Rogue Reviews: Saints of Storm and Sorrow by Gabriella Buba

This review is spoiler-free.

Reviewing Saints of Storm and Sorrow by Gabriella Buba is a challenge, because I have a limited amount of space into which I need to squish a nearly limitless amount of praise.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m tired of the “traditional” setting of fantasy novels: Fantasylandia, where the castles are Italian, the peerage is French, the accents are British, and the armor is German. Basically, Western Europe, but with more elves and less dysentery. So imagine my delight when I open to Chapter 1 and see the main character, Lunurin, freediving for oysters on the beach of a tropical, volcanic island.

Many of the familiar story beats we’re used to seeing are here, and they’re all executed pretty much flawlessly. There’s an implacable evil empire, a love triangle, conflicts between family loyalty and community loyalty, and ancient magic that can only be harnessed at great cost by a chosen few. But the world, characters, magic, and lore are all Filipino-inspired, and I cannot overemphasize how much of a difference that makes. For someone whose whole job is articulating stuff, I’m having a hard time putting into words just how much I love this aspect of Saints of Storm and Sorrow. The closest I can come is to say that I didn’t realize how much I actually wanted this until it was in my hands, and now I want more.

I could devote this whole review to explaining how using a different cultural lens changes everything about how these familiar story beats play out and resolve, but that would do a disservice to all of the other stuff that’s great about this novel. Like Lunurin. Lunurin is complex and conflicted, and a lot of tension comes from how she handles (or fails to handle) her conflicting motivations that sometimes cause her to work at cross purposes with herself. It really helps that her consistent, rock-solid characterization and the close-third-person perspective work together to make it so that none of her choices, either good or bad, feel contrived. We’re right there, looking over her shoulder at the same limited list of bad options, wondering along with her which, if any, will be the one that helps more of her people survive under the rule of the island’s colonial oppressors. Her decision may not be the right one, but we’re never confused as to why she picked it.

Speaking of colonial oppressors, the themes of this book aren’t subtle, and I can’t imagine they were intended to be. I normally enjoy a bit of meta-mystery in the books I read, in the sense of “I wonder what this recurring motif is symbolizing” or whatever, but Saints doesn’t have time for that. This book looks you right in the face and says, “Colonialism is industrial-scale murder” with its whole chest, leaving no room for misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Every aspect of the characters’ daily lives is affected by the crushing weight of the occupying empire, from work to travel and from worship to leisure, and the excuses the colonial government gives for itself are scarily similar to things we hear people say in real life. Furthermore, Buba has a talent for imagery, so when she describes the punishments and abuses Lunurin and her people are subjected to, it’s equal parts intense and unsettling without necessarily being gory or over-the-top.

Saints takes a lot of pains to ensure that its message gets across, and it takes some real risks to do so. The biggest risk, in my opinion, is how she’s handled the church. Most fantasy authors would look at their plot and say, “To make this plot work, I need a religion that’s basically identical to Catholicism.” Then they’d spend a weekend or so worldbuilding a Fantasy Not-Catholic church with all the serial numbers filed off but enough similarities that a savvy reader would “get it.” But that’s yet another thing Saints doesn’t have time for. The author has decided to pick up the real Catholic church—with Jesus, Mary, saints, Latin mass, genuflecting, the whole works—and drop it into a fantasy world with magic and sea monsters and ghosts.

It’s a bold choice, and at first I found it kind of jarring. As I got deeper into the story, however, I realized that choice was a combination of brutal honesty and narrative brilliance. The antagonists need all of the baggage the Catholic church carries in real life to be functional antagonists for this story. A thinly veiled stand-in would seem like a mustache-twirling parody. Readers would likely see them as a hyperbolic church committing exaggerated crimes for the benefit of the plot, story, or theme. But by doing it this way, the author is not only refusing to give the church even a thin little loincloth to hide their actions under, but is also using the jolting effect of seeing a real-world institution’s real-world crimes in a fantasy setting to drive home the fact that these are not exaggerations at all. Furthermore, it removes all of the temptation to include any “well, both sides…” waffling. There is no attempt to soften the antagonists or make them appear somehow sympathetic, which would almost be a requirement for a bespoke fantasy religious institution; we hold our fictional villains to higher standards than we hold our real ones to. So once I got over the uncanny valley vibe, it felt far more natural and believable than Fantasy Not-Catholicism would have.

The protagonist and the themes aren’t the only things Buba nailed in Saints of Storm and Sorrow. The imagery used to describe the magical elements, from hurricanes to conversations with gods, is fantastic. The romantic relationships are explored with depth and sensitivity as they fall apart and rebuild themselves. Saints even has a love triangle that is believable, well done, and doesn’t annoy me to death; across all the books I’ve ever read, this is the second one to manage that feat.

The characters are all compelling, and I wanted every one of the protagonists to escape their situations and live long and happy lives (…alas). The worldbuilding is expertly done through description and dialogue, with only a bare minimum of exposition, and the hints we get of the wider world are deeply intriguing. The pacing is very good, and the prose is rich and flowing without being overdone. The climax was set up so well that I honestly didn’t know how it was going to turn out until the very end, and the ending was powerful and deeply emotional (even if it didn’t go entirely how I wanted it to).

There are only a couple of things in Saints that I can be critical of, and mentioning them feels almost like nitpicking:

The prologue is a whirlwind, not just of action, but of unfamiliar terms and phrases that can be hard to keep up with. Most of those concepts are explained later on, but many are only explained through context clues and non-expository dialogue. This novel doesn’t really have a “reader stand-in” character to give the other characters an excuse to explain concepts that are widely known in-world. That’s how I like it, but it’s not to everyone’s narrative taste. If you’re the kind of person who prefers to have every new concept explained very shortly after it’s introduced, the prologue will be rough.

The other thing I need to mention is Cat’s character arc. Cat is one of Lunurin’s love interests, and I could talk about her character arc all day long, but I promised up top that there wouldn’t be any spoilers in this review. I’ll just say that I  love everything about it, from the setup at the beginning to the authenticity at the end. However, to people who haven’t had a Cat-like person in their lives, her character arc might feel forced or disjointed, particularly as it approaches its culmination. It was totally believable to me, but I can see how it might feel abrupt or out of left field to other readers. I wouldn’t change it, though, because it’s the most believable possible resolution to that entire branch of the plot.

The third thing is… well, there’s not a third thing. I only have two things to complain about, and for both of them, I’m not even complaining for me; I’m just borrowing trouble on some hypothetical person’s behalf. Saints of Storm and Sorrow is fantastic, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy with a little bit of romance, a dollop of magic, two cups of narrative tension, and as much revolutionary fervor as will fit in the pot before it boils over.

Overall:
Saints of Storm and Sorrow is a wonderful novel with compelling, consistent characters, touching romance, an outstanding setting, true-to-life antagonists, and a passionate heart beating inside of it. S-Tier, 9/10.