Review: The Pearl Crucible by Urna Semper

Preamble

Caveat right up front: The author, Urna Semper, is the pen name for my friend Parrish Baker, a mentor and one of our editors at Tender and Tempting Tales. We have appeared and are set to appear in anthologies together, so what’s good for that gander is obviously good for this goose. I also beta-read quite a few of Parrish’s stories before he submits them to anthologies these days—both Rac and T&TT—so I’m fairly familiar with the range of his work. So why am I reviewing this book? Well… because I want to, firstly. It’s my blog, after all. The other reason is more complex. I’ll go into that below, but I just wanted to get my interests out on the table. If Parrish does well, I do well, but that’s not a strong enough reason for me to read a whole novel. Almost nothing is, in fact.

The truth is, since somewhere in the middle of my PhD candidacy, I’ve had trouble reading for pleasure. English majors, and especially English grad students, often grow up as voracious readers. I used to read several novels a week as a matter of course; I read like eating, drinking, breathing. Books were my air and my food. You can, however, grow to despise even your favorite things if you guzzle too greedily and too deep, especially if you imbibe things you don’t 100% like but must read to get that all-important credential. I wanted the letters next to my name, and I wanted to be able to say with honesty that I was an expert in a field. In proving myself to myself, I burned something vital out of my being. Or, well… almost burned it out. It’s taken some real work to try to coax that dying ember back to life again.

I’m writing this review because, somewhere in the middle of reading The Pearl Crucible, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time: I read through the night. I looked forward to my reading time before bed. I longed to read that book and get back to it each day. In other words, I liked it, in the same way I used to like all manner of books, and in a manner I’ve worried I might not be able to like books again.

Sometime after reading The Pearl Crucible, I told Parrish that I struggle to like much of anything anymore, media-wise. Everything feels like “content” to me. Filler. Things that exist just to exist. People speaking with nothing to say. Voices that like to hear themselves talk. This isn’t universal, but it’s common enough that I’ve grown a bit despondent. I went back to watching older television shows most of the time, just because it felt like they still had something vital to say. I reread bits of old books that felt meaningful to me. I wrapped myself in a cocoon of legible media where I could still find meaning, just so I didn’t have to face the gaping wide wound of emptiness out there. (All this is to say: Don’t be a social media manager if the internet depresses you, lol.)

Anyways, I like Parrish Baker’s writing, because I cannot ignore the fact that he insistently has things to say, and he’s good at saying them. This is an important preamble to my review—to any review of mine—because if I’m taking the time to review a book, and not just use it as a case study, it means it didn’t depress the hell out of me. If you take nothing else away from my review here, carry this with you: Go read Parrish Baker’s stuff on Substack (writing as Urna Semper). I have no incentive there, and I’m not in most of the anthologies he’s in; the ones I would most recommend, like Corsairs and Cutlasses or Moggies of Mars from Raconteur Press, don’t include me. Beyond all that, read The Pearl Crucible. Whether you’re searching about for meaningful writing like I am or just looking for a fantastic sci-fi murder mystery romance, it’s a book you want to read.

The Pearl Crucible

You will not be getting a summary of this book, because short of using some summary to illustrate a point, I do not believe summary is a vital or useful element of book reviews. (If I may gripe for a moment, I also think many Goodreads and Amazon reviewers use summary in place of actual critical analysis of a text, or even in place of offering their real opinions, and that annoys me.) It’s also a murder mystery, so a summary would truly endanger the mystery’s solution, and I don’t want that. I want you to experience it as I did, as far as may be possible after consuming a glowing review.

The Genres: The Pearl Crucible both defies and straddles a number of genres and subgenres. I would call it primarily a social-science-fiction murder mystery, with most of the beats of a sci-fi romance, including a hilarious and mildly perverse meet cute, and a tear-inducing HFN ending that I found truly touching. The murder mystery is what propels the plot’s action, as well as the book’s exploration of the sociological concerns of the planet of Iphigenia, and its relationship to its past—and, more distantly, to our past. Parrish’s interest in art history is ever-present and ineluctable in The Pearl Crucible, introducing surprising twists and turns.

The Characters: The Pearl Crucible is a Dardana Fenek mystery, which takes place some time after the story “The Miss” (in Uncanny Valet, the most recent anthologized Dardana story) and just before “The Case of the Unnatural Sister” (found in Pinup Noir: Sultry Murder Jazz, the first anthologized Dardana story). To get a full list of all Dardana Fenek mysteries in their proper in-universe order, Parrish has a post on Substack to aid readers. The Pearl Crucible, in chronological terms, is the story of Ensign-Captain Efan Mardonios’s first case with Dardana, and the story of how they come to be associated with one another. It is also the story of Dardana’s most dangerous adventure, a perilous intersection between her past and present, and a tale about Barsina’s unshakable devotion to her; much of the time in this novel, Dardana and Barsina are together, watching each other’s backs and saving one another.

I am a sucker for a series about a private detective or police consultant, especially when it features its share of action, violence, adventure, romance, and compelling smut, and The Pearl Crucible delivers on all points. I am also a sucker for a bisexual character who engages in romance with folks of different genders, especially at one time, and that’s our girl Dardana all over. I was immediately captured by Dardana in the first story I read about her: “The Case of the Folly Dealer,” originally written for the collection Vice Noir and ultimately posted on Substack. While I can see how it’s not Miami Vice enough for Vice Noir, it’s still an extremely good story with a delightfully compelling character in an intriguing and magnetic world, and I began hunting around for Dardana stories thereafter. Short stories, however, barely do her credit; Dardana is resplendent in The Pearl Crucible in a way only a novel could show her to advantage, and she is a marvelously sympathetic, saucy, and hilarious investigator capable of touching your heart—even if it’s as exhausted, burnt out, and irony-poisoned as mine.

The real standout in The Pearl Crucible is, however, Efan Mardonios. We see him in glimpses in other stories, and Dardana oft describes him as blond, particularly special to her, and heroic, but this is where we really see his character laid out and explored. How it’s possible for a character to be commanding, heroic, idealistic, an adorable sweetheart, a dom daddy, a naive idiot, an intelligent investigator, and a lion with the heart of a golden retriever, all at once is truly a mystery to me, but Urna Semper manages it. One thing that I like about both Dardana and Efan is that, while they are relatable and sympathetic characters trying to do the right thing in their context, they’re still very much people of their world and time—not ours. They are not contemporary people with contemporary values, somehow transported more than a millennium into the future and several lightyears away. They’re Iphigenian, and while Dardana represents the worst aspects of Iphigenian values, and its society’s effects on the human body and its psyche, Efan represents and enacts Iphigenian ideals. One doesn’t need to agree with those ideals to see how people stuck in the center of them and raised with them, like Efan, can attempt to do the right thing and be kind to others within their own paradigm. Different as we are, it is difficult not to respect the hell out of Efan, if one judges him fairly within his context.

Content Warnings: The Pearl Crucible in an unflinching look at Iphigenia from the perspective of a person considered less than human, from birth, by that society. As such, it’s a rough ride if you’re not prepared. We get to meet a figure from Dardana’s past here, and we learn a great deal about the abuses Dardana suffered during her adolescence and young adulthood. There is, of course, violence suffered by our main character. Moreover, while it’s not directly depicted in all its horror, a character does suffer sexual assault within the action of the book, and that bears some warning. The novel also features no fewer than four spicy scenes—three of them “three chili peppers,” and the fourth being, by my reckoning, four chili peppers. If you plan to read it, be ready for that.

The Tropes: This book has everything you’d expect from a murder mystery with a private detective—a Watson way more useful and intelligent than Doyle’s Watson, a connection in the police department (here the militia commissariat) far more useful and important to the story than anything in the Holmes canon, plenty of red herrings, a series of Chekhov’s guns mounting up on the table almost worthy of a Dresden Files entry, a veritable snake pit of femmes fatales, imprisonments, near escapes, and even non-escapes that will make your heart stop.

As science fiction, the primary topic of examination is cloning, especially for labor and pleasure, and the use of clones as chattel and second-class persons from birth to manumitting. The molding and shaping of clones' minds for service, the intentional alteration of human genetics for passivity and pleasantness, and the abuses of such persons thereof, are all on display here. An exploration of indentured servitude by genetic destiny is also explored, as well as its effects on society.

The Pearl Crucible is also, as I have mentioned, a sort of surprise romance, but it maintains the throughline of a romance from the Meet Cute with Efan all the way to the end. I was honestly worried the novel wouldn’t manage this well, but it does. What might help sustain the overall “feeling” of The Pearl Crucible as a romance throughout is Barsina’s continued presence and love for Dardana (and Dardana’s love for her), even when Efan is not on the page. The romance here is of an older quality—something like a chivalric romance, where the love between master and servant, mistress and maid, patron and courtesan, courting gentleman and independent lady, are all happening in tandem and all represent vital, different, and valid forms of romance deserving of exploration. For modern romance tropes, we still have our Meet Cute (laugh-out-loud funny, I might note), Partners on the Same Case, It Was Always You, Prince Charming, Grumpy/Sunshine, and something of a Cinderella story, if… admittedly a little weird. Weird is good, at least for me.

Favorite Moments: They’re too numerous to mention them all, but one standout is Efan and Dardana in the whorehouse. (This is a spicy AF scene, and was originally offered, I believe, to paying subscribers when the book was up on Substack. I can see why.) I was utterly surprised by this scene (pleasantly so), and if you like some hella spicy, borderline dom-sub seasoning to your chili, this book is for you.

My mind also comes back insistently to a scene of interrogation including both Dardana and Efan, which involves mention of a “yellow novel,” Dardana being utterly hilarious, and Efan (who’s very into this), smiling “beatifically.” I found it extremely hard not to wake up my husband laughing when I read this part, and it does a very good job illustrating why Efan and Dardana work so well together, especially what makes them similar. This scene also points back to the Meet Cute, which deserves a callback. Did I mention the Meet Cute is killer? If you’re a romance author, go study this book.

The murder scene investigation and all the twists and turns, including the red herring, did a good job keeping me guessing. I’m pretty skilled at clocking the murderer in these things (just ask Jenna, lol), but it took me a bit when I was reading this one—partially because there were just so many people who would justifiably want this bastard dead. The book also adheres to the rules of fair play in mystery: everything I needed was there, and we meet the killer early on. No ex machina reveals in the eleventh hour.

My final standout scene was the date, which balances sweetness with danger in a way I found rather intriguing and sumptuous. I feel like all suspenseful romances need a scene like this, charged with potential, passionate energy, and deadly reveals, and which dance on the edge of absolute peril.

Tiny Gripes: This book was originally posted to Substack, and it was published by the author, who understandably did not want to shell out hundreds of dollars for a copy edit. It still looks better than many books that did have an independent copy editor, because many of those editors are all garbage and puffery. Do I want to go in and fix a few typos and add a few commas? Yes. Do I always? Also yes. Not even close to a dealbreaker.

My one real gripe is that there are moments when there are section breaks, likely created from the story’s natural breaks when posted in bits to Substack, which remain in the novel version. Many of these section breaks feel unnecessary to me, as they do not signify a jump in time, subject, or POV, and in some cases, they break up a conversation. They almost feel like ad breaks in a television show. In any case, my recommendation for future Iphigenia novels taken down from Substack (such as the impending Thessaly Affair, which I’ve been reading in serial) is that these section breaks each undergo an assessment before inclusion. If they serve no purpose, I recommend their removal.

And before you say, “But Tara, each of those breaks represent a moment for you to put the novel down,” I’ll just say that I NEVER wanted to put it down… but when I did, I did so on the chapter breaks, not sections, lol. The chapters are all of a length that makes them quite conquerable in a “one more chapter” binge before sleep. In other words, the book was good. I liked it.

My Rating

Rarely for me, The Pearl Crucible is six stars—not only a flawless execution, but I want more books to be like it in endless ways, both large and small. Stop reading this and go get a copy.

But before you go! I’m co-hosting a podcast! I know, everybody’s doing it, but this one’s pretty fun. Jenna and I get together on Zoom and interview various romance authors, talk bookish drama and Bridgerton, and I’ve been loving it. This week, Tender and Tempting Tales posted our episode of Illicit Liaisons, and the guest is… Urna Semper! Yes, I know… synergy. Go give it a listen, then give Parrish (our Urna Semper) some love.

Want to support indie authors? Buy a book. Review it. Tell your friends. Word of mouth is gold.

Thanks for reading, folks, and as Parrish says: Always choose light.