With Cielo by her side, and the lessons Cielo teaches her – about magic, about love – Teo finds the strength to fully inhabit her so-called oddness and use it as her strength. Ultimately, it is Cielo’s fluidity – and, more importantly, Cielo’s constant and joyful embodiment of that fluidity – that helps Teo understand herself and stand firm in her own identity and power. Cielo, like the sky they named themselves after, “is always changing, but always the sky,” Teo observes. While one might momentarily wonder why Cielo’s (and, later, Teo’s) gender is so firmly bound to their physical form (there is an unsettling insistence on which presentation is a “boy’s” body and which is a “girl’s” body), overall, Capetta emphasizes that who we are is made up of far more than what parts we have or how we are perceived by an uncaring and ignorant world. Celio is an orphan, searching for the truth of their own origin story, a truth that is bound up in Teo’s quest. Cielo is man, woman, bird, mouse, raincloud, wind. But Teo’s magic is stubborn, and she needs a guide to help her use it if she has any hope of success.Įnter Cielo, a fellow strega whose gender expression surpasses masculinity and femininity to encompass both, and more. The scope of such an attack is more far reaching than she’d ever anticipated, and soon the lives of all streghe hang in the balance. Suddenly Teo must embark on a quest to uncover the motives behind such an attack, all while her father’s life, and the fate of her family, hangs in the balance. When an attack is made on her family – and all the patriarchs that make up the ruling families of her land, Vinalia – however, the world that Teo knew is thrown into chaos. Yet Teo shoulders her duty stoically, never dreaming that there might be more in store for her than the limited position that second daughter outlines. She doesn’t fit in with her brothers, either the violent and unstable Beniamo, or the studious, soft-hearted Luca, the scholar. It’s a job that keeps Teo isolated: she’s seen as odd, as compared to her older sister Mirella, who is the picture of feminine beauty and grace. Thieves who seek to steal from them, or disgruntled townspeople who would wish her family harm it is up to Teo to deal with them, to dole out punishment, and keep her family safe. As a strega, she contains the power of transfiguration, which she uses to punish her powerful family’s enemies, of which there are many. Teodora di Sangro is her family’s protector: a strega whose identity is hidden even to those she loves most.
The Brilliant Death is a fast-paced joyride of a novel, containing magic, intrigue, and a genderfluid love story in the midst of high-stakes secrets and courtly lies. ‘The Brilliant Death’ by Amy Rose Capetta
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