The Hurricane Wars

“Talasyn stood frozen in terror. In her memory she’d run away, heading low, diving into the first shelter she could find, but in this dream her body refused to obey. The stormship drew nearer and nearer and the wind blew through her heart like iron bolts.”

Talasyn’s trauma response to her memories of the fall of Hornbill’s Head illustrates The Destructive Nature of Imperialism at a psychological level. In her mind, she’s frozen by fear as the Night Empire destroys the world around her, unable to find the agency and power to move.

“Aether is the prime element, the one that binds all the others together and connects each dimension to the next. Every once in a while, an aethermancer is brought into this world—someone who can traverse the aether’s path in specific ways. Rainsingers. Firedancers. Shadowforged. Windcallers. Thunderstruck. Enchanters. And you. The Lightweave is the thread and you are the spinner. It will do as you command. So, tell it what you want.”

Guanzon, in a flashback speech from the Amirante, succinctly explains the magic system she crafts in the narrative. In a few lines, she clarifies how aether works, the various types of aethermancy, and Talasyn’s abilities.

“Her heart in her throat, Talasyn thought about the dark prince she’d met out on the drifting ice. The lethal dance that he’d drawn her into. She thought about the way his gray eyes had shone silver beneath the seven moons, regarding her as if she were his prey.”

Guanzon uses romantic language to describe Alaric in Talasyn’s memories, describing him as a prince dancing with her beneath the moonlight. The lushness of this language foreshadows Talasyn’s romantic relationship with Alaric.

“For Sardovia. For Khaede’s child, who will never know a father. For myself. Because I have to understand why Nenavar calls to something inside me, and because I have to give Alaric Ossinast the fight of his life the next time we meet in battle.”

Talasyn’s sense of duty to the people of Sardovia is strong, as she justifies her decision to travel to Nenavar as being for the good of her people. However, self-determination plays a role in this decision, too, as she seeks to understand her past and how it connects to her strange feeling of belonging in Nenavar.

“Was the woman the same person whose voice had come rushing back to her on the crests of the Nenavarene wind? Who had touched her face with rough hands? And what about that city of gold? She’d never been to any such place as she’d glimpsed amidst those wild monsoon currents. Why had her mind’s eye afforded her that image only now? Had it been a city here, within the borders of the Dominion?”

Guanzon’s use of repeated rhetorical questions creates a frantic feeling on the page, as Talasyn continues to experience strange visions of Nenavar that she cannot understand. The sheer number of questions back-to-back also illustrates how much Talasyn does not know about herself and her past.

“As she plodded through the long grass and the bitter wind of the Great Steppe and stole and sold what she could to scrape out a meager existence in the Hornbill’s Head slums, as she curled up in whatever corner of the orphanage and then of the fetid streets she had claimed for the night, as she mixed seeds into water just for something to fill her stomach—and, much later, as she huddled in deep trenches with comrades that were now long dead, as she closed her eyes while stormships screamed through the land—her imagination had been her refuge, conjuring a different set of circumstances every time.”

Talasyn dreamt of finding her family while she suffered for 19 years, and Guanzon uses intense imagery to describe Talasyn’s past. The descriptive language of this paragraph brings to life how difficult Talasyn’s upbringing was while placing it in stark contrast to the childhood she would have had as the Nenavarene Lachis’ka.

“Ideth Vela carried the Hurricane Wars on her shoulders more than anybody else. Talasyn couldn’t add to her burden.”

Talasyn thinks the Amirante feels the greatest sense of duty and responsibility for the Hurricane Wars, but Talasyn’s sense of duty is just as strong. These lines also foreshadow Talasyn’s decision to agree to Urduja’s terms and become the Lachis’ka in exchange for her friends’ safety and protection, as Talasyn shoulders the burden herself.

“That realization brought with it a dull ache that experience had shown her would soon scab over on top of layers upon layers of all the other old scars.”

Talasyn’s view of herself and her lived experience is visceral, as she imagines herself covered entirely in scars from the pain of living through the Hurricane Wars and poverty in Hornbill’s Head. These scars further illustrate the negative impacts of war on oppressed groups, as Talasyn struggles with her inability to protect her people and those she holds closest.

“Talasyn was struck by the overwhelming urge to—to cry. To scream. To rage at the heavens. The creatures were terrible and beautiful, and what was left of the Sardovian Allfold beheld them far too late.”

Talasyn’s reaction to finally seeing the Nenavarene dragons is not relief, but pain, as the dragons could have turned the tide of the war against the Night Empire. They also are the fulfillment of her vision of coiled scales in earlier chapters—an instance of foreshadowing.

“There was a beast trying to claw its way out of Talasyn’s chest, some vile, ugly thing birthed from anger and disbelief, but she might as well have been the sea, crashing desperately against the insurmountable rock that was her grandmother’s iron will.”

Guanzon uses an extended metaphor to describe the conflict between Talasyn and Urduja. Talasyn thinks of her desire to refuse the marriage alliance to Alaric as monstrous, like the dragons of Nenavar, but the Dragon Queen Urduja does not balk at the sight of her rage. Talasyn does not have the power to refuse, because if she does, she risks the safety of the Sardovians. She must bow to the political power of her grandmother in hopes of keeping her friends secure.

“Many empires have come and gone since the first Zahiya-lachis took the throne. Nenavar has watched them rise and she has watched them fall, and she will outlast this one, too. The Night Empire will not destroy us, and neither will they destroy you […] Now—save us all.”

Urduja places the burden of saving Nenavar upon Talasyn’s shoulders, shoulders that already carry the Sardovian cause. Urduja is the player with the political power, and Talasyn is her pawn.

“It was a knife between her ribs, this reminder that she was about to wed someone who truly despised her. It wasn’t that she craved Alaric’s approval—no, his was the last in the world that she wanted—but a cavernous space had been hollowed out in her heart over the years, and his words echoed there beside older ones: that she wasn’t worth it; that she was too difficult for anyone to bother with. An orphan who was too mouthy. A soldier with only one friend. A Lightweaver who could barely master the basics. A Lachis’ka who was too coarse-mannered. And now a bride who would never be loved.”

Talasyn’s core desire is to be loved, accepted, and appreciated for who she is. The marriage to Alaric is abhorrent to Talasyn not only because Alaric is her enemy, but also because she feels she’s missing another opportunity to find love and companionship, two things typically associated with marriage.

“The glimpse into her early life had filled him with cold fury, as overwhelming as it was impotent. It was long in the past. Hornbill’s Head was gone, and, with it, all the squalor that had marked her early years. Still, he was seized by the fanciful urge to resurrect Hornbill’s Head just for the pleasure of having his stormships flatten it again.”

Though Alaric still regards Talasyn as his foe, his heart softens when he hears about the difficulty of her youth. His desire to destroy in Talasyn’s name illustrates how Alaric views love as something driven by both passion and destruction.

“Could I have lived like this? Alaric found himself idly wondering. Without a throne to someday inherit, with the stormships remaining his grandfather’s impossible dream, would he have been content with this kind of life, his days passing slow and easy in some mundane pastoral setting?”

Though Alaric is on the winning side of the Hurricane Wars, he cannot stop himself from wondering what his life would be without the power of the Night Empire. His time with Talasyn makes him question what power means to him and what it would mean to live without it.

“As she came to a stop a few inches away, Alaric saw her usual death stare had been replaced with uncertainty. Her eyes, which usually blazed with fury, were rendered a lighter shade of brown by the glow of the torches and somehow seemed gentler because of that, yet no less potent in their scrutiny.”

As Talasyn and Alaric grow closer, he becomes connected and in tune with her feelings, so much so that he can read the difference in her emotions by solely looking at her eyes. He begins to know and understand Talasyn, feelings that she reciprocates privately.

“Her mind raced, drawing on old lessons, on old conversations that Urduja had liberally sprinkled with advice. She saw the bigger picture. She considered every angle.”

Talasyn becomes more politically adept during her time at court, which is an important development in her character arc. When Alaric chooses to spare Surakwel, she can understand the rationale behind it, illustrating her growth in political acumen.

“Alaric remained silent. There was no defense left to him, not when Gaheris was talking in that deceptively gentle manner of his that almost always indicated a taste of pain in the near future. The air in the In-Between grew thinner, dark magic crackling in corners that did not exist in the material realm, strange shapes lurking in the shadows.”

Alaric and Gaheris’s relationship is marked by cruelty and pain. Throughout the book, political relationships complicate and damage familial ones. Gaheris’s political ambitions lead him to treat his son cruelly. Similarly, Queen Urduja uses her granddaughter Talasyn as a political pawn.

“It was in this moment, in a burst of sharp clarity, that Talasyn truly understood that the Hurricane Wars weren’t over. With Nenavar on its side, Sardovia could still take back the Northwest Continent. There had to be a way. She would find it.”

Talasyn feels a brief hope, coupled again with her strong sense of duty to the Sardovian cause. She has to be the one to return to Sardovia and begin the struggle for freedom anew, as her role as Night Empress will allow her unprecedented access to Kesath.

“And while the Hurricane Wars would always be felt between them, like two shards of a cracked pane of glass separated by the spidery white line of fracture, there at least seemed to be a mutual agreement to not talk about it anymore. At last.”

Talasyn and Alaric’s relationship is inherently shaped by the Hurricane Wars and strongly impacted by their varying perspectives on the conflict. No matter how much they discuss each other’s thoughts, the “fracture” of their different opinions on the Night Empire and Sardovia strongly shapes their relationship, keeping them constantly in conflict with one another.

“It was a revelation, to be held like this, to have someone else’s warmth so near, surrounding her. It was hunger, the thing that made her tighten her arms around his neck until there was no more space between them, skin to skin, the urgency with which he had latched on to her echoing everything that her soul had cried out for all these years.”

The evocative language Guanzon uses to describe Talasyn and Alaric’s embrace illustrates how emotionally meaningful even a simple hug is to their relationship. Both are starved for love, affection, and safety, so to find it with each other, with an enemy, shocks them, a key aspect of a typical enemies-to-lovers romance.

“But she couldn’t talk to him about everything. If Alaric ever found out that Talasyn’s mother had played an instrumental role in sending Nenavarene warships to the Continent nineteen years ago, to help the same aethermancers who had killed his grandfather—and once the Sardovian remnant made their move and he learned that Nenavar had been sheltering them in the Storm God’s Eye—that would be the death blow to any budding intimacy that Talasyn forged with him.”

Talasyn wants to keep building intimacy with Alaric, which she acknowledges she has already begun to forge, but she knows the truth would drive them apart. She feels guilt, but by the end of the novel, Alaric will have secrets of his own that he cannot share with his wife.

“These are the hands that will work alongside yours to build an empire. These are the hands that will hold your children and help you carry the world. These are the hands that will always reach for yours.”

The vows Alaric and Talasyn exchange at their wedding are significant, as the image of hands connects to the motif of Alaric’s gloves, which he uses to block his emotions. The image of building an empire is also important, as Alaric seeks to continue building the Night Empire while Talasyn, ironically, seeks to rip it apart.

“Come on, darling, some darkly wicked, impulsive part of him thought, one last fight before I leave you.”

Alaric’s thoughts clearly illustrate the theme of War as an Intensifier of Romantic Love in his relationship with Talasyn. He wants to argue with her, to spar, because when they are fighting, both feel safe to ignite the passion they feel for each other.