don’t know how Neuemeier dreamed them up, and their magic, and the things they were willing to do to win. The Tarashana woman herself – her mission, her magic, her people! All of it was so BEAUTIFUL, the kind of beautiful that sends shivers down your spine and makes the hairs on your arms stand up. I so hope we see more of the Tarashana in later books…

But this one. THIS ONE. Ryo and Aras go through so much in this book; their incredible friendship and loyalty to each other, established so well in Tuyo, is simultaneously one of their greatest strengths in the adventure they undertake in this book, but then – I audibly GASPED when A Thing happened, okay??? The last chunk of the book took my heart up like a towel and WRUNG IT; I ached for absolutely everyone, not just Ryo and Aras but the whole cast of amazing secondary characters.

Tarashana is about Big Magical Adventure Things – saving-the-world type things – but it’s also fundamentally a book about relationships, the different kinds of loyalties and friendships, mercy versus justice, how freaking IMPOSSIBLE it can be to tell what the right thing to do is sometimes (and how freaking clear it is, other times). Honour vs necessity vs love. And I think it’s the perfect book for anyone who wants to…to be drawn in and soothed by a book, anyone who wants a majorly character-driven story, but also anyone who wants magical adventures – even if the adventure, here, is (mostly) a quieter kind of adventure. The real action doesn’t come about until the climax of that adventure. (But when we do get it, it comes complete with shadow-warriors and shapeshifting servants of the gods and magic swords and THERE IS PLENTY TO GET YOUR ADRENALINE GOING, OKAY???)

Which is not the end of the novel, by the way. The adventure, I mean. THERE IS SO MUCH MORE CHARACTER-STUFF AFTER THE ADVENTURE IS OVER. Which might have been my favourite part of the book.

Argh. I can’t even. Go read Tuyo, if you haven’t, then check this one out, okay? Please? I am years late to it and I need more people to scream about this with!!!

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