Amnesty, Lara Elena Donnelly
Rating: Great Read
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Spy Thriller
Representation:
-Gay protagonist
-Bi protagonist
-Black protagonist
-Disabled and disfigured protagonists
Note: Amnesty features minimal (but present) explicit sex. This novel is NOT YA.
Trigger warnings: torture, graphic injury, injury by fire, addiction, alcoholism, state violence/corruption, bombing/explosion, death
If you have not read Amberlough and Armistice, you may wish to skip this review!
Amnesty is the third and final book in the Amberlough Dossier, and with its completion I can say with confidence that this is my favorite LGBTQ series - maybe even my favorite series, period. Amnesty had me checking my calendar for months in advance of its release. Donnelly has remarkable skill with suspense, skill which she puts to phenomenal use in the spy thriller genre, and which will make readers just now picking up the first book in the series glad that all three of them are now available.
That is the key to why Amnesty (and the previous books in the series) work: Donnelly makes you wait. These books demand patience from the reader, and it makes the pay-off that much sweeter. However, this is not your typical slow burn romance, only because the burn is not slow - the fire is roaring in the hearth! Only, one of the main characters is standing outside in the snow because he is too proud to be warm, while the other is in a neighboring country. Every time Donnelly adds another log to the fire, and you expect the romance to finally pay off, you realize, damn it all, that Cyril and Aristide are still outside in the blizzard.
Donnelly makes you wait on the romance, but that is only one of Amnesty’s moving parts. Amnesty is not by any means a book where nothing happens for 300 pages - it’s a balancing act where the romance is drawn out slow, but the thriller-style plot keeps you frantically turning pages. Still, Amnesty is something of an outlier of a thriller. The core problem of the story is an open-ended question: how do you rebuild your life after you have lost everything? The city of Amberlough has just experienced the rise and fall of a fascist regime; the country at large has not even elected a new government yet. Our main characters are war-scarred, broke, and newly arrived back home only to find their old life is no longer there to receive them. What do they do when one of their rank is lauded as a war hero while the another is reviled by his country as a traitor? Not exactly typical thriller fare. Yet Donnelly’s strongest suit is tension and suspense, so despite the lack of a heist, kidnapping, or assassination attempt, Amnesty still reads like a thriller. The stakes are high on a very personal level, and we readers have dashed our way through the heists and hijinks with these characters for long enough in Amberlough and Armistice that the rather more subdued plot of Amnesty is not unwelcome. The reader interest in knowing the characters come out of things okay carries some weight for the plot - but I doubt you’ll mind. After all, you will be too preoccupied with whether the characters come out okay.
Donnelly’s world-building continues to dazzle in Amnesty, as well. One of my favorite things about her work is that she does not coddle her reader. You are given exactly as much information as you need, exactly as many reminders, and no more. And because the world is so rich, and the reminders so sparing, the reader’s immersion in Donnelly’s world is nearly flawless. With every book, Donnelly gives us a little bit more context, meaning that the reader absorbs information more like a child absorbing the world naturally than like a student committing things to memory. It helps that Donnelly uses real-world touchstones that allow her readers to fill in the gaps, touchstones which also explicitly create room for people of color to take a starring role. I’ve spoken about how well Donnelly uses Porachis as an analog for South/SE Asia in Armistice, and in Amnesty, she only continues to fill in the gaps on her globe.
In this book, we learn more about the countries of Liso, Asu, and Niori. Asu and Niori are both east Asian countries, partial analogs to China and Japan, while Liso appears to be linguistically tied to southern Africa, with minor character names like Achela Aowamma taking inspiration from Sesotho, though Jamila Osogurundi’s name may be a composite of Oso (Nigerian surname/prefix) + Gurundi (Nigerian snack). There is no one-to-one comparison to be made. Just as Gedda isn’t quite the Netherlands, neither are Porachis, Asu, Niori, and Liso exact analogs. Donnelly’s writing choices here are fascinating - she gives just enough of an analog in order to create diversity of ethnicity that real-world readers will be able to understand and appreciate, while still changing enough to make her world an original, non-derivative fantasy. It is a delicate line to walk, and Donnelly does so with grace. I strongly recommend the whole series as a tool of study for aspiring writers, even if the genre isn’t your usual cup of tea, because it really is that good.
The globe isn’t just flavor, either. One of the main themes of Amnesty is how one reconciles living an international life. Lillian and Jinadh continue to play a role as main characters after Armistice. Their arc in Amnesty, however, is about reckoning not only with the fallout from the ousted OSP regime, but the personal struggles of being displaced. Jinadh is a Porachin prince, while Lillian is Geddan. They cannot be married for political reasons in Porachis, but Lillian has the advantage of language and culture back home in Gedda, which is a source of marital strife for them. Yet what choice do they have? Is it better to live in a country where neither know the language, like Asu, or to allow Lillian the gift of her homeland, no matter how ‘unfair’? It is questions like these that build Amnesty into a story so real it is almost tangible.
Amnesty - the whole series, in fact - is a rough read. Donnelly pulls no punches in her treatment of war and fascism, though it is important to note that her interest lies on the boundaries of war - the social consequences - not the thick of the fighting. In Amberlough, Donnelly first questions how fascist regimes rise to power. In the sequel, she asks how a fascist takeover unsettles the countries around it - to the point that refugees from fascism cannot count on their safety even far from home. Finally, the last book in the series asks about the aftermath; how is history written around fascism? How do nationally-held emotions become more sacred than law, and to what end? And, on the smaller scale, can one recover a self that you once were, before great trauma? Can you pick up where you left off?
If you, like me, read Amberlough and Armistice, I highly recommend picking up where you left off with Amnesty. A rough read it may be, but one that fully rewards its reader’s patience.
For more from Lara Elena Donnelly, visit her website here.
