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A review by elenajohansen
Last Memoria by Rachel Emma Shaw
1.0
The entire book is plagued by inconsistency at all levels.
The most obvious being technical presentation, as it's riddled with errors. There are several instances of words being incorrectly used in place of their homonyms: "taught" when it should be "taut," "vile" when it's obviously meant to be "vial," and so forth. In addition, a word specific to the story--Sarilla's unwanted nickname--switches between "beastie" and "beasty" frequently, sometimes even on the same page. Stack those errors on top of repeated incorrect hyphenation (both present when it shouldn't be in things like "dirt-track" and missing when it should be present, like "Sarilla shaped hole") and a general tendency toward word repetition and excessive stage direction, it's reasonable to guess this was edited poorly or not at all.
The story is also inconsistent in characterization. Is Sarilla the scared fugitive who must avoid going into town where she might be recognized, or the brave sister who needs to save her brother? Is she the meek wimp who can't stop her brother from acting stupidly and getting himself caught, or the sass-talking pain in the backside who's constantly needling her captors even when it endangers her? The level of danger itself is inconsistent; she'll be terrified of someone noticing her on one page, then she'll act recklessly in the open when anyone could see her, because the plot needs her to, so it's fine.
Thematically, there's some inconsistency built on top of the apparent running gag of this novel: "everybody lies." Those two words are used to hide from the reader everything from character backstory and motivations to fundamental ways in which the world operates. World-building was introduced long after it was needed. I didn't know what the "graves" in the forest were that everyone was so terrified about, and when they turned out to be abandoned tunnels one could fall into, no one bothered to explain how they'd come to be called "graves." I knew the name of Sarilla's uncle/antagonist from the beginning, but not that he was King until nearly halfway through the book--that seemed like something that shouldn't have been a mystery. I didn't know there was another country peopled by memoria until even later--when Sarilla finally gets a "quest," just in time for the narrative to switch from her POV to Falon's.
The story suffered from a pronounced lack of direction, resulting from most of the important characters spending most of their time without any real agency.
I was floundering through Sarilla's half of the book trying to figure out what her goal was. At first, it seemed simple--stay safe long enough to get to the rest of her family. Okay. But why? The story never told me what was going to happen when they were reunited. (No, wait, it did, another character explained it in the final chapters that aren't even from her POV.) She abandons her brother because he's going to get them caught. She changes her mind and searches for him. He's caught by the army. She follows so she can get him back, but she gets captured by her former lover and his companions in the process. They kidnap her...why? It's not clear for a while. When it turns out it's so Falon can regain his stolen memories, they all turn around and go back for her brother, who has them. Except then he's dead, and so is the rest of her family. At 40%. I was literally staring at the text and thinking, "So the book's over then? Sarilla can't reunite with her family, which I thought was her arc, and Falon can't get his memories back, because the brother is dead."
I should not be having a standoff with a book about whether or not the story is over at 40%.
And it's not, because hey! everybody lies! Sarilla actually as Falon's memories, so he still has a goal. But she doesn't! Because I have no idea what she wants now! At the halfway mark, Falon takes her before the King and he says "So how about you help me destroy all the memoria in this other country that hasn't been talked about at all before?"
She accepts. I'm not clear on why at the time, though eventually it's explained that her deep self-hatred makes her want to destroy the monsters she came from. But also it's the King's idea to eventually double-cross them. Sarilla never seems to make her own decisions.
But the narrative switches POV to Falon, and for a while it looks like things are getting better, plot-wise. There's a clear goal: Sarilla's going to destroy stuff and Falon's sticking around to get her memories back from her.
Only then Falon loses his agency by getting taken over by blackvine, which turns out to be a physical form of infectious memory/psychic connection to the race of memoria under threat. Once it's a part of him, it's serious emotional whiplash between hating Sarilla and loving her--the memoria want her because she might have their ancient repository of racial memory. Or not. But probably. But she says she doesn't.
Any interest I still had, I lost here, though I made myself finish the book as it's for a book club. The constant "everybody lies" story-washing gives the narrative permission to make every character so unreliable there's no ground to stand on for a reader to accurately interpret the text. The ending reveals so many layers of betrayal that no one is who we thought they were--except I barely thought these characters were anyone specific already, because for most of Sarilla's half, she's fighting against being overwhelmed by floating memories that constantly distract her from reality. For Falon's half, he spends a great deal of it possessed by a foreign collective consciousness. No one can go five pages without a radical shift in self-perception or opinions expressed or behaviors modified.
At the bitter end, Falon believes that Sarilla wasn't born a monster because of her power (despite saying so at various points at least half a dozen times) but that the King "made" her that way. Then, when he gets his memories back and finds out his part in shaping her actions, he believes that he made her a monster. In both cases, again, the agency for the only female character in the book, the titular character, is usurped by the influence of male characters who take credit/blame for making her who she is. Ultimately, that's a pretty misogynist conclusion that I don't care for.
The entire novel is an inconsistent, sucking quicksand pit of a story. I cannot recommend it to anyone and won't be reading the next book.
The most obvious being technical presentation, as it's riddled with errors. There are several instances of words being incorrectly used in place of their homonyms: "taught" when it should be "taut," "vile" when it's obviously meant to be "vial," and so forth. In addition, a word specific to the story--Sarilla's unwanted nickname--switches between "beastie" and "beasty" frequently, sometimes even on the same page. Stack those errors on top of repeated incorrect hyphenation (both present when it shouldn't be in things like "dirt-track" and missing when it should be present, like "Sarilla shaped hole") and a general tendency toward word repetition and excessive stage direction, it's reasonable to guess this was edited poorly or not at all.
The story is also inconsistent in characterization. Is Sarilla the scared fugitive who must avoid going into town where she might be recognized, or the brave sister who needs to save her brother? Is she the meek wimp who can't stop her brother from acting stupidly and getting himself caught, or the sass-talking pain in the backside who's constantly needling her captors even when it endangers her? The level of danger itself is inconsistent; she'll be terrified of someone noticing her on one page, then she'll act recklessly in the open when anyone could see her, because the plot needs her to, so it's fine.
Thematically, there's some inconsistency built on top of the apparent running gag of this novel: "everybody lies." Those two words are used to hide from the reader everything from character backstory and motivations to fundamental ways in which the world operates. World-building was introduced long after it was needed. I didn't know what the "graves" in the forest were that everyone was so terrified about, and when they turned out to be abandoned tunnels one could fall into, no one bothered to explain how they'd come to be called "graves." I knew the name of Sarilla's uncle/antagonist from the beginning, but not that he was King until nearly halfway through the book--that seemed like something that shouldn't have been a mystery. I didn't know there was another country peopled by memoria until even later--when Sarilla finally gets a "quest," just in time for the narrative to switch from her POV to Falon's.
The story suffered from a pronounced lack of direction, resulting from most of the important characters spending most of their time without any real agency.
I was floundering through Sarilla's half of the book trying to figure out what her goal was. At first, it seemed simple--stay safe long enough to get to the rest of her family. Okay. But why? The story never told me what was going to happen when they were reunited. (No, wait, it did, another character explained it in the final chapters that aren't even from her POV.) She abandons her brother because he's going to get them caught. She changes her mind and searches for him. He's caught by the army. She follows so she can get him back, but she gets captured by her former lover and his companions in the process. They kidnap her...why? It's not clear for a while. When it turns out it's so Falon can regain his stolen memories, they all turn around and go back for her brother, who has them. Except then he's dead, and so is the rest of her family. At 40%. I was literally staring at the text and thinking, "So the book's over then? Sarilla can't reunite with her family, which I thought was her arc, and Falon can't get his memories back, because the brother is dead."
I should not be having a standoff with a book about whether or not the story is over at 40%.
And it's not, because hey! everybody lies! Sarilla actually as Falon's memories, so he still has a goal. But she doesn't! Because I have no idea what she wants now! At the halfway mark, Falon takes her before the King and he says "So how about you help me destroy all the memoria in this other country that hasn't been talked about at all before?"
She accepts. I'm not clear on why at the time, though eventually it's explained that her deep self-hatred makes her want to destroy the monsters she came from. But also it's the King's idea to eventually double-cross them. Sarilla never seems to make her own decisions.
But the narrative switches POV to Falon, and for a while it looks like things are getting better, plot-wise. There's a clear goal: Sarilla's going to destroy stuff and Falon's sticking around to get her memories back from her.
Only then Falon loses his agency by getting taken over by blackvine, which turns out to be a physical form of infectious memory/psychic connection to the race of memoria under threat. Once it's a part of him, it's serious emotional whiplash between hating Sarilla and loving her--the memoria want her because she might have their ancient repository of racial memory. Or not. But probably. But she says she doesn't.
Any interest I still had, I lost here, though I made myself finish the book as it's for a book club. The constant "everybody lies" story-washing gives the narrative permission to make every character so unreliable there's no ground to stand on for a reader to accurately interpret the text. The ending reveals so many layers of betrayal that no one is who we thought they were--except I barely thought these characters were anyone specific already, because for most of Sarilla's half, she's fighting against being overwhelmed by floating memories that constantly distract her from reality. For Falon's half, he spends a great deal of it possessed by a foreign collective consciousness. No one can go five pages without a radical shift in self-perception or opinions expressed or behaviors modified.
At the bitter end, Falon believes that Sarilla wasn't born a monster because of her power (despite saying so at various points at least half a dozen times) but that the King "made" her that way. Then, when he gets his memories back and finds out his part in shaping her actions, he believes that he made her a monster. In both cases, again, the agency for the only female character in the book, the titular character, is usurped by the influence of male characters who take credit/blame for making her who she is. Ultimately, that's a pretty misogynist conclusion that I don't care for.
The entire novel is an inconsistent, sucking quicksand pit of a story. I cannot recommend it to anyone and won't be reading the next book.