Russ Allbery: Review: The Sovereign

Review: The Sovereign, by C.L. Clark

The Sovereign is the third and concluding book of C.L. Clark’s
Magic of the Lost high fantasy trilogy. I recommend reading the books of
this series close together, since there are a lot of characters and a lot
of continuity between books that is helpful to remember, but it was not
quite as difficult this time to remember where the story left off.

At the end of The Faithless, the
political situation in Balladaire (not-France) was more stable, but the
threat of a plague lay on the horizon. That threat arrives in earnest in
this book, along with new threats from both Balladaire’s former colonial
conscript soldiers and from neighboring Taargen (not-Germany, sort of,
although the parallel isn’t as close). Luca and Touraine have finally
admitted that they’re deeply in love, but they are still very different
people with different goals and ethics. Luca is determined to do anything
necessary to save her kingdom, but her definition of her kingdom is sharp
and brittle. Touraine is torn between far too many loyalties, plus the
lingering worry that her morals and Luca’s may not be compatible.

I think the hardest part of this sort of series is finding an ending the
reader will find satisfying. This one, unfortunately, did not work for me,
but that may be more due to personal preference than objective flaws.

There have been two threads through this series: an improbable romance
embedded in a network of complex personal relationships, and a political
commentary on colonialism and post-colonial wars. I was enjoying the
former, but it was the latter that felt fresh and interesting to me. The
plot threads in The Faithless outside of Balladaire expanded that
complexity, and I was hoping the final volume would continue in that
direction. How could a colonial power atone for its history? How does the
former colony establish its own governance? Is there a path to freedom
without violence? Are attempts to chart a more moral course doomed to open
lines of attack for one’s other enemies?

It’s clear that Clark was thinking about similar themes, but The
Sovereign narrows the field instead of widens it, restricts the political
options, and then resolves most questions in a massive war. This is not
that surprising of a conclusion, but it’s one that I found unsatisfying
and, honestly, a little boring. Yes, one way to resolve all the competing
tensions is for everyone to try to kill each other and whoever survives
wins, and historically that’s one of the more likely outcomes, but that
ending doesn’t wrestle with the politics as much as it collapses them.

Clark instead focuses this concluding volume on the romance, which becomes
even more fraught, tragic, and dramatic than it was in previous books (and
that’s saying something). The hard questions of divided loyalties and
moral conflicts are mostly framed by questions about Touraine’s loyalty to
Luca and Luca’s trust of Touraine. This is all very Shakespearean, full of
hard choices, sudden reversals, miscommunication, and a very deep conflict
between Luca’s realpolitik and Touraine’s stubborn personal morality. If
this is what you were reading the series for, if you were hoping for a
maximum-drama sapphic relationship, you may thoroughly enjoy this. I
thought it had its moments, but I wish they had been balanced by more
moments of cool-headed practicality and creative political ingenuity.

My biggest frustration with this ending is that the characters largely
stop doing politics. The political complexity was the strength of both
The Unbroken and The Faithless:
People who intensely dislike each other negotiate because there is
something larger to be gained, personal decisions made without considering
the political ramifications have costs, and multiple characters are trying
hard to find a way to turn a nasty, exploitative world into something
better without simply killing everyone who disagrees. Many of the
characters were objectively bad at politics, inexperienced and immature,
but they stumbled or dragged or fought their way into political solutions
anyway. I thought Clark moved too far away from that in The
Sovereign. Everyone goes deep into their own emotions and desire for
vengeance or conquest or revolution and stops compromising. To a
depressingly large extent, the story is resolved by killing everyone who
disagrees. I think the story is poorer for it.

One of the other threads of the series is Balladairan magic, or rather its
odd absence. Luca has one understanding of it, the rebels introduced in
The Faithless have a different understanding of it, and its pursuit
is set up as critical to resolving the threat of a plague. We do get an
explanation of sorts, but it’s not as complete or as satisfying as I was
hoping, and the symbolism of Balladaire’s missing magic is left
frustratingly murky. For me, this has some of the same problems as the
political conclusion: I wanted an intellectual catharsis alongside the
emotional catharsis, but that was not the direction Clark was taking the
story.

I like reading about these characters. All of Luca, Touraine, and Pruett
are complex, comprehensible, flawed, and often intriguing. But my favorite
character in the story, the person I latched on to as an emotional path
through the story, was Sabine. Her refreshingly straightforward loyalty
and lack of drama was a breath of fresh air. She has some great moments in
this book, but there too I got wrong-footed by the direction Clark went
with her arc and found its conclusion deeply unsatisfying.

I’m not sure how many of these complaints are because of missed
opportunities in the novel, how many were due to a mismatch of taste, and
how many were due to not being in the right mood to read this conclusion.
I’m sure that it didn’t help that I read this simultaneous with
another novel in which the characters were
always miserable, or that I read it in early 2026 with, uh, all that
entails. I suspect that if you came away from the first two books invested
in the messy romance and wanting MOAR DRAMA, you may get exactly what you
were hoping for. That, sadly, was not what I was hoping for.

I can’t really recommend this. I thought it dragged in places and didn’t
deliver the ending I wanted. But it has some great moments, it does wrap
up the threads of the trilogy as advertised, and at least the romance gets
a dramatic climax worthy of the tension that has been built through the
previous books. If that matches what you were enjoying in the previous
books, you may well enjoy this more than I did.

Rating: 5 out of 10