Unfortunately, I did not get the chance to read this ARC prior to the book's publication, but we did end up buying it for our library collection.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2020 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2020/01/2020-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

I adore the world that Rowland has created. A fantasy in which there is no homophobia, each land's language and customs are respected without needing justification, and everyone has razor-sharp wit? Yes.

Ylfing's struggles with his lot in life are still humorous but relatable. I found this book not quite as engaging as the first, because of the delicate balance of Ylfing's suffering, the irreverence with which his suffering is treated, and perhaps the fact that he was struggling with how he became to be a Chant and currently experienced the trade. I did enjoy the commentary on storytelling, and how the characters viewed certain rituals as sacrosanct, while others viewed them as superstitious or frivolous. The stakes didn't feel as high in this book, perhaps because we were a bit more removed from the consequences.

What can I say about A CHOIR OF LIES that hasn't already been lauded? The story structure (I love framed narratives, and this one is a narrative inside a narrative inside a narrative - I LOVE it) is amazing, the voice (for both narrators) is on point, and the mere storytelling muscle that went into the main throughline story of how storytellers have more power than people realize is ASTOUNDING.

But the tricks in having characters omit chapters? Multiple passes of footnotes? Crossing out and blacking out sections of text? So much of these techniques are perfect examples of showing over telling (even when one says "I'm tearing this chapter out for this reason" because that still shows us the mindset and attitude of the narrator), and I'd absolutely love to teach this novel in an academic course. (I would literally make the whole semester class around the different narrative devices in this book alone, on god.)

I got really wild on the podcast episode, so please check out BABY YOU'RE A HAUNTED HOUSE out now on iTunes, Spotify, and Podbean!

Last fall, I had the great pleasure of reading Alexandra Rowland’s A Conspiracy of Truths. This incredible novel felt like it was written just for me, because the main character was such a knowledgeable storyteller that he was able to weaponize it to escape mortal peril. Rowland’s fantasy meditation on the power of story continues in A Choir of Lies. Here, the apprentice of the protagonist of A Conspiracy of Truths, has been attempting to make his way in the wide world as a Chant. Being a professional wandering storyteller is a hard enough job, but our young Chant is suffering intense grief, feelings of betrayal, and a hefty dollop of existential crisis.

In the world Rowland created, being a Chant is a holy calling. They wander from place to place, collecting and telling stories. There are rituals that must be performed before an apprentice gives up their name and becomes a nameless Chant. But our Chant is on the cusp of giving it all up and taking back his name. After three years of wandering, he fetches up in Heyrland, a city that looks and feels a lot like our Amsterdam at the beginning of its golden age of trade. Instead of telling stories for room and board, Chant takes a job as a translator for a wealthy merchant. Once this merchant figures out that their new translator has Chant-training, they tell chant to start hyping their newest import: bulbs for a plant that can grow in the dark (which sort of makes up for the fact that it smells like rotting meat). If you haven’t figured it out by now, a significant part of the plot mirrors the economic bubble now known as Tulip Mania.

As Chant (mostly unwittingly, before he figures things out) participates in some seriously misguided business, he is also struggling with his calling. His master-Chant put him through hell and he clearly hasn’t come to terms with it. (Read A Conspiracy of Truths.) When he encounters another Chant in Heyrland, a woman with very different ideas of what it means to be a Chant, it throws him even further into mental and emotional crisis. The early chapters of A Choir of Lies, before Chant has an epiphany and (not coincidentally) figures out that the cute merchant-banker guy is flirting with him, are a little rough. Chant wallows in his feelings instead of making actual progress. Once you get past those first chapters and the plot really kicks off, this book turns into a great read.

Normally, I don’t recommend getting a particular format. It usually doesn’t matter if you get a book in print or electronically or as an audiobook. I have to say, though, having read this as an electronic advanced reader copy, I recommend getting this book in print. The story is “written” as a manuscript Chant writes about his time in the Heyrland, then gives to Mistress Chant to read. Mistress Chant’s marginalia appears as footnotes as she comments on (and swears at and corrects) Chant’s autobiography. In an electronic book, footnotes are links. Flipping back and forth between the main text and the footnotes by trying to hit a number with my fingers was really irritating—especially when Mistress Chant is arguing with almost every line. Get this as a print book.

I adore Rowland’s Chant novels. The world-building is incredibly rich and vibrant. I loved the gender- and sexuality diverse language and culture of Heyrland. (There are grammatical forms for five genders!) The characters are beautiful psychological portraits. There are no heroes or villains in this book; it’s all just a bunch of humans running around doing very human things. Above all, I am completely hooked on all the metanarrative elements and themes. Seriously, these books are catnip for my bookish heart.

Everything we learned about Chants in Alexandra Rowland’s accomplished debut A Conspiracy of Truths came from Chant himself—and he was an irascible, inveterate liar. This, admittedly, is the job of a Chant, which is less a name and more a title: collecting and telling stories as a sort of vagabond monk. Chants are rare in the world of the novel—numbering in the hundreds, though there’s no way to know—so we had to take everything he said on faith. In A Choir of Lies, Rowland’s charming followup, we follow not one but two other Chants when they meet by accident in the seaside town of Heyrland. Like members of any order, there are broad, heartfelt divisions between them—disagreements about both the nature of stories, and of storytellers.

The narrator is Ylfing, who was an apprentice-Chant in A Conspiracy of Truths. Ylifing was a cheerful, good-natured young man, and even though his master was always excoriating him for his youth and his tendency to fall in love easily, he didn’t really deserve it. The master-Chant may have been the narrator of that novel, but you can read between the lines. But then Ylfing watched his master-Chant bring down an entire country—fomenting coups, revolutions, and invasions largely from the confines of a jail cell, and using only the power of words. The damaging, sometimes fatal effects of storytelling were made horribly manifest. (What are gossip, slander, fraud, and lies but a form of storytelling?)

The sequel opens three years later. Though Ylfing has “sunk his home beneath the waves” (a sort of ritual renunciation of an apprentice-Chant’s origin and name) and become a Chant in his own right, he’s sick with grief over the actions of his predecessor. In short, he is having a crisis of conscience and career. His faith in the good of storytelling has been shaken, and he’s been holed up in an Amsterdam-ish port city acting as translator and hawking an exotic flower called stars-on-the-marsh for a wealthy and influential burgher, Sterre de Waeyer. (This detail calls to mind the Dutch tulip mania of the 1600s, which is usually cited as the first recorded speculative bubble, an association which will become more relevant as the story unfolds.) He’s moping and sad, and his storytelling is off.

Ylfing has taken to keeping a diary: recording his thoughts about both the past and the present, transcribing conversations, even, occasionally, writing out the tales he’s collected as Chant. It is in reading this diary that we first meet the other Chant of the story, so to speak: her footnotes gloss the narrative. (She also appears in Ylfing’s own diary, so she’s reading and account of herself, which is often strange.) Mistress Chant’s commentary on Ylfing’s journal is exasperated and aggrieved: Chant’s aren’t supposed to write their stories down! Or live like beggars! Or wallow in self-pity! She considers him a heretic, and at times even questions whether he’s a real Chant. Though both see their callings as divinely inspired, they are in profound disagreement as to how that should be be expressed. Mistress Chant’s observations allow us to witness events that unfold in parallax. They also break up what would be just a terrible amount of self-pitying from Ylfing.

In a nice piece of irony, although Ylfing takes great care not to be behave like his master-Chant, he still manages to thrown the city into crisis: His work for de Waeyer precipitates a mania for the stars-on-the-marsh flower which soon gets well out of hand. But Ylfing is neither his dyspeptic master-Chant, who evidenced very little remorse for the consequences of his storytelling; nor is he the footnoting Mistress Chant, who is as locked in her convictions about the duties and proprieties of being a Chant as Ylfing is at the beginning. Underneath all the listless brooding, Ylfing is an amiable and affectionate person with a keen sense of fairness; he just has to find his way back to himself. A Choir of Lies is a worthy followup to A Conspiracy of Truths, a slow-burn of a story told with warm humor and gentle wisdom.

I actually really liked this, but I'm not sure how much of a stand-alone I consider it. While I read it without having read the previous book, it definitely spoiled the previous book.

That being said, this continues the theme of "deal with trauma and denial/self-destructive behavior I've been reading this year, which is kind of unexpected as I don't really seek that out. But it's a worthwhile thing to emphasize in life, to be fair.

When we last saw Yfling, Chant (his Master-Chant) had been the wrecking ball that brought down Nuryevet. Yfling, a sweet young man who loved nothing more than a good tumble with any handsome young man who was willing, always seemed like a deer caught in the glare of Chant's determination to bring down a corrupt, absurdist government. Three years later, we find him on his own, now himself a Chant, and the title of the book could have easily been "What the Hell Am I Doing Here?" or "How in the Name of Stories Am I Going to Fix This?" or possibly "I Don't Want to Be a Chant Anymore, Please Make It Stop." Of course, we're only getting part of what Yfling wanted to tell us because someone has redacted what he wrote (he wasn't supposed to be writing it down in the first place) and that includes burning some of it (starting at Chapter 3, just so you'll be prepared) and also has liberally commented all over what remains and we are not talking nice commentary ("You little shit.") in the beginning, though it does soften considerably by the almost end ("Ah, child. You are still so young."), which is something of a relief. Because Yfling needs the encouragement. He might have to fix a few things. Well, a lot of things. Okay, just because you make a mess doesn't mean you can't fix it. The right stories can fix things. Usually. Oh, and there is Love! Yfling, who has such a good heart, so deserves True Love. Frankly, the entire book is like a love letter to stories- those who tell them and those who read them.

If you loved A Conspiracy of Truths as much as I did, this will definitely be more of your jam. Rowland's books make me feel happy and hopeful and should make us all want to be worthy of our gifts that can bring about change. #hopepunkforever

Alexandra Rowland has assured me there will shortly be an audiobook offering of "A Choir of Lies" and I'll be buying it tout suite. I've listened to Conspiracy an embarrassing number of times.

I received a Digital and Paper Review Copy from Saga Press in exchange for an honest review. And frankly I am so glad no one has reached through my computer yet to redact this statement or add footnotes, I can't tell you.

Alexandra Rowland’s A Conspiracy of Truths took me by surprise in 2018. I deemed it an “unexpectedly delightful story featuring a wonderfully eccentric narrator named Chant.” I was just as surprised, in this follow-up book, to see Chant left by the wayside in favor of a story focusing on Ylfing, Chant’s former apprentice. Ylfing is now a wayward soul, untethered, searching for purchase in a new city, having left his name, his master, and his personal connections behind. In many ways, his experience is mirroring that of the reader. Without the anchor of Chant and his splendid narration, we’re left to pick up the pieces along with Ylfing.

It’s a bold choice to change gears so drastically from one book to the next, but it pays off well. The overarching plot about a mysterious flower serves as a backdrop to the real story of Ylfing’s personal growth. The book itself is “written” by Ylfing in a manuscript format with a bevy of footnote comments by an opinionated newcomer who slowly comes into focus.

In the end, this book is charming, heartening, and well worth your time. It feels like Rowland is just getting started here. She’s an exciting, fresh voice in fantasy and I’m excited to see what yarn she spins next.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.