REVIEW: The Harp & Ring Sequence by Ilana C. Myer

Recently, Ilana C. Myer began a Substack newsletter, Notes From the Mountain, which encouraged me to move my own blog here. I’m reposting my review from last year of her Harp & the Ring Sequence which was completed during the pandemic, and which received a five-star Kirkus review. It’s definitely a fantasy series you’ll want to check out!

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“Ilana C. Myer’s lyrical, high fantasy series The Harp and Ring Sequence tells the tale of a gifted young poet, Kimbralin Amaristoth, who leaves her hate-filled family behind to pursue her dreams under an alias in the capital city of Tamryllin. But as the annual poetry and song festival begins, a dark power rises, causing a plague to spread. Can Lin and her new bard friends recover the lost magic of the Otherworld and enchant their harps with musical word-spells to restore balance to the land of Eivar?” -- From the Macmillan website about the series.

Tomorrow, on Tuesday, March 24rd, Tom Doherty Associates will release “The Poet King,” the third and final volume of Ilana C. Myer’s sweeping fantasy trilogy, the Harp & Ring Sequence. This series is by turns lyrical, magical, mystical, and romantic, and by far one of the best to debut on the market in recent years. 

There are many things to love about Myer’s work. All of her characters - heroes and villains alike - are deep, well-drawn out, and believably motivated without descending into a tedious grey amorality. You won’t find a single mustache-twirling bad guy anywhere in the series, but you will definitely have moments when your heart breaks over the choices that the characters feel necessary to make. And it’s for this reason, above all others, that I believe that Myer’s stories play on the same transcendent level as the best modern fantasists like Guy Gavriel Kay and Tad Williams. Her plots are filled with clever twists and turns, and yet there’s also a sense of certain inevitable, often tragic, destinies from which the characters cannot escape. Resilience in the face of darkness and the necessity of personal sacrifice are both incredibly powerful themes in this series, and especially resonant for our time. Myer seems to have an incredibly deep well of emotion to draw upon, and she puts all of it on the page to fantastic, gut-wrenching effect.

Another aspect of the series that I found quite refreshing was that the fictional universe was a pleasant blend of both the familiar and the exotic. This is neither the usual Tolkienesque pastiche of elves and dwarves, nor is it just English history with the serial numbers scratched off of it. Myer’s world feels truly multicultural, and there’s just enough of a taste of far off lands to keep you intrigued, and yet you don’t have to constantly refer to an appendix to follow what’s going on. 

Each of the books is well written, and the series builds towards a very satisfying climax by the end of “The Poet King.” The only disappointment you’ll experience will be when you realize there isn’t a new trilogy already on the way with the same characters and same settings (we’ll have to hope that changes in the future). In the meantime, you’ll have to content yourself with the discovery of an amazing new author who I hope will soon become a household name for fantasy readers everywhere. “The Poet King” goes on sale tomorrow.

You can find Ilana Myer’s Amazon page here: https://www.amazon.com/Ilana-C-Myer/e/B00R3GTXOS?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1585013920&sr=8-1