The Ivory Key: book review

 

Title: The Ivory Key

Release date: January 4th, 2022

Pages: 384

Publisher: Clarion Books

Rating: 3,5/5 ⭐️

Synopsis:

Vira is desperate to get out of her mother’s shadow and establish her legacy as a revered queen of Ashoka. But with the country’s only quarry running out of magic–a precious resource that has kept Ashoka safe from conflict–she can barely protect her citizens from the looming threat of war. And if her enemies discover this, they’ll stop at nothing to seize the last of the magic.

Vira’s only hope is to find a mysterious object of legend: the Ivory Key, rumored to unlock a new source of magic. But in order to infiltrate enemy territory and retrieve it, she must reunite with her siblings, torn apart by the different paths their lives have taken. Each of them has something to gain from finding the Ivory Key–and even more to lose if they fail. Ronak plans to sell it to the highest bidder in exchange for escape from his impending political marriage. Kaleb, falsely accused of assassinating the former maharani needs it to clear his name. And Riya, a runaway who cut all family ties, wants the Key to prove her loyalty to the rebels who want to strip the nobility of its power.

They must work together to survive the treacherous journey. But with each sibling harboring secrets and their own agendas, the very thing that brought them together could tear apart their family–and their world–for good.

The Ivory Key is the first book in an Indian-inspired duology that follows the adventures of four siblings: Vira, queen of Ashoka, is still trying to face what happened after her mother's death; Ronak, who wants to escape his sister's reign and built his own destiny far away from Ashoka; Riya, who has escaped without leaving a message to her siblings and met a new family, the Ravens, a group of rebels; and Kaleb, my personal favorite. He was accused of his mother's murder and imprisoned under Vira's order.

So the question is, what do these people have in common-- in addition to blood? The answer is sadly simple: they all have a grudge against Vira. She is slowly becoming her mother, the previous queen, erasing who she had been, and never showing love to her family. She's even dressing like her, but please, don't judge her too harshly. Vira is suffering too, forced to rule too young and with nightmares that are devouring her from the inside. During the war against a neighboring kingdom, she had lost a city, and guilt haunts her.

Magic is fading and the only way to keep her kingdom safe is to find the legendary Ivory Key. The four siblings have their own purposes, but will the adventure bring peace between them?

These four siblings seem extremely different, but they're all moved by selfishness: Vira wants to be a better ruler, and yet she continues to follow her mother's path even though it’s wrong and goes against her own happiness; Ronak wants to escape from his life and an unwanted marriage, but he gives priority to his own joy and desires to his friend Jay and Kaleb, taking their wishes for granted, in order to get what he wants; Riya has run from her own siblings and she has forgotten her true family, becoming a rebel; and at the end, we have Kaleb, who is such a great person, always so sweet even if his own sister has imprisoned him.

The first part of the book follows our characters' insight, pointing out their past, nature, and intentions. It was my favorite part of the book since we really connect with them and I really liked the author's work to make them as human as possible. They do terrible choices and yet sometimes we can relate with them. The Ivory Key deals with very sensitive topics such as racism, family conflicts, duty, freedom, and many more that are narrated in order to sensitize the reader.

The author did a great work with their characterization. Their feelings are stated in a few turns, making the narration smooth and straightforward. They're all driven by their own purposes and their dangerous decisions could forever ruin the relationships that are already troubled.

We also meet the Council and I expected far more from them. They're painted as manipulative and wicked against Vira, they don't want her as the new queen, but their motives are not clear. They disappear after the first part, leaving open an important side of the plot that will never be explained in this book.

Other questions were not answered in this first book, but I hope to know more about their mother's death, the Kamala Society, and especially magic.

It's the second part that lowered my book rating. It had gone off on the right foot, but it got lost halfway. I waited for a book inspired by Indiana Jones, a book with similar vibes, so it should have contained riddles and enigmas, but there was nothing difficult about the finding of the Ivory Key, nor did the descriptions make me really visualize the setting.

We follow their path to get this mysterious artifact. They don't even know if this key exists, so I expected to find intrigues, traps, or difficulties of any kind that would have slowed down their mission since they were searching for an extremely important object. But everything was too easy for me to find it credible. Sometimes they simply stumble on the door of a hidden city and voilà, here's a great part of the riddle uncovered.

Even the magic system isn't entirely clear. In the beginning, magic is like a tool: Ashoka needs it to live since everything works with it and that's the reason why Vira needs it, magic is disappearing, leaving the country powerless. But in the end, with everything that happens to our characters, something is uncovered and so the nature of magic changes.

I also wanted more conflict, and more dialogues directed to find a solution to their disagreements, but the characters remain static since the beginning of their adventure and so all the expectations I had for them had collapsed as soon as I saw no improvement. I was expecting so much more from their relationships, but at a certain point, they simply start to collaborate without having solved a whole lot of anything between them. Conflicts like that need to be managed with calm, focusing on them even though the real priority is something else.

Their interactions were not sacrificed for more descriptions and astonishing plot twists. On the contrary, I found the final twist quite predictable, or at least I've imagined it since the beginning of the book.

In the end, I can confirm that The Ivory Key has a lot of potentials: the setting is intriguing; the Kamala Society, if deepened far better, can be interesting; the characters have to develop a lot so that's what I expect from the second and last book.