Review: Amberlough

Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This trilogy, I've seen it often enough on the shelves at work that those pretty as hell covers made me really want to get into it. And so I've started my journey through a second-world fantasy built on the level of Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse, Fonda Lee's Green Bone Saga, R.F. Kuang's The Poppy War, or Avatar: The Last Airbender - paralleling the real world, historically and politically, but for sure not our world. The only difference between this and all the others I've mentioned before is that The Amberlough Dossier is devoid of magic or steampunk or any traditional fantasy elements - it's fantasy in a loose sense, being merely an alternate world where the technology and culture is ours from a bygone era, only with the names changed.


Donnelly, though, creates a fascinating story world in this debut novel. Amberlough is the city where this book takes place, the capital of one of four states of the Federation of Gedda, of the same name. Culturally it's a mashup of New York's seedy underbelly of international trade, Paris's Art Deco aesthetic, and the cabarets of Weimar-era Berlin. It's almost utopian in how much it flouts certain standards of decency, but the Nazis - sorry, the Ospies, the "One State Party" - are coming, circling around and around in the other states of the Federation. Between territorial disputes in the east, reminiscent of the splitting of Prussia and the creation of the Free Port of Danzig, and a Scandinavian-esque state in the west being the center of the Ospies' power, it's no wonder the grays and blackboots are poised to subsume the colorful world of Amberlough.

Not if the revolutionary Catwalk has anything to say about it, of course.

Amberlough may be a world that resembles the 1920s, but it's also a more diverse and permissive world than the real 1920s were. Though there's still some trouble with racism and sexism in this society - and Amberlough's been involved with some failed colonization efforts in the past, the repercussions of which are still felt today in the divided state of the African-esque island of Liso - it's refreshing to see a society where as European-like as it is, there are black people in positions of power and prestige, and LGBTQ+ people too. Hell, two of our three protagonists are interracial m/m lovers, and polyamorous triads are a long-standing tradition in this and other Federation lands.

Fair warning, though - the ending will make you pretty pissed, especially once you pick up the second book and things are starting off surprisingly bleakly. No spoilers, of course.

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