The Scarlet Throne is the first of a planned trilogy called The False Goddess. Binsa, our protagonist is a “living goddess” who is trying to find a way to stay on her throne. (It is a limited tenure–early childhood to menarche.) As an extra complication, our protagonist is not actually a living goddess! She is possessed by a demon, and a “blood shaman.”
The story plunges into a twisty political plot as Binsa struggles with a priesthood determined to dethrone and replace her, a demon that hates her, and general unrest in the city she rules. Binsa is also struggling with the morality of her actions as she slowly begins to succumb to using blood magic. (Prior to the beginning of the novel she had been avoiding it, because blood magic is eventually lethal, and involves murdering and torturing people.)
Binsa has to deal with a great deal of trauma and PTSD due to her mother also having been a blood shaman. (The mother also stage-mothered Binsa into being selected as the new goddess. If by “stage mother” we mean “abused Binsa extensively and trained her to impersonate a goddess, and murdered a bunch of people.”) As the novel progresses, Binsa makes some horrifying discoveries and and is slowly drawn into doing some extremely horrifying things in her efforts to maintain control of the throne.
Amy Leow treads a fine line with Binsa, who is both a character you can sympathize with…and a monster in the making. The balance between “sympathetic” and “monster” tips wildly, until you aren’t sure what to think about the character, until about mid book when tensions really begin ramping up and secrets start spilling out. The overall theme seems to be “morally gray person is dragged down by their own trauma, a demon, and possibly the ghost of her mother, if the ghost isn’t actually a hallucination.”)
Overall, this is a well written novel. The only issues I have with the novel is some aspects of the worldbuilding. (There is an author preface that mildly spoilers the issue. I would recommend not reading it until you run into the bit of worldbuilding that I bounced off of.) This is one of the few books where the plot drew me in, rather than the character(s) experiencing the plot. (This is because most of the characters are con artists, horrible bureaucrats, and venial priests. This is a very dark read!) I’m extremely invested to finding out what happens next.
This review is based on a galley copy received from NetGalley.
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