Blurb:

A gothic fantasy for fans of Hannah Whitten and Caitlin Starling.

In a holy city where sins and blessings can be revealed through consecrated touch, Csilla - born without a soul - is worthless to the Church that raised her. But when a series of murders corrodes the magic that keeps the city safe, the Church elders see a use for her flaw: she can assassinate their prime suspect, a heretic with divine heritage.

The heretic, however, makes a counter-offer; clear his name and catch the real killer, without becoming a target herself, and he'll use his power to get her a soul. When their investigation catches the attention of Ilan, a ruthless Inquisitor demoted for his failure to solve the case, he reluctantly offers his help in order to earn back his position. He’ll bring in the murderer— and failing that, Csilla and the heretic. But as the death toll rises and their hunt pits them against the Faith, Csilla will find that salvation comes at the cost of everything she believes in.

Review:

“But this was the city of miracles, and not everything miraculous was good.”

After having been so enraptured by Cate Baumer’s As Born to Rule the Storm, I knew I needed to explore the rest of her canon; and if you’re familiar at all with my reviews and tastes, you’ll immediately understand why The Faithful Dark jumped out at me. The first plot-related sentence of the back cover reads:

“In a holy city where sins and blessings can be revealed through consecrated touch, Csilla - born without a soul - is worthless to the Church that raised her.”

Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. I didn’t even need to read any further. I bought the book right then and there. I mentioned in my review of Our Lady of the Artilects that I love a good, well-developed, fictional faith (see: Dune, Dead Space, Destiny, Babylon 5, etc.); and The Faithful Dark delivers that in spades. 

The first thing that I noticed as I explored the opening chapters of The Faithful Dark was how comfortable it felt (despite the subject matter contained therein); and I quickly realized why. It has been a while since I’ve actually sat down to read a proper fantasy novel, or at least one without any of the aesthetic trappings more commonly attributed to sci-fi; but fantasy was what I grew up with. They were the first of my explorations into genre fiction, beginning some two decades ago when my mom gave me her copy of The Sword of Shannara that she got when she was in high school. From there I ravenously devoured the first several of the Redwall books, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, at least of few of the Eragon novels, and even more Shannara books; but I realized as I was sitting with The Faithful Dark that the last “proper” fantasy novel I read might actually have been Terry Brooks’ The High Druid’s Blade in 2014, to which I thought, “Oh lord has it been 10 years since I’ve read a fantasy novel?” I’d been in the stars for so long, both as a reader and a writer, that I’d nearly forgotten the feeling of fantasy’s soft embrace; and so The Faithful Dark was a wonderful reintroduction to that side of the genre divide.  

But for whatever softness I felt with the fantasy genre’s return to my life, the story of The Faithful Dark is not so gentle. The Faithful Dark takes place in a fantasy theocracy, in the city of Silgard—the center of the empire. But darkness has infiltrated the holy city. Bodies keep appearing—dead and discarded, their flesh etched in the cursed language of banished demons (perhaps now not quite so banished as before). The leaders of the church question whether these symbols are true evidence of demonic activity or just the work of a too-well-read individual trying to cause a panic amongst Silgard’s faithful. And so the investigation begins. 

The story jumps between two different POV characters (though I could’ve sworn it was three, until just now flipping through the book to check—but we’ll talk about why in a second): Csilla and Ilan. Csilla is the aforementioned girl without a soul, and Ilan is an Inquisitor for the Church to which she desperately wishes to belong. Caught between them is an Izir (The Faithful Dark’s in-universe taxonomy for people descended from angels) named Mihály, whose presence in the story weighs so heavily on the narrative, and intertwines Csilla and Ilan’s stories in such a way that—as said above—I didn’t even realize Mihály wasn’t actually a POV character. They’re just there within the other characters’ stories—a walking, talking inciting incident. Mihály catalyzes much of the plot, appearing as a personal and theological stumbling block to both Csilla and Ilan; and whose latent (albeit faint) connection to the divine has the potential to solve or create many different problems throughout the novel.

Since The Faithful Dark is built in the shape of a mystery story, I will not divulge much of the plot beyond what I’ve said above. What I will say is that the narrative moves expectedly where it should, and just as importantly unexpectedly where it should. I’ve always maintained that the best “twists” are ones that you can anticipate immediately before the characters do; and Baumer bread-crumbed out just enough foreshadowing detail to allow me to do that here, while still preserving a couple reveals for the third act that I couldn’t anticipate. 

Right from the jump, the setting of The Faithful Dark is so specifically textured, and so well-realized, that it all but demands you consider this world as a real place. So rich is the texture of this place that Baumer is able to deploy—without context or further explanation—myriad off-hand remarks and references to the deeper lore of Silgard’s church and faith, and it all just fits. I could see this whole world in my mind’s eye, and I desperately wanted to explore it further, to see what else was out there past the city walls. 

But The Faithful Dark’s biggest strengths, as with As Born to Rule the Storm, are its characters. Csilla is so specifically developed that I’m unsure I’ve connected more with any other fictional character in recent years. I felt for her. Baumer has also quite eloquently crafted Ilan, who appears—when he is first introduced—as an incredibly simple, almost one-dimensional pseudo-antagonist; a pious, inquisitorial priest whose sole joy seems to be the purging of sin from the congregation of Silgard. But this is merely a facade, as Baumer quickly begins teasing out a backstory that hides tantalizing complexity and conflict (I’d love a prequel story about Ilan’s journey from his former life to the church). 

Given the nature of the narrative being told here, there is a lot to unpack thematically. I’d be very interested to learn more about the inspirations behind The Faithful Dark because there were bits and pieces of the worldbuilding of the novel—and some highly specific turns of phrase—that stuck out to me as not merely bearing mere symbolic significance, but could be pointing toward potential allegorical interpretations. That might just be my religious upbringing reading too far into the text, but I’m eager to re-read The Faithful Dark again and dig a little deeper, to see what (if anything) I can find. It’s a captivating world, and it drew me in quickly and completely.

And on that note, hopefully what I write next here will be taken as the compliment which I intend it to be, but I’ll add a bit of further introductory context to help clear up what I mean. I came to the world of books from filmmaking, which I’m sure is clear from how often I mention movies in my reviews. As a child born in Los Angeles to a father who worked at Warner Bros., I think I probably saw my first movie before I read my first book (I was read to, of course, long before my parents sat me down in front of a TV; but I’m sure I had seen my first feature film before I sat down and read a whole novel on my own). As I grew up, the lure of Hollywood called to me, and soon I was shooting my own home movies and learning how to use non-linear editing software on the home computer. My first summer job was in a post-production house in Orlando. I went to school for film production. I wrote my first screenplay almost 10 years before I self-published my first novel (which was itself an adaptation of that exact screenplay). And so, because of all that, when I read books, I have always seen them in my head as movies. For this reason I’m a somewhat slow reader, because the scenes on the page play out in my head in “real time”, as the movie of the book is projected onto my gray matter. So while I know it might be gauche to draw comparisons between books and movies, or might otherwise offend those of a more literary sensibility (amidst the seemingly eternal struggle between the book was better than the movie and they should adapt this book into a movie), I could not help but keep thinking as I read through The Faithful Dark, “I would love to direct this for the big screen.” Because the movie version of this that played in my head rocked. So, with apologies if I’ve made some heinous faux pas in wishing to see this story breathed to “life” at twenty-four frames a second; but that is as personally high praise as I can muster. I would love to see it on screen, and I would love to direct that effort.

But for now there is just the book, and the book is great! (If I had one complaint, it would be about the cover of the currently available edition, if only because Baumer just shared—the day I’m writing this—a fanart cover by warickaart which, in my opinion, blows the old cover out of the water. Ignorance is bliss, but now I’ve seen this and I can’t go back! Fan artists rule.) 

The ending of The Faithful Dark is definite enough that it could easily remain as a standalone tale, but also leaves the door open for further stories in this universe—which I for one am chomping at the bit to read. If Baumer leaves this universe as it is, I will appreciate the time I had with it, but if there is more, well… I’ll be the first in line to buy it.