Photo credits: DarkWorkX
Edited by Vaishali
Title: Dominion of the Star (Descendants of the Fallen #1)
Author: Angelica Clyman Genre/Themes: Young Adult Fantasy, Dystopian, Romance, Paranormal, Angels, Post-Apocalypse Publisher: Indie Angel Books Year of Publication: 2015 Version: Paperback copy kindly provided by the author ISBN: 9780692476345 Review“Stars are all fire and pressure, exploding ceaselessly in the abyss,” he whispered. “The world teaches us that violence is natural, but the sky pretends it’s beautiful too. Stars die like we do - victims of their own mechanisms of survival. We don’t notice when it happens; we only see what we can’t avoid."
Brought up in a modest village, Kayla Steelryn is the moving force of this imaginative, downcast dystopian fantasy. Kayla’s past is most secretive, her only vessel of understanding is a trinket that holds the face of lurking hope. Unsettled by a restlessness that tugs at her bones, Kayla finally makes the desperate decision to flee the banal, rifle through her past’s identity and seek the face that may tie all of these pieces together. With a leap of expectancy, and a bigger one of fear she leaves her coy potter’s village for the uncharted remains of a post-apocalyptic society, both bare and heartsick. It’s time for this lonesome star to forge a path of dominion…even if she doesn’t know what the stars hold for her just yet.
‘His hazel eyes were sharp, and she felt as if nothing escaped his vigilant gaze. He didn’t smile. His voice was quiet and softly harsh, as if he spoke rarely. “I had no doubt we would meet again.”
…”There were times I wasn’t as sure as you…and all I could do was dream."
Leaving the mundane and familiar, Kayla is now amid the profoundly indefinite; a world that threatens a lot more than just the unknown. By parting with her home she has traded inertia for a perilous venture that challenges her trusting nature and tests her feeble mettle as a young woman unchallenged. It’s a battleground for survival, only not predominantly in the visible cacophony of the loud and lairy, of raucous dwellers and evident battle - this is the kind of dreary survivalism experienced through stories and memories, through grief and loss, through leftovers of a world that no longer exists, and the somber endurance of travelling a barren society.
“Each one of us that took this had to make a choice. Lie down and die out in this world, or be a part of something that will win. The answer is simple.”
“The world has fallen apart while you’ve slept in peace."
Almost 18 years ago, a darkening eclipse initiated a pandemonius development; a phenomenon that crumpled life, destroyed people and sundered structure, only for antagonist Sebastian Za’in to rise and commandeer the remains in a fist that promised renewal and rejuvenation. Not only did the eclipse leave a legacy of darkness, it endowed a world without faith, without the heavenly, and without conviction, driven by the mythology of the nephilim and the stories of fallen Angels. But riding on the back of one eclipse is soon to procure another era of calamity; the second stage in a cycle of devastation.
“When you hear ‘Angels,’ it sounds beautiful, right?…but even our legends have no room for redemption.”
“But…what is he organizing?” “The world."
And Kayla immediately crosses paths with one particular embodiment of said sacrilege and volatility: Jeremy. Kayla travels with this man of two natures and his chirpy, mysterious companion Kittie, soon facing a true piece of the world that is so foreign to her as she’s led farther away from her goal and into the stronghold of Lord Za’in. Jeremy is a character that is twisted by passion, driven by pain and prompted by impulse, and although this made him unfavourable for me because he seemed built on a threat to destroy, he undoubtedly has the most punishing path in this whole story, caught in a thrall that dominates his personal autonomy.
‘He was born into darkness -that was the reason they gave him for his suffering.’
‘He closed his eyes. What was his nature? Wasn’t it his nature to fight….everything?'
Jeremy is impelled by a force to secure a place of importance in this fallen world that’s about to fall further still. It’s about his and Kit’s survival. But he’s also driven by a bitter need for retribution and anger, running with an uncontrolled temper that can’t be suppressed. He runs like a tempest with the inflammatory nature to spread storms of pain; mirroring his own. Is he too skeptical to give his desire any worth or is he simply just a man without honour? Dominated by urges and impulses, his perspective is narrowed to an oppressive sight that hinders any bearing of the consequences and what sustains the image at large. Jeremy’s haunting, disabling thoughts push him down one path while his stubborn resilience urges his down another; you really never know whether he will be exhausted by darkness or find a way back from it.
‘If something was really going to happen, this man would be the source, and Jeremy would be a dark Horseman.’
‘He didn’t care anymore if the stars were shining. Let them go on burning. Soon they’d have no choice but to watch what fires he’d be setting, down below their gaze.'
Jeremy isn’t the only man twisting Kayla from the inside out as she’s torn between men that promise different things; and right at the other end of the spectrum is the cool and collected to Jeremy’s fire, a former vision of change and nomad of the lost and found, Asher Serafin. Asher’s quest has been a long time coming and in a last attempt to chase forgiveness, his mission is set to protect Kayla, hoping it to be enough to make up for his personal privation. Asher is an enduring, tranquil tempered, austere pillar of strength and direction even if he doesn’t know where he is headed; a flexible man with a flexible perception that makes him an adaptable and admirable character - one of my favourites! - but he’s still a player of pent-up misgivings, his past a condensed package of unalterable anguish.
‘Asher knew what he was. He was just a man, cursed from the moment that he fell in love with an Angel. Nothing would change that. No amount of death, here in this place, would erase that crushing force that held him standing through every disaster.’
‘He wasn’t leading the Resistance this time. He had stopped resisting. This wasn’t the explosive human will to rebel or revolt. Instead, he was simply a vessel of divine retribution, a herald of a needed end.'
Her being misplaced leads Kayla on a path of possessing more than she bargained for. Whose intentions are really the purest? And can she really trust her situation and the people she loves when she barely trusts her own resolve? Will she find love in the one who punishes her, or the one who protects her? One carves a life of reckless abandon while the other carves one of purpose and shelter; following one love, eternal only to her destruction, and another who walks alongside here as a constant construction of strength, understanding and companionship…
“There must be something wrong with me…to miss them both like this.”
“It’s the burden that those with a heart carry. You can’t let your emotions rule you, but don’t cut them off. Your feelings are not a sin against any of us."
…and then the lord who stands above all: the persuasive, genial, inspiring teacher who offers Kayla praise, importance, and a fundamental expression of her identity - who makes he feel like a promising piece of light in a world that offers little in the ways of solution; exacting a movement embedded in the stories of legend and of the bones which came before them. But whether legends inspire strength; whether myth has only provoked a secular system of non-believing and suspicious, is Za’in a true bringer of knowledge and an age of improvement, or an entity of blasphemy, bathing in the blood of the lost while favouring those of the supernatural.
“Ultimately, my purpose is to restore the world. Many things have contributed to its downfall, but there has been nothing as destructive as this planet’s inhabitants shirking the responsibility that comes with the gift of existence: cultivation."
‘Dominion of the Star’ is the first book in the descendants of the fallen series; a story of outcasts and survivors bound together in an intense situation of inexorable feelings that imitate the drudgery of the world before them. A story that doesn’t offer a chiseled trajectory of guidance, but instead plods through in an attempt to mimic the uncertainty of our four main characters…A story of Kayla’s coming of age and coming of acceptance is unnerving for this sheltered girl who knows nothing of the disastrous Eclipse that shrouded the earth to begin with. Forcing control around her heart as opposed to being weakened by its impractical but desirable will; torn between loyalties, hard decisions and divided in this dynamic triangle of love.
“All pain fades, right Asher?”
“Most things do, Kittie. But nothing stops you from moving. Your eyes tell me you understand that.” “There was a time I forgot. I stood still for too long.” “Me too…” “You’re just one more storm or act of violence away from being taken out, and you know you’ll have to stop dreaming."
Angelica Clyman has crafted this story with a unique blend of beautiful prose that lends itself to the haunting upset of the story while its poetic quality is engaging, selective and effective - if not a bit too drawn out and vague, with a significant portion of the book that is formed of very vague memories that were quite confusing - reality, dreams and the past were heavily blurred for me and I really lost my way in a way that made me feel removed from Kayla and the story (I also felt this way because i started to lose my understanding of what this story was about), but the ambiguity of the narrative did lend itself to a lot of misdirection for me.
“I wish I could honestly believe that, but I don’t know the nature of the ghost I’m chasing. So many of my actions are an attempt to be close to something that is constantly changing in form."
Because of this the story was a little tricky to engage with, and I often had to re-read scenes to grapple with my understanding of events, trying to gain my own bearings and keeping up with burning feelings that didn’t always make sense. In terms of world building there is a strong sense of atmosphere, but I don’t think there was enough examination to make sense of it, so in effect we weren’t offered a proper feel for the world fashioned. This might however be a point the author elaborates on in future books. I did have some concerns with the romantic element/ relationships in the book which I’ll explain a bit more in the spoiler section below, but overall the integrated romance strengthens the internal conflict each character has to face, and transforms the plot into a dynamic one; so the romance felt belonged to the story.
“Sometimes, when you set out to do something and you’ve been alone for so long, you just keep moving. You forget why. All you can recall is that you’re trying, you’re really trying, and you can’t let it all go. But then someone reaches out to you, and he needs to stretch out his hand as much as you need to grasp it…"
This is more than a matter of trust for Kayla, she’s trapped in the cracks of a despondent world only looking on through the inexperienced eyes of shelter, as she trusts and stumbles in the face of broken trust and a broken heart. Kayla is a soft protagonist with an unpracticed and unprepared heart. She’s restless and hindered by uncompromising indecision, her scattered steps like walking on hot coals; her choices divided by her disparate identity: one that amalgamates the diverse sides of her - to reach a destiny that first begins with acceptance - her dominion begins with acceptance. There is choice in destiny, not suppressed by an overwhelming obligation to nurture the intentions of others.
“Just because God has perished, doesn’t mean that we’re not left an inheritance. There are debts, I know, but there is great wealth in what Man can do. Your soul, even if it’s damned, is a spark of the divine. And Kayla…she possesses a unique fragment of that lost Heavenly glory. Within her is the defiant, brilliant pulse of a fallen Star."
Coming in just short of 500 pages, ‘Dominion of the Star’ offers a lot to get lost in, each character follows the line of warring with the different parts of themselves, an intense battle that could either spell a light of victory or the morose endeavour of absolute failure, but each of the four has a story to tell, even the antagonist has provocative roots as a villain. The fluctuating theme of who must be trusted underlined the dark quality of the book. ‘Dominion of the Star’ promises a suffering triangle of romance blended with complex characters, merged with mythology and grounds itself in a setting of the post apocalyptic waiting on another dooming eclipse to follow in its wake. ‘Dominion of the Star’ is a post apocalypse on the brink of sinking into another apocalypse.
‘A sense of dread began to settle with the knowledge that no man could escape his beginnings. Original sin wasn’t dealt out equally, and that girl couldn’t lift his portion. But she tried.’
‘They all sat motionless, unmoved by the storm, none of them willing to break the comfort given by Kayla’s falling tears. The didn’t hear the cry of a frightened child, but an Angel weeping for their broken world.'
An alternative order was enacted by Sebastian Za’in. Every marked eclipse is said to bring an ill-marked, ill-fated catastrophe in this tragically intense tale of the angelic and the ordinary; a story of a girl split between decisions, her conscious being tugged on by various threads of burden, only to find herself directed into one of spiritual rousing. Kayla is unlike Jeremy who lives by burning his feelings to fuel his movements from one moment to the next; she’s unlike the Asher who moves with steady, resolute steps, because in a world of secular beliefs she may be one to offer something as blinding as a single-minded star.
“You’re not just flesh and blood, and the sin of thought is just as dangerous for you. There are places you can’t let you mind wander. You have to promise me.”
“...I’m responsible for the sin of thought? Suppose your dark imaginings could bring down this whole world. How would you handle that?” Asher grabbed her by the shoulders, one strong shake painfully raising her head. “I’d have to grow up quick…"
In a world that would rather believe in sacrilege than the divine, should Kayla ignore her heritage-bound duty or follow the impulse and path of personal faith and feeling - it’s Kayla’s overwhelming sense of uncertainty that fortifies her downfall. ‘Dominion of the Star’ is a troubling odyssey of the unceasingly uncertain as violence and doubt twist the world where the old world is just a memory. Za’in’s fantasy of rebirth and renewal is awaiting another dooming era, another hell that sits morosely at the heels of his construct. Following a fantasy or follow in experience.. A struggle to conquer and a struggle of yielding, this post-apocalyptic foundation exists as a backdrop of this tale of mythology, destiny and spiritual stimulation.
“This is a world where it is acceptable for a worthless human to throw rocks at an Angel dreaming in a tree.”
“But if you don’t know what you want , then you still won’t be able to tell if I’m trapping you or saving you.” Either way, I can see now that you’re lonely too.” “Even the stars look peaceful from a distance, right?"
The rebellion began in loyalty and love to an Angel loved and then to preserve a world for an Angel born. An imaginative start to a series - Angelica Clyman is certainly an author to watch out for in the fantasy genre.
‘Where do I even begin? This was her answer. Above her, Orion’s belt shone brightly’
“We’ll have to trust her to fight for herself. That’s what it will come to in the end, when the sky darkens.” I gave THIS BOOK 3.5 stars - Trigger Warning: Some profanity and very mild, non-descriptive sex scenes
Thank you to Angelica for sending me a free copy for review!
My Rating System: ★ - 1 star: I did not like the book ★★ - 2 stars: The book was okay ★★★ - 3 stars: It was a good, solid read ★★★★ - 4 stars: A great book ★★★★★ - 5: A phenomenal read
THIS PART MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!
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Some Concerns and thoughts… 1) The visions were confusing to me; firstly because I didn’t know the consecutive order of them; secondly because I was lost between what was real and otherwise. 2) Perhaps the author didn’t want to include every day mundane activity such as eating and just being human, but I found myself missing this. I think details of survival have to include basic human action. As the story is always on the move I can understand why other aspects took precedence, but then I wondered how long they could possibly go without food or water etc. Every day motions make a story feel more real for me. I can only phrase it as saying this was a story that withheld essential mundane meat. 3) The details and events of the story were at times a bit too vague for me. I was trying to find a place to ground my feet but this was difficult because the narrative (although well written) was unclear or lost to either intense feelings or cloudy visions. I struggled a lot with Jeremy’s character - I didn’t like him at first and really wanted Kayla to choose Asher even though I could see early on where the romance was going, but I was resigned to admit defeat toward the end. But nonetheless, Jeremy proved to be a character who had to overcome the most and suffered the most (he experiences the most volatile of transformations and his fate is the most unknown) and I had a great regard for him in that respect. I like the fact that we are forced to suspend our own beliefs and opinions of his character as he fluctuates between darker desires. Maybe he needs Kayla more than Asher to temper the chaos in him. 4) Team Asher Serafin all the way!…and not just because he has one of the greatest names I think I’ve ever heard. 5) I don’t think the story lacks depth but it does lack breadth and examinations of the world.Romance and relationships - I didn’t understand why Kayla felt aggrieved by losing Jeremy at the start because I wasn’t sure what she was actually losing. I struggle with romance that show little development from the offset so I couldn’t understand what bound Jeremy and Kayla together with the exception of the extreme circumstances they found themselves in. I felt as if she was confusing intense feelings for love. Their romance burned like a fire to hot and rapid for me to understand how it reached that stage - leaving me to taste mostly ashes and smoke. Past relationships highlighted through visions also led me to feel conflicted about who desired who. I’m pretty sure that Asher said he loved Kiera, which led me to believe that he was transferring those feelings onto Kayla. 6) I didn’t have a considerable understanding of the world because of the shapeless past and an equal sense of ambiguity of the present. So I was constantly trying to play catch up with the characters and where exactly their feelings stemmed from. I like abstract qualities to a story so long as it’s countered nicely with what’s reachable. 7) Favourite characters - Kit and Asher!
CategoriesAll Leave a comment and let's talk about 'Dominion of the Star'
2 Comments
Zoeb
5/12/2019 11:50:18
I loved your review, Vaishali. And I really appreciate the candour and calm objectivity with which you presented your thoughts and feelings about the book. I also agree with you on the point that good dystopia writing is all about portraying the chaos of a fallen world very credibly and convincingly which then lets us imagine perfectly how terrible or desperate things must be for the characters roaming and wandering alone in this barren world. But yes, the strength and complexity of the characters and the themes makes it a very promising read.
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Vaishali@ Vicarious Living
5/12/2019 17:24:43
Thank you so much for your lovely, thoughtful honest words Zoeb.
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