Freedom's Apprentice (The Dead Rivers Trilogy, #2) by Naomi Kritzer

Freedom's Apprentice (The Dead Rivers Trilogy, #2) Reviews

• 
  Ry Herman

  Another well-written entry in a fantasy series that keeps the adventure going in high gear while at the same time taking a hard look at the effects of slavery and oppression. I'm eager to see how it all comes together in the third and final book.
• 
  Loton Cagle

  Amazing middle book in the Dead Rivers Trilogy!
  
  Loving this series! Lauria is a really complex character and the changes she goes through as sets right the wrongs she created are fascinating as are the many adventures she encounters on her journey. The ending leaves you itching for more!
• 
  Kylie

  This book had a great structure because of it's plot--Lauria and Tamar attempt to free all of the slaves that Lauria had previously returned to slavery, when she worked for Kyros. Another fun element is all of the shamanic journeying the characters do when they sleep. Lots of adventure and action, and lesbian characters, although the romance is on the slow burn.
• 
  Alicia

  
  https://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2023/0...
  
  Solid second volume, as the protagonist and her blood sister set off on a quest to try and right some wrongs. The middle dragged a little but I think was necessary, information-wise, but this was an entertaining and action-packed outing for sure. I’m psyched for book three. A-/B+.
• 
  M

  Many difficulties and the need to be better.
• 
  Brittany

  There is absolutely zero reason for this book to have a half-naked woman on the cover. It's a well-written and well-executed adventure story with great characters.
• 
  Laura

  The second installment of Kritzer's Dead Rivers Trilogy shares many of its predecessor's enjoyable features -- thrilling adventures, narrow escapes, calculated risk-taking, swashbuckling battles -- while expanding on the fantasy elements of shamanism and sorcery. Kritzer continues to centre femaleness in her worldbuilding; while Freedom's Gate introduced us to the homosocial sisterhoods of the desert bandit tribes, Freedom's Apprentice explores the competing factions of all-female sorceresses struggling to maintain a monopoly on the region's magical and material resources by enslaving spirit djinni as well as racial minorities. Kritzer's writing seems to take the innate femininity of magic itself for granted, which I find interesting mostly for the matter-of-fact style in which it is executed. While Gate explored issues of loyalty, allegiance, and belonging as they relate to the overarching theme of freedom, Apprentice sees its characters grappling with power, duty, and penance. While certain elements of this sequel were so thoroughly enjoyable that I wished I could wrap them in a bow and gift them to my younger self (such as the synasthetic art of constructing beaded spellchains and telepathic communication via a spiritual dreamland), Apprentice did not quite live up to the pleasure I took in Lauria's adventures with the bandits in Gate.
  
  Throughout the book, I was frustrated by the bond between Lauria and her "blood-sister" Tamar, and then was further frustrated by my own frustration. Half of me cheers the platonic female friendship at the heart of this trilogy, a friendship that is passionate, at times strained, but always enduring. The other half craves overt queerness from this series that is so straightforward in its celebration of women and of lesbian relationships -- in its background characters. The reader in me who is over and done with non-canon, queerbaiting innuendo wants to see Lauria and Tamar's love canonized by the author and testified by the characters themselves.
  
  That said, I can't help but feel that much of the novel's ambiguity regarding this central relationship is deliberate: on numerous occasions, Lauria is interrogated as to whether she and Tamar are lovers, but Lauria refuses to answer the question, either to her interrogator or to the reader. Though her narration is void of eroticism (that I could identify), the novel ends with a declaration of love that opens the door to many possibilities in the sequel. Equally possible is that Kritzer is purposefully blurring socially constructed lines between her protagonists as lovers and friends to make a statement about patriarchal boundaries on female love, but that interpretation seems a bit bold and ambitious for a series that I think is still marketed as YA.
  
  I understand that my conflicted reactions to and expectations for Lauria and Tamar's relationship are rooted in society and literature's dearth of powerful female relationships more generally. When confronted with this rare specimen, I have always had to choose: either this pairing will be platonic or it will be sexual, and whatever it is, the paucity of female love on the page and on-screen will leave me craving more of both and leaving me to pin all my demands on this one representation. I anticipate a day when our culture is so saturated with femaleness and with stories about women that the burden to represent all women, all relationships, and all love will be lifted from these special few.
• 
  Clay Kallam

  
  ‘Freedom’s Apprentice’ (Bantam Spectra, $6.99, 356 pages) is also a nicely written tale with an interesting setup: When Penelope was pining for Odysseus around 1200 BCE, she wove herself into a meditative state that allowed her to capture djinn, or genies, and make them do her bidding. This sorcery (limited to women) naturally changed the shape of the ancient world, though Alexander the Great did still come along and do some serious conquering.
  
  ‘Freedom’s Apprentice’ kicks in around 200 BCE, it appears, and it’s an ancient society with an overlay of powerful magic. Sorceresses can control djinni, though it eventually costs them their sanity, and the djinni can do things like fly and build canals. In fact, a huge collection of djinni were put to work rerouting two major Central Asian rivers, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, which altered geography and history.
  
  Lauria, the protagonist, begins the book with a goal of freeing some slaves she had once before captured (she has seen the evils of slavery and wants to redeem herself). Along the way, she’s involved in sword and sorcery, and though there are some improbabilities, all in all it’s a very fun ride -- the concluding volume in the trilogy is set for next spring, so we won’t have to wait that long to see how it all turns out. (I’m guessing, though, that the good girls win.)
  
  
• 
  Isana Skeete

  I wasn't expecting to already be finished, but it was really good enough. It was really interesting. Tamar and Lauria are wonderful and Kritzer makes their adventures believable. But they never get away too easily. When she pulls the rug out from under her characters, she REALLY send them crashing down, which is great because then I get to read about how they get out of it. I'm not sure whether I truly believe their luck and accomplishments or if I'm just refusing to disbelieve because of how quick the story goes and how much it pulls you in. But, I don't really think that it matters because it's a great read.
• 
  Leah

  I picked this up for $0.75 at a book sale, not because I was at all interested, but because I went to school with the author. :) Sorry Naomi, I misjudged the book by its cover! This was a quick, fun read. It's apparently the middle book of a trilogy, but I didn't have any problem picking the story up midstream. All around enjoyable fantasy book in a fun world of magic.
• 
  Hunter

  not as good as the first book in the trilogy.