Book #102 of 2022:
This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke
Author Katherine Locke nails the tense and paranoid atmosphere in this fictionalized account of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (a student-led uprising against Soviet control that ultimately failed, although the novel doesn’t track the conflict all the way to its bitter end). And as ever with this writer, I enjoy the #ownvoices Jewish representation that they have incorporated in the text, including but not limited to some ugly yet realistic antisemitism from people on either side of the struggle. However, the more fantastic / magical realist pieces here don’t quite succeed for me, from the river in Budapest randomly turning into stone and back to the late-reveal that everything before has been in grayscale, with the blue sky glimpsed through a torn flag the first color that the revolutionaries have seen in years.
One of the love interests for the heroine is also a literal angel of death who’s there to escort fallen children to the beyond, which is the sort of idea that could work, but would need a much stronger foundation supporting it, especially given this being’s status as a secondary viewpoint protagonist. Like the other supernatural elements, his nature is described in an unsatisfyingly vague and oblique way, and never questioned by the characters who seem otherwise grounded in a recognizable reality. I do appreciate how he settles into a polyamorous relationship with Csilla and a human boy, one of several queer touches throughout the story, but overall this just doesn’t read as a cohesive whole to me.
[Content warning for gun violence, secret police, torture, and gore.]
★★★☆☆
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