Review: Ternion of Tarr: A Simgra Series Novel by Bethany Arliss

Blurb:

“Tasty, innocent soul,” it says in a voice so deep, dark, and malevolent, it drives a shudder up my spine. The words seem to come from the ground itself, rising like fire, licking at me with grotesque rapture.

The price is six souls in three nights.

Imprisoned for a crime she did not commit, Rill Narin carries a lethal secret—she is a Tangler. Temporarily inhabiting other bodies is illegal magic, but a slice of life on the outside is sweet relief from the brutality of prison. Until Rill tangles with the Earl of Tarr’s daughter and witnesses a demonic murder.

Thrown into a whirlwind of danger and intrigue, Rill forms an uneasy alliance with the steely Constable Sabella Rivers and privileged Lady Keeva Dalton. United by circumstances more perilous than their differences, they embark on a frantic race against time to unmask a hellish murderer. With shadowy secrets lurking in every corner, can the ternion discover the hidden forces at play and unveil the truth before the price is paid?

Review:

I wanted to enjoy this book. The cover caught my attention, and I was interested in the blurb. It sounded right up my strange little book street. Unfortunately, I had so many issues with this book I am genuinely wondering if I've read the same one as everyone else. 

I want to start with the positives, because every book has one. (Even if it’s just that it was written on a computer - which is an actual bit of feedback I got on a paper once.)

I actually thought the magic system was interesting. There seems to be more than just elemental magic happening in this world and people can have multiple types of magic. The class of magic and description of tangling as a class, closed vs open minds in magic, it made me wonder what other skills were around in this world. There is also more than just magical people but also creatures, we have Pegasi and there were mentions of unicorns. There were also a few mentions of a couple other creatures but not talked about too much. One of the characters has a little flashback to how she got her pegasus and it was a really good scene that I enjoyed. The hags early on and their wandering the woods, super interesting and would have loved to see more of the magical woods. These were all genuinely positive aspects that I have to nod to while I move into the next bit I’m calling “everything that I ever found wrong with this book”. 

I am not someone that has a problem with first-person vs third-person in books. Give me a second-person book and make me feel like I’m being gaslighted, it’s cool. I’m here for it. But if you’re going to do a first-person, multi POV book, the voices need to sound different and the three characters we follow, Sabella, Rill and Keeva, did not. I had to keep checking whose chapter I was in because I genuinely could not tell sometimes. 

Despite the fact we have these three POVs, and the various side characters around them, we actually don’t get a lot of dialogue. Consequently, the two things add up to a lot of telling the reader rather than information coming out in a natural and organic way. Like “We have the second collection of spooky, haunted items.” vs a conversation about why one of the characters can’t go into the library and some rebuke ‘The haunted items down there are too dangerous’, or some sort of dialogue exchange to give us info about the world around the MCs. Side note - really enjoyed the spooky items. I would have liked more on the spooky, haunted items.

Staying on the MCs, I have genuinely never come across a mix of flat characters while being wildly inconsistent. I did not care about a single character. I couldn't even tell you Sabella's name for the first few chapters. I thought it was Sabrina. But it's fine because she's the best of her class and top dog and super tough girl. Rill is such a poster girl for 'not like other girls' and 'misunderstood, loner, I've not had friends but maybe now???'. Keeva is your shelf standard rich girl who is coddled but doesn't want to be coddled because she's an adult and wah wah wah. This is actually shouted at Keeva at one point, alongside some shouting at Sabella, by Rill. And somehow Rill, despite not knowing them more than just casually over about 48 hours, has gotten through to them. They’re reevaluating things and how they hold themselves and their powers! Because…sure, why not. You know going into it that the story happens over three nights. I don’t inherently have a problem with a short timeframe but I made a lot of scrunchy, ate-a-lemon-face throughout because of the impact of things said and done by characters.

So Sabella, Rill and Keeva are tough independent characters, then they're whinging, then they're relying on Sabella's male mentor to get them out of trouble but never mind because later it's girl power! Literally. There is a scene where three of them hold hands to support one of their magic. The back and forth felt like a literary Old Spice advert, ‘Look at this. Look at that. Now look at this’, except ‘Now I’m on a horse’ became ‘Now I’m on a Pegasus.’  

Getting into the big reveals throughout, I was just not convinced at all. And while I can vibe with some of the reveal being about power, the whole ‘I’m in love with [REDACTED] and you took her from me!’ came out of nowhere. This is a genuine thing that happened in one of the antagonist motivation monologues, and I can only think about The Incredibles (great film) “He starts monologuing.” “He starts monologuing!” I am with Frozone on this one. The monologuing was not a winner. 

At about the 75% mark, the writing, character depictions and interactions became almost difficult to get through. You could feel the expectation of background triumphant music being announced when [convenient thing] happens in the nick of time. If this were a debut author, I might be more generous about some of this but instead my parting remark is probably just: the Pegasus was good and more wood hags please.