Synopsis: Sylvie has always known she deserves more. Out in the permanent twilight of the Dusklands, her guardians called her power to create illusions a curse. But Sylvie knows it gives her a place in Coeur d'Or, the palais of the Amber Empress and her highborn legacies.
So Sylvie sets off toward the Amber City, a glittering jewel under a sun that never sets, to take what is hers.
But her hope for a better life is quickly dimmed. The empress invites her in only as part of a wicked wager among her powerful courtiers. Sylvie must assume a new name, Mirage, and begin to navigate secretive social circles and deadly games of intrigue in order to claim her spot. Soon it becomes apparent that nothing is as it appears and no one, including her cruel yet captivating sponsor, Sunder, will answer her questions. As Mirage strives to assume what should be her rightful place, she'll have to consider whether it is worth the price she must pay.
Review: Amber and Dusk had an interesting premise, but wasn't fleshed out enough. We follow Sylvie as she is heading to the Amber City to pronounce herself as a legacy to the empire, and hone her power of illusions. First off, if someone is writing a story about illusions, there has to be illusions in the book. Sylvie isn't good at making illusions, but we still didn't see much of her ability until the second half of the book. This story isn't long. It shouldn't take 200 pages of a 350 page book for our main character to figure out her ability. It seemed like the author didn't want to bore readers by including a lot of training Sylvie had to endure, but I wanted to see that. I wanted to see her struggle and learn.
None of the other characters were remarkable and that was equally disappointing. As someone who doesn't usually like main characters, I need secondary characters to make me care, but none of the characters in this book gave me that. We also don't spend a lot of time with them and exposed to their abilities. There's a scene where Sunder takes Sylvie to an underground fighting ring and that would have been a perfect way to continually introduce characters and abilities into the story, but we don't get much of that environment.
The writing was beautiful and I loved just reading the scenes in the book, but the story itself was mediocre. A large part of that is because we don't get to spend a lot of time engulfed in the magic of this world. If this was a different story, like Sylvie finds a random note mentioning some connection she has to the Amber City, then I would have enjoyed this much more. The magic took more away from the story. The best part about this story was the diversity. This isn't a traditional fantasy where all the characters are white and straight. A number of characters, while they don't have a familiar ethnicity to our world, are brown-skinned, and sexuality isn't questioned here. There are characters who have flings with people of the same sex and no one is bothered by it. Amber and Dusk was refreshing in that regard, but not much else.
Beautiful writing and interesting concept, but not much else going for it.
2 howls
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