primeideal

This is a book that I'd seen around a couple times and neglected to pick up because I wasn't sure it would fit for any bingo squares (I know, I know, this has overall been very good for getting me to read fiction but does have some perverse incentives). But I'm doing well enough I figured it'd be worth a read even if I couldn't gamify it, and you know what, I'm very glad I picked it up because it's very well-crafted. Having just bounced off a book with a lot of jarring sentence-level constructions, I found this to be well-written without being too heavy-handed or preachy overall.

This book is set in the fictional empire of Becar, and the fundamental conceit is society's belief in reincarnation. Depending on your deeds in this life, you will be reborn as another kind of animal, in an endless cycle of death and rebirth (there isn't an emphasis on breaking the cycle or achieving nirvana). However, there's one dishonorable exception; the kehoks are chimera-like monsters that are made from the most evil souls, and basically only become other kehoks, never returning to the normal balance of creation. The augurs are the religious class, selected from children with pure souls and trained to read other people's souls so that they can report on whether others are on the right track to a healthy rebirth. In Becar, kehoks are used as race animals in an important bread-and-circuses type of entertainment that placates the populace.

What works well is that so much revolves around belief in reincarnation, augurs, and their temple structure, and it shapes everyone in ways that come off as realistic.

A young racer talking to her kehok:

"What did you do to be reborn like this?" Raia asked. "You're lionlike, so you must have hunted the innocent in your past life. Were you a murderer? An assassin? Did you seek people out to be cruel to them? Did you hunt with words or knives? Your body is metal, so you must have been cold. Unfeeling. A hard man. Did people hate you? Did you hate them? Both?"
She knew she was babbling, but the words wouldn't seem to stop. "Did you know you would come back like this? Did you ever try to change? You know that's what augurs are for--to help you make the right choices and help you lead an honorable life. They could have prevented this from happening to you, if you'd let them, which you obviously didn't. Why not? I mean, I know why my parents don't ask augurs to help them."

A young temple student talking to an adult augur:

"...can you please describe this Raia?"
"She has no bumpy edges," Shalla said. "Some shimmering lines. Overlapping ovals, but they are full of holes." The holes, she knew from her studies, were from fear. The lines were from choices not yet committed to. But the ovals indicated she was on the right path. A truly balanced soul would be all circles, with no sharp or rough edges.
Augur Clari graced her with a slight smile. "Tell me her appearance when not seen with the inner sight."

An exhausted trainer meeting one of her foolhardy ex-racers:

She hoped the little idiot didn't die in the race. While that would teach him a valuable lesson, he most likely wouldn't remember it in his next life.

So the specific plot here--and hear me out, because I recognize it's a weird comparison--is a little bit like "The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi" meets "The Goblin Emperor." On the one hand, we have Tamra, a washed-up racer who's now unsuccessfully trying to pivot into training future racers. All she cares about is making enough money to pay off her debts and make sure her daughter, Shalla, can continue her prestigious augur lessons at temple school. Her eccentric patron, Lady Evara, is willing to support her financially, but only to a point. So she has to make do with cheap kehoks, and racers, that nobody else will take. Like Amina, she's basically like "I'm too old for this, I have so many aches and pains, I only care about my kid." And then she meets Raia, a young woman who's trying to escape an arranged marriage and is willing to do basically anything else...

Meanwhile, in the capital, Prince Dar is waiting to be coronated after the untimely death of his brother, Emperor Zarin. Like Maia, Dar is a decent person thrust into power unexpectedly; his brother was a good man, he misses him, and he doesn't really know what to do--especially because, since he hasn't yet been coronated, he doesn't have any authority to sign laws or order soldiers about. No wonder the populace is disgruntled, they have no government. Why can't they just coronate him already? Well, that gets back to the worldbuilding. When Dar and his advisor, the devout Augur Yorbel, are introduced as POV characters, the foreshadowing of "hmm, I wonder how these two plotlines will intersect" felt a little obvious, like, we can't go 400 more pages with this being strung out as a "mystery"? Not to worry, the characters do communicate and move things along.

There are also a couple other POVs, like the ambassador from a neighboring kingdom trying to take advantage of Becar's political instability. But he hates it in Becar because, well, he doesn't like sand. It's course and rough and irritating. And it gets everywhere. Lest you think I'm exaggerating:

Inside the palace, in a suite with a view of the Aur River, Ambassador Usan of Ranir decided he despised sand. It wormed its way in everywhere, making even the finest silks feel gritty when the wind blew, which seemed to be all the blasted time. When he'd first arrived in Becar, he had found it mildly irritating. But now, he reflected, he loathed it.

The stakes of the races are a little contrived--like, Raia has to win at least one of her qualifiers to make it to the major championships, but oh no, the financial situation is so dire that they have to win Everything Ever? Except if they don't? And then in the championships-before-the-grand-final she racks up a bunch of wins but...why does she need to, there are twenty racers in the grand final, are they still having money problems? That isn't clearly communicated. And while "if the augurs weren't really as incorruptible and pure as we all believe, that would rattle the foundations of society" is handled well, Tamra's counterargument is "I don't worry about the next life, I just protect the people who I care about in this one," and...I don't think that's enough, either.

Similarly, there are some broader themes about "even if individual parents, or "parental" beings, truly want what's best for their children, good intentions that lead to paternalistic manipulation can blow up spectacularly," that worked well for me. On the other hand, there's also a theme of "to excel in racing you have to put aside past and future or everything else, just live in the moment, the moment is all," but at the same time...these people have important needs and concerns for the future, that's what motivates them to do this dangerous job. Maybe a distinction without a difference.

Overall, though, I think this was a really good example of taking one or two core worldbuilding ideas, extrapolating them a few steps, and exploring the consequences!

Bingo: Multi-POV.