James Nicoll Reviews

2023’s Zhara is the first volume in S. Jae-Jones’ Guardians of Dawn secondary universe fantasy series.

Zhara is a poor orphan who selflessly serves her stepmother, Second Wife¹. Royal Heir Han is a prince of the realm. Although they would seem to have nothing in common, they do. Both are plagued by magic.

Magic is forbidden, lest its users transform into abominations, as happened to the most recent and final emperor of the Mugung Dynasty. The Warlord graciously intervened, ridding the world of the transformed emperor, accepting the burden of rule for himself, and instituting the policy of burning mages in the name of public safety.

Twenty years later, this policy presents a problem for young Zhara. Ability to do magic is something one is born with², not a career one chooses. Zhara inherited her late father’s knack for magic. Should this become known to the Kestrels, the anti-magic police, she will be burned just as her father was. Who then will take care of Zhara’s blind sister Suzhan?

Royal Heir Han would seem to have a far cozier life. With his widowed father Prince Wonhu still on the throne (the book is not clear on this, but I’m guessing that he serves at the pleasure of the Warlord), the government is firmly in the hands of Chancellor Lord Chan Gobu. It would seem that all Han needs to do is enjoy himself while fending off proposed marriages.

Appearances are deceiving. Like Zhara, Han conceals magic ability. Not his own, but that of his younger brother, Second Heir Anyang. Han swore an oath to his late mother that Anyang would live to his majority. Anyang’s poorly controlled magic makes that a difficult oath to fulfil.

Han’s quest for a way to manage Anyang’s magic leads Han to Master Cao’s bookshop, the very shop from which romance-obsessed Zhara borrows books³. The only assistance Cao can offer is a magical primer, The Thousand-Character Classic, possession of which is extremely illegal.

Han and Zhara’s paths cross. As so often happens, books are inadvertently exchanged. Zhara ends up with the precious The Thousand-Character Classic, while Han is astonished to find in his possession the latest installment of the popular romance The Maiden Who Was Loved by Death. His surprise does not prevent him from reading the book or becoming immediately addicted.

Han will need all the distractions he can get. He discovers to his distress that he is slated to marry fierce northern warrior woman Princess Yulana. This time no cunning will save him. Everyone save Han is in favor of the match and Han has no veto.

Zhara has marriage problems of her own. Second Wife has arranged for Suzhan to marry none other than Chancellor Lord Chan Gobu, with Zhara to accompany Suzhan as her companion. It seems a fabulous match, save for the age difference between groom and bride, and the fact that the Chancellor’s previous wives all died under mysterious circumstances. This could be why the Chancellor is willing to settle for Suzhan, more well-born families being reluctant to marry daughters to such a groom.

In fact, Zhara and Han face a crisis far more serious than ill-omened marriages. Demons are on the verge of invading the mortal realm once more. Only the Guardians of Dawn can stop them. Too bad the Guardians of Dawn themselves have no idea that they are the Guardians of Dawn.

~oOo~

While the red string of destiny no doubt ensured that Zhara and Han would somehow meet, it certainly helps that they are in the same city and are both entangled with the Chancellor.

Relying on reincarnations of legendary heroes to realize who they are may seem an unreliable way to manage demonic infestations but there is another method available. Demons can access the mortal world more easily in times of social unrest, and to avoid that, the rich and powerful need to be kind and just, not monumental dicks. While that may sound unlikely, the Mugung Dynasty lasted 2,647 years, which strongly suggests the Mugung knew what they were doing.

Zhara needed to be about a hundred pages shorter, which could have been accomplished in part by trimming inconsequential confrontations. Much of the plot depends on people being crap at their jobs, whether it is princes neglecting their duties, the Kestrels letting suspects slip through their hands, or grand demons pausing just prior to their inevitable victory over an enemy who has won every previous war for a villainous monologue.

The novel has what I think of as Star Wars-level operational security. For example, Han has no trouble slipping out of the palace, which implies assassins would have no trouble slipping into the palace. This appears ill-advised. As well, one might think the various resistance groups that thrive in this oppressive setting would embrace stringent measures to conceal themselves from the officials who constantly monitor the populace. If Han and Zhara’s experiences are any guide, all one needs to do to find the rebels is ask the first stranger one meets for directions. This too seems ill-advised.

The characters are limned in broad strokes. They aren’t at all complex. The younger readers at whom this is aimed at won’t have any trouble working out their motivations. The plot drags a bit, but… while this is the first novel in a series and must leave open plot hooks for later volumes, it is a complete novel, not simply the first 416 pages of a much longer work. It’s got that going for it.

Zhara is available here (St. Martin’s Press), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: First Wife would have been Zhara’s late mother. This culture is not keen on allowing married women personal names — Han’s mother was called the Royal Consort.

2: Zhara survived because when the Kestrels finally caught up with her father and dragged him off to be burned, her stepmother hid Zhara in a trunk. Thus, the burden of gratitude that has led Zhara to ignore the fact Second Wife is pretty clearly an evil stepmother who only saved Zhara because she was useful.

Rank explicitly will not protect mages, so I am not sure why nobody ever tested Anyang for magic. Well, aside from ​“many people are comprehensively terrible at their jobs,” which seems to be the defining characteristic of life under the Warlord.

3: It is a plot point that books are hand-copied, this secondary universe not possessing movable-type printing presses. It’s also a plot point that there is something much like mass media or at least mass enthusiasm for fiction. However, the print runs are limited by the number of scriveners publishers have on staff and are therefore miniscule, three or four hundred copies per volume. High demand and low supply have exactly the effect you’d expect: books are expensive.

This may explain why certain important facts have been forgotten. If there are only ever a few copies of important tomes, it’s easy for all of them to be destroyed or filed away in private libraries.

Mind you, it cannot have helped that the people most likely to care about the Guardians were mages and most of them were executed in the last twenty years.