At the close of the first installment of Amy Ewing’s Lone City trilogy, Violet, a surrogate of the upper-class in a violent and corrupt dystopia, has just landed in scalding hot water with her mistress, the cruel and calculating Duchess of the Lake.
For reasons that explicitly spoil the first book, The White Rose follow Violet and a downtrodden ensemble of other servants and surrogates as they flee the royal inner circle of the Jewel for a safe house in the vast, quiet farming district, with the burdensome strings of possible revolution attached.
All things considered, this second book follows the expected trajectory of a dystopian series fairly closely. The subtlety of The Jewel is quickly ushered away into the margins in favor of a much more explosive kind of storytelling––the first half of the book, at surface, is a ceaseless rush of running, hiding, and smuggling, with short interludes where the characters screw it up.
But on closer inspection, The White Rose still has richness to offer, even as the mystery and intrigue of the first book falls away.
The concealed-history reveal regarding the Lone City’s origins is what saves this installment’s world-building from falling to the wayside as the revolution plot takes the spotlight: even as Ewing draws conclusions for her novel’s current affairs, her use of history keeps adding to the dimensions of her world. Unearthing records becomes The White Rose‘s chief asset as it concerns plot twists, and Ewing’s choices in the dark past of her dystopian land on a familiar note that echoes the real world, but leaves enough room for the Lone City to become something of its own, without the burden of conforming to allegory.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the thing that sets Ewing’s series apart from other miserable un-futures is her addition of a magical element. In the first book, it’s a set of abilities called the Auguries that allow the surrogates to bear children quickly and with the royalty’s preferences for appearance. Here, though, a much deeper and broader outgrowth of the natural world comes to the fore, more like the Star Wars-style force than the codified skill system that the surrogates have been taught to exhaust and abuse.
The underlying truth behind the Auguries illuminates the failings in a system that treats people like products the way that the Auguries themselves and the pain they cause acted like a proxy for forced childbirth––bringing unspeakable pain to the physical realm, where it can be described, inspected, and reckoned with. In this regard, dark dystopia and fantasy fit together beautifully, with the technical, clinical, cold aesthetic going up against the ancient, natural one. In the plot to overthrow and exploitative royalty, Ewing decides to tap into something much older, lending her work the mystical power of a fantasy, while escaping, like Star Wars does, the call to fully explain the magic and its origins, and keeping a gritty, modern, sci-fi edge.
Violet’s doubts about her ability to tap into this power appear, logically, but this development’s shadows on the supporting cast are much more interesting and well-defined: the minor players and their pasts, hesitations, and ideas about the revolt are possibly the only areas where the second book notably exceeds the first.
Raven, the best friend Violet was parted from when she came into the service of the Duchess of the Lake, gets a comprehensive treatment in this volume, where we finally see the fabric binding them together more closely. As the sharper, fiercer foil to Violet’s more subdued strength, she has to come to terms with her own servitude and how completely it took those things from her, a subplot Ewing handles generously, and further enriches by pouring it into magic.
A few times, Ewing fails to commit to the scuffles the characters encounter as they make their escape from the Jewel––and uses Raven’s abilities to get them out unscathed––but ultimately, The White Rose doesn’t neglect her. The most vital relationship in this novel isn’t a romantic pairing; it’s the love between Violet and her best friend. It’s into this relationship that Ewing pours the heart-felt confessions, the sacrifices, the solemn promises, and as a result, the whole book benefits.
Garnet, the Duchess of the Lake’s ne’er-do-well (depending on who you ask) son, also sees a deep, thought-provoking character arc in The White Rose, Ewing combining his privilege with a desire to make amends that lends him both earnestness and biting self-awareness. Raven and Violet’s bond may be the most important character element in the book, but in a stunning turn of events, this sardonic agent of moderate chaos steps out to become book two’s scene-stealer, what, with his quips and surprising glimpses of heroism and slowly-emerging conviction. He’s like the Effie Trinket of this trilogy, mixed with a few extra drops of vinegar.
The truly wide range of characters in Ewing’s vision is beginning to show as one of her work’s closely-held triumphs. The rebellion on its own isn’t a particularly innovative use of the idea, but the wide array of characters and motivations she uses to propel it forward (and their begrudging cooperation) is very nearly worth it all. In a particularly valuable exchange, Ash, one of the characters on the run with Violet and company, brings up the girl he was hired as an escort for, the Duchess’ niece, Carnelian. He remarks on the fact that for all the heartache she caused them, she, too, has suffered at the hands of the royalty, and then says something that really expands the scope of the revolution, and gives it the means to matter. “We can’t choose who we free from them, Violet,” he tells her, as he comes into his own. “It has to be all or nothing.”
The Pigeon 