#ylfing

Ylfing- A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland

I also screamed a lot of things from how cute the actual flirtations were and how stupid young Ylfing had gotten since leaving his teacher and how glaring the twist was. But you know. We're not here to listen to me talking about plot twists. We're here to listen to me talk about how it was a highlight on my reading list. I definitely loved how the book utilized footnotes. It wasn't the matter-of-fact Pratchett expositing and it really pointed out how unreliable our narrator was. In the first book, we had to remind ourselves to take Chant's narration with a grain of salt because he's naturally a crabby old bastard who does say he's filling in gaps of his story with third-hand information. But here, we find an in-universe reader pointing out the flaws and biases in Ylfing's story, filling in details and information we lack, and further driving in the dichotomy between new and old, fiction and truth. I just love how the in-universe reader interacts with the story we're reading, but at times it gets a bit redundant. That, or it feels like the author is hitting you on the head while pointing out the information you need to take a note of in fear you'll miss the build-up of the story. Talking about the story, this is an interesting progression from the first book. Like Ylfing, we begin to realize the weight of the actions that were done by Chant and understand the trauma that was unknowingly inflicted on someone when a main character rushes to their happily ever after. Seeing Ylfing trying to recover from being hurt and abandoned is painful and slow, just like his own path to redemption. From a cheery and optimistic apprentice, he's become a mournful and jaded traveller. Sometimes, like the reader, you want to slap him and other times you want to let him cry on your shoulder. How Ylfing continues to be exploited and ridiculed through this story also adds to the pain of it all, but it eventually has to get better. Eventually. Also, if you're into that inclusivity, this book has a wide array of sexualities and gender orientations and cultures, as did the first book. The first thing anyone would note would be how Fictional Amsterdam has six different social genders. They say that A Conspiracy of Truths was a love story to stories while A Choir of Lies was a love story for storytellers. That is most certainly true. We get to see traditional storytellers and storytellers who's lost the joy for it. We get to appreciate the tales they tell in the artful, crafted way they learned to tell them. And we get to love those who manage to claw themselves out of burnout and the abyss for the sake of their audience.

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