Perplexity by Chawna Schroeder
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I was charmed by Illuminary, the first installment in Chawna’s A Little Princess-inspired fantasy trilogy. The world she has created is rich in color and culture and variety. The characters populating the story might faintly echo their Hodgson Burnett counterparts, but they are even more wonderfully themselves, full of charm and personality and nuance. The inclusion of faith is vital, prevalent, and beautifully portrayed. But, as much as I loved that first installment, the aforementioned inspiration from one of my favorite children’s classics felt minimal. That was no longer the case in this followup. Perplexity delivers on the promises of Illuminary, reimagining A Little Princess in a brilliant fantastical setting while also being very much its own powerful story.

If you’re familiar with A Little Princess, you know about the sadness and darkness that defines the middle section of that story. To avoid potentially spoiling Illuminary, I’ll just say that this second installment is where we see that heaviness come into play in ways it was merely hinted at toward the final pages of the first book. Our main character finds herself betrayed, suddenly embarking on a future that not even her worst nightmares could have envisioned. But even in the midst of that sorrow and horror, Chawna displays the same hope-filled flashes of light found in the story that inspired her own. Yosi is every bit as thoughtful, dignified, and defiantly optimistic in the face of her trials as her classic counterpart, Sara Crewe.

But unlike Sara, Yosi’s hope is found more blatantly in her Sustainer. Perplexity—and the entire series—is deeply faithful and faith-filled. Prayer and Scripture flows through it like breath through lungs. It is through bringing the honest cries of her heart to the feet of her Sustainer, and through the truth of His words harbored in her memory, that she braves the darkness facing her and comes out the other side of it. And like a weapon forged, she comes out all the stronger on the other side of her fiery trials.

Aside from Yosi’s character and the deep core of faith, one of my favorite elements of this series is the worldbuilding. Specifically, I love how Chawna has crafted a fantasy landscape the so wonderfully showcases the beauties of real-world nations without excusing their atrocities and failings. India, England, and France all beautifully represented through fictional counterparts. Those fictional take some of the defining traits of their real-world inspirations and dial them up several notches. The settings are by turns rich and vibrant, cold and cruel, and can almost be seen and smelled and tasted thanks to Chawna’s fantastic powers of description. Her prose is simply beautiful, as are the original poems and songs and takes on scripture she has woven into the series.

It took a while for me to get back into the story, and I was originally afraid that this might be a case of second book slump. Thankfully, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. After a bit of a slow start, the plot really takes off. From around the hundred page mark until the end of the book, I was powerfully gripped and deeply invested. While there are plenty of unresolved elements to the plot that left me almost desperate for the (as yet unannounced) final installment, I also thought Chawna provided us with a satisfying enough conclusion to net leave readers frustrated in the waiting. The Sceptre and the Stylus is shaping up to become one of my favorite fantasies, young adult series, and retellings. I can’t wait to see how the story ends!

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