The Harp of Kings by Juliet Marillier

*Mild spoilers ahead!*

Juliet Marillier is one of my favorite authors, so when I learned that she was coming out with a new fantasy series last year, I was really excited. I picked up The Harp of Kings shortly after it was released and made it part of my Then vs. Now Reading Challenge, in which I reread an old favorite, then a new-to-me book by the same author. For my old favorite, I reread Daughter of the Forest and had a wonderful time falling back into that world and revisiting some of my favorite literary characters. As I moved onto Harp of Kings, I had high hopes that I might find another story by Marillier to love. Alas, I was destined to be disappointed.

The Harp of Kings is set in medieval Ireland, and follows three characters who are all in training to join an elite band of warrior-spies. The first of these characters, Liobhan, is a fierce and fiery eighteen-year-old woman with big ambitions. She is a talented singer and whistle player, but her heart is set on becoming a warrior and being accepted as an official member of the spy group. The next character is Brocc, her brother. Like Liobhan, he is musically inclined, and is a gifted harpist and singer. He is also talented in combat, but his heart isn't quite as into being a warrior as his sister's. He's along for the ride though, and trains competently beside her. The third character is Dau, a young man with a bristly exterior and a troubled past. Making it into the warrior band means everything to him, and he scrupulously keeps score of who is likely to be accepted into the team in his head.

The plot begins when Liobhan, Brocc, and Dau are selected to participate in a mission in the neighboring kingdom of Breifne, even though they are still just trainees. Liobhan and Brocc are chosen for their musical talents, as the mission requires them to work undercover as traveling bards. Dau is asked to participate due to his expertise with horses, as they need someone to pose as a ferrier. Their goal is to recover a missing object of extreme symbolic importance to Breifne, the Harp of Kings. This Harp is required to be present at an upcoming coronation. Liobhan, Brocc, and Dau are tasked with slipping in among the people of the kingdom, discovering who is responsible for the theft, and returning the harp in time for the ceremony.

Their mission goes from being a straightforward robbery investigation to a confusing foray into the uncanny when it becomes clear that beings from a magical realm might be involved. To complicate matters further, the group discovers that the man who is to be crowned king at the upcoming coronation is entirely unfit to lead, throwing the consequences of completing their job into question. As the team slowly gets closer and closer to uncovering the location of the harp, they are forced to make some difficult decisions about how much they are willing to sacrifice to bring about a conclusion that is right for the future of the kingdom.

I was quite disappointed with this novel. That's a difficult thing for me to say, as I am so in love with other books by Juliet Marillier, but I must be honest. I did not enjoy this half as much as I was expecting to, and it was a slog to make it to the end.

It started off well enough. I was interested in the story, and I thought the plot moved along at a good pace. After a while, however, things became slow and the characters began acting in ways that were frustrating to me. The biggest example of this was in their continual, flagrant violation of all the rules of their mission. All of the major characters in the novel, particularly Liobhan and Dau, are supposed to be laser-focused on trying to make it into the spy group, but this ambition does not match the way they behave. At every opportunity, they break rules, ignore their directions of their leaders, and draw an immense amount of attention to themselves. There isn't even much of an internal struggle going on in their minds as they do so; if the limitations placed on them by their role in the mission are inconvenient to them, they disregard them. From time to time a character will acknowledge that they aren't following orders, but it's in a casual, shoulder-shrugging kind of way. They expect their rash actions will catch up with them at some point, but they are never particularly worried about that in the moment.

This might be forgivable if the characters ended up facing consequences by the end of the story, but they don't. In fact, they are rewarded for their insubordination, and praised for being creative problem solvers. This is dysfunctional and shouldn't be how an elite organization of warrior spies works. It undermined the framework of the story and became a continual irritation as I read.

The plot itself became more thin and vague as it went on as well. The setup of a secret mission with assumed identities implies that something exciting and intriguing will eventually be uncovered, but that never really happened. The details of where the harp went are left very vague, and explained away with a throwaway comment about the mysterious ways of the Fair Folk from the other realm. This story was supposed to center around a mystery so impenetrable that spies were needed to unravel it, but in the end there was barely a mystery to solve at all. The characters used a combination of magic and dumb luck to complete the mission, meaning that their supposedly impressive skills in combat and spying didn't even come into play. It all felt sloppy, which is not a word I ever thought I would associate with Marillier's work.

So ultimately, I was left wanting a lot more from The Harp of Kings. I wasn't overly fond of the characters, and the plot itself was lacking the complexity you would expect from a novel about spies. Also, while this isn't a criticism, I was surprised at the complete lack of any LGBTQIA characters. This is a brand new book, and many new fantasy novels include a more diverse cast nowadays. There were several places in the story where these types of characters would have fit in well. It felt like a missed opportunity.

The Harp of Kings is the start of a new trilogy, and I do not think I will be picking up any of the other books in the series once they are released. There just wasn't enough I liked here to catch my interest. I am disappointed, but still glad that I got a chance to explore another work by one of my favorite authors. It ended up not being to my taste, but that's okay. Nothing will ever dampen my love for the Sevenwaters books. For my first match-up in my Then vs. Now Challenge, the "then" book definitely wins out.


Challenge Tally
Then vs. Now: 2/27 

Total Books Read in 2020: 3