If you lose your memories, how do you know who you are? Can you be guilty of a crime you don’t remember? What if there are parts of yourself that are better off forgotten? Rachel Emma Shaw explores these themes of memory and identity in her debut fantasy novel The Last Memoria. The book came out just last month and is the first in a duology. The audiobook is currently available for free, for a limited time—read to the end for details.
Sarilla is a memoria, marked by her white hair and blackened fingertips, dreaded and feared for her ability to steal memories from the minds of others. Tired of being used as a tool by King Renford, Sarilla has escaped the palace and sworn never to use her abilities again. She has seen far too much betrayal, and the memories of others fill her head, threatening to consume her mind as they did her mother’s. Falon has the opposite problem—where Sarilla has too many memories, he has too few, and the six-month gap in his mind haunts him. Falon will do whatever it takes to get his memories back, even if it means teaming up with one of the very creatures responsible for robbing him of his identity. But Sarilla’s hatred of her power makes him question everything he thinks he knows about the memori. And something about her seems oddly familiar…
While the thought of having your memories and identity stolen is scary enough, the setting of The Last Memoria is what makes it truly a horror story. Much of the action takes place within the Deadwood—a fitting name for a forest filled with innumerable dangers. Like a Gothic castle, the ground beneath the trees is riddled with abandoned tunnels that were once used by the race of memori that lived underground before they were driven out and massacred. Now the forest floor is littered with “graves,” deceptive patches of earth, ready to give way beneath a traveler’s weight and plunge him into the depths of these tunnels. But the true danger of the forest is the blackvine, the embodiment of the memori’s stolen memories. Emerging at night, the blackvine whips tendrils of darkness through the forest, sucking the memories out of those it touches and leaving them a broken shell. It was the world-building of this novel that first drew me in, and it remained one of my favorite aspects throughout the story.
Another interesting thing about The Last Memoria is the way that it uses point of view to create suspense. The first part of the book is told from Sarilla’s perspective, then about halfway through it switches to Falon’s. Neither are quite reliable narrators—Sarilla because of her secrets and self-deception, and Falon because his memories and sense of self have been tampered with. Throughout the book, we also get many brief looks through the eyes of others as Sarilla experiences the memories that she’s taken. Despite—or even because of—being in multiple characters’ heads, the ending comes as quite a surprise.
If you love intricate fantasy worlds and suspenseful tales of love and betrayal, be sure to check out The Last Memoria! You can find the ebook and paperback on Amazon, and for a limited time the audiobook is available for free on Spotify, iTunes, and Podbean. If you read it, come and share your thoughts in the comments!