The Lost Reliquary by Lyndsay Ely (book review).
‘The Lost Reliquary’ effectively engages the reader from the very first line. The protagonist, Lys, is part of the crowd gathered for the execution of a religious heretic. But instead of seeing their goddess in action, Lys and the rest of the congregation witness an assassination attempt. The victim has been altered in some unknown way, and when the goddess Tempestra-Innara arrives to destroy the heretic, she instead finds herself gravely injured.
Lys isn’t a mere bystander, though, but a sort of assassin/monk dedicated to Tempestra-Innara’s church. Normally, she’d be out there hunting down heretics, but seeing her goddess in pain starts her thinking about the cruelty of the church she serves. Even so, the church decides to send her and another acolyte, Nolan, on a quest to root out the heretics. Neither are pleased about working with another, and, for the first half of the book, the reader sees two different perspectives on their faith shown by the two characters. Lys is hiding her true goal, to find a weapon to bring down Tempestra-Innara, while Nolan is much more obviously dedicated to the mission. This, eventually, leads to him abandoning Lys, who ultimately has to rescue him from a group of Renderers who distil the divine traces out of the bodies of those who worship them.
The backdrop to all of this is the world created by writer Lyndsay Ely,where gods are real. In the past, apparently, they each had their domains: the sea, agriculture, fire and so on, but, at some point, war broke out between them. The result wasn’t merely their followers going to war, but the gods and goddesses fighting amongst themselves as well. When a god or goddess is slain, their domain seems to have collapsed or become unstable for a while, creating areas of desolation, as well as blight or famine among their followers. Eventually, only one divinity remained alive: Tempestra-Innara. Her two-part name is important. The first part is her own, but the second part represents the host within whom she is embodied. This, in turn, is the key to killing a god.
One of the ways Ely uses the quest motif cleverly is to have Lys and Nolan travel outside their normal stomping grounds. Different towns are visited, and much of the action in the middle of the book takes place somewhere across the sea. This gives them a different perspective on their religion, seeing how people further away from the centre get by with less of a relationship with Tempestra-Innara. There are some darkly comic moments here as Lys and Nolan rub each other up the wrong way, and while Ely could have gone with the old ‘odd couple’ romance here, the two characters develop a much more nuanced relationship that works so much better.
There’s a turning point about three-quarters of the way through the book when Lys finally discovers where the gods came from and why they fell upon one another. For all the reality of divinity in this world, the power of faith in the unseen remains important. There’s a plan that a few have been involved with over many years, and even the Renderers had their part in it.
Ultimately, this is a thoroughly enjoyable fantasy adventure that draws deeply on the logic of a clever, if terrifying, central conceit. It’s almost Lovecraftian in the sense that the gods and goddesses of this world were called into it from elsewhere, but with an element of morality baked into it. These divinities aren’t mere monsters but the focal points of competing religions. They’re the justification for all kinds of tortures and inquisitions. This allows Ely to ask that fundamental question: if gods are real and interact with us directly, would we be any the better for it? I’m not sure she answers that question in any sort of reassuring way, but she does give us a parable of sorts, warning us of the dangers of theocracy and fanaticism.
Neale Monks
August 2025
(pub: Saga Press/Simon & Schuster, 2025. 447 page hardback. Price: $20.00 (US). ISBN: 978-1-66808-031-3).
check out website: www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Lost-Reliquary/Lyndsay-Ely/Divine-Thrall/9781668080313