In the city of Craewick, memories reign. The power-obsessed ruler of the city, Madame, has cultivated a society in which memories are currency, citizens are divided by ability, and Gifted individuals can take memories from others through touch as they please.
Seventeen-year-old Etta Lark is desperate to live outside of the corrupt culture, but grapples with the guilt of an accident that has left her mother bedridden in the city’s asylum. When Madame threatens to put her mother up for auction, a Craewick practice in which a “criminal's" memories are sold to the highest bidder before being killed, Etta will do whatever it takes to save her. Even if it means rejoining the Shadows, the rebel group she swore off in the wake of the accident years earlier.
To prove her allegiance to the Shadows and rescue her mother, Etta must steal a memorized map of the Maze, a formidable prison created by the bloodthirsty ruler of a neighboring Realm. So she sets out on a journey in which she faces startling attacks, unexpected romance, and, above all, her own past in order to set things right in her world.
Definitely hesitant to start this one, what with my grandmother grappling with dementia, but since trying to skirt around the topic resulted in being blindsided by the last two books I read containing dying grandmothers (one who also had dementia), I figured maybe I'm better off diving straight into a story knowing that it deals with lost memories. It turned out I didn't feel much of anything...
You often hear a lot of praise for a book's world-building; how the details make the world seem real, no matter how fantastical. Well, this time around I could tell there was a rich world to explore, but the book lacked the 'building' to bring it to life. The book begins with a glossary of terms for the different magics and people in this world. I've seen many books with glossaries before (Tamora Pierce's works all typically come with definitions of foreign terms), but those usually come at the end of the book as a reference or reminder, not an introduction. These terms are expected to be known going into the book so that their explanations don't have to be woven into the text.
I get it. It can be clunky to try and work in definitions into the characters' introductions, especially when there's no outsider to have to explain it to. But when you have points where the narrator explain her backstory to the audience, why should you treat world-building any differently? It made it especially hard to recall what some terms meant when they weren't addressed until halfway through the book (and it's not easy flipping back and forth in an ebook).
But definitions were the least of my gripes for this book: first and foremost was the tone. From the (gorgeous) dark cover, and the first few chapters, I expected a lot darker a story than I ended up getting: Etta is being blackmailed with her mother's life; she's already betrayed the rebellion that raised her, but has to go back and put her life on the line to save those she loves; people's memories, arguably their entire selves can be stolen or altered with a touch or a look...and then you get blindsided with a sudden 180 tonal shift half-way through, and a surprisingly simple, happy ending?
After reading the author's note at the very, very end of the book, I kinda get it. Mansy was inspired by her own mother's struggle to heal through brain damage, and wanted to share and expand upon that. But this world that she created contained so much more than one person's healing.
First, there's the rebellion and all things pertaining to it. (I'm getting a little bit close to the ending here, but I'll try to keep things vague.) We see the toll that waging war has taken on its leaders, how they feel the pressure to return death with death. But then you have to remember the other side of the fight. There's socioeconomic ramifications for messing with the memory market and stripping power from loyalists—nullifying one leader doesn't make the war stop. Yet we see no backlash from the war, the rebellion. If the events in America today show you anything it's that there's no way the fighting would end so abruptly, even if they're trying to make a better world for all.
On the magic side of things, the whole concept of memories being a commodity is dark. In this magic system memories are not copied and shared, they are taken, traded, and stored. And it's never clear how minds deal with memory theft in the long run. We're told of an instance where a little girl was dying so her parents kidnapped another child, transferred their daughter's memories into her, and essentially had their daughter live on. Later on, the kidnapped girl's sister rescues her into the rebellion, and she supposedly regains some of her own memories then, but it's not clear if she ever fully recovered.
These dark themes and concepts are fascinating, yet ultimately dropped in favor of a romance, a redemption plot, and a revolution rushed together so everything could fit into one standard-length stand-alone YA novel. In fact, I almost hesitate to put it at Young Adult instead of Middle Grade, what with all the complex plot elements discarded. This could have easily made for a duet or trilogy, or even just a longer story, but too much felt like convenience just to reach the ending she wanted. I wouldn't be so hard on it if Mansy hadn't introduced these elements in the first place, but there was just so much potential squandered that I have a hard time letting it go.
That isn't to say that I hated this book. Not at all. I liked Etta/Jules/Julietta as our protagonist. She was very well fleshed out; brave, logical, caring, guilty conscience, etc. I just wish some of her quests didn't have easy-mode turned on. I also liked Reid, the traveling partner and eventual love interest. He offers some good banter and a kind heart, seeming almost too innocent for the rebellion, but still goes through enough growth to make you root for him. Unfortunately, the rest of the characters are rushed so much that they're barely footnotes in Etta's story.
Overall, in case I haven't repeated myself enough, this was a rushed story. As much as I look forward to stand-alones to break up the multi-book epics, I still expect them to make good on their promises, and The Memory Thief just dropped the ball on too much to end up satisfying. I'd recommend it for the fascinating magic system, with all its complexities, and the main characters' stories were fine, though (again) abrupt. There are a few good points about redemption, changing your heart, and empathy even in war, but there's not much else to cling to here. Unless you plan on trying a hand at fanfiction for this world, I don't think you'll remember this one in the long run.
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