Review: A Poison Dark and Drowning by Jessica Cluess

We review Jessica Cluess’ A Poison Dark and Drowning, the second installment in her Kingdom on Fire series.

Jessica Cluess’ Kingdom on Fire series continues with A Poison Dark and Drowning. As a sequel, it’s fast-paced and full of action, with several unexpected twists and surprises. As a continuation of Henrietta’s journey, the story is satisfying, and leaves us with plenty of questions for the series’ finale. The sequel doesn’t quite equal the heights of the trilogy’s first installment, but you’ll probably tear through it too quickly to really care that much.

In A Shadow Bright and Burning, we met Henrietta Howell, a talented young girl who can set herself on fire in magical Victorian-era England. Her magical ability earns her a place as the first female sorcerer in centuries. But she’s not entirely who they think she is, and she must balance keeping her own secrets with her quest to save her childhood love and end the war against the monstrous Ancients. In short, she’s got a lot going on.

Yes, A Poison Dark and Drowning suffers from several of the typical issues that tend to plague middle books in trilogies. But, overall, it’s an exciting ride that sets us up for a thrilling conclusion to Henrietta’s story.

Henrietta is still the best part

Every story needs a good protagonist. And Henrietta is a great one. And A Poison Dark and Drowning allows her to become a more complicated character in her own right. Henrietta must further confront her past, in ways both large and small. The decisions she’s made come back to haunt her. She must keep up the ruse that she’s the “chosen one” of legend. (Though we all know she’s not.) And we finally learn more about her family history, complete with a twist that, while some readers may have guessed already, still surprised me.

Henrietta must make several difficult decisions over the course of this novel. And some of her choices are not always good ones. She doesn’t always behave the way a “heroine” is supposed to. But her choices are completely understandable ones, which further illustrate the difficult – and generally unprecedented – situation she’s found herself in. And her struggle to succeed in a sorcerer world dominated by men who are all waiting for her to fail is compelling as both story and feminist statement.

The world gets so much more complicated

One of the great strengths of Cluess’ writing is her ability to plot out a truly complicated fictional world, and make us all really believe in it. Her magical England is close enough to the real Victorian era that it feels familiar. (Queen Victoria herself shows up!) But it’s just different enough to be dangerous and exciting.

Not that things weren’t dangerous in the first novel. But here, everything feels more immediate, somehow. We see up close and personal the damage the Ancients and their minions can wield. There’s death and destruction – a lot of it. And we learn more about the people that inhabit this magical land. We learn more about Henrietta’s family, as well as the history of other prominent sorcerer types. We meet magicians and faeries; we’re even introduced to witches and their history (a bit). Even the Ancients get a bit of backstory. Everything feels much more expansive.

The author obviously imagined the world of this particular Victorian England with great care, and it shows.

There’s definitely some mid-series issues here, though

But, for all the things that make A Poison Dark and Drowning exciting, there are some things that don’t work quite as well as I would have liked. The ending isn’t entirely satisfactory – though, as with any middle novel in a trilogy, that comes with the territory. Several major plot threads are left dangling at the end of the book, as well as the fate of a couple of key characters who have run afoul of the terrible monsters and other dark things in this story.

And Henrietta herself is forced into a position I’m not sure any of us feel entirely comfortable with at the end, even though, in some way, I’m some readers might have been rooting for this outcome. It’s impossible to tell how these cliffhanger moments will play out the series’ finale, and leaving everyone in these particular situations does feel somewhat unsatisfying. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s supposed to.

Since this is a YA novel, it won’t come as a surprise that our heroine has multiple romantic options here. However, none of them feel terribly satisfactory. It seems as though every man Henrietta interacts with is suddenly wildly in love with her. And no matter how frequently she asserts her independence, it still feels almost as though this love triangle (quadrangle?) business comes out of nowhere.

It’s possible that this is the natural progression from A Shadow Bright and Burning. And now we must rate all these men Henrietta met in the first installment as potential love interests, because that’s how stories like this go. But, at the moment, I kind of want Henrietta to pull a Kelly Taylor and choose herself in the end. (Yes, my ship pretty much got sunk in this novel, why do you ask?)

All that said, A Poison Dark and Drowning is still very worth your time. It does a great job building on the story that came before, adding stakes and raising new questions. Henrietta remains as appealing a heroine as ever. And, honestly, this book took the main story in several unexpected directions. So much so that I’m not sure how the story can rebound to anything like a happy ending with just one book to go. But I’m can’t wait to watch it try. (Maybe “happy” is a relative term in a world like this, anyway.)

Next: Review: Sarah Porter’s When I Cast Your Shadow

The final installment in the Kingdom on Fire series is due in 2018.