The Harpy Knight (The Chaos Constellation #2), by Sara Omer

Last year, I was gladly impressed by The Gryphon King, Sara Omer's debut novel that featured a rich South Asian inspired world building and an impressive character work, especially around Bataar and his conquest campaign; with The Harpy Knight, a direct sequel picking months after the ending of The Gryphon King, Omer takes the opportunity to give us a closer look to Nohra, another of the main characters that already shined in the previous book, but almost creating a really dark study of a character while Bataar's campaign puts its focus on the northern lands.

After an organic recap of book 1 (seriously, this is something I think almost every author should try to do in series), we are immediately drawn months after the ending, with Bataar's campaign moving to the North, hunting down the traitor Nassar; but if this is a book about anything is, it's about his stormy relationship with Nohra, how he needs her if he wants to maintain the control over Darya. A Nohra that hasn't forgiven him for the role he played in destroying part of his family, but who would also do anything in her hands to protect the rest of them, all while the world is in turmoil.

While The Gryphon King was a more general book, a story still woven around Bataar but introducing us to the rest of the world, Omer puts most of the narrative weight on Nohra's shoulder, creating the opportunity to analyze a really complex character. Not only we see her love for Qaira, but also what was initially hate against Bataar is slowly evolving into something different, almost like she cares about him. She's a fierce warrior, a fighter, but Omer can't let a character have a happy, simple life: we will see her in pain, under duress, almost reaching her breaking point. It's difficult not loving our bisexual disaster flying girl after this novel.
The rest of the cast is a bit overshadowed by Nohra's in-depth portrait created by this novel, but still have space to play their necessary roles in this book; still, it is worth to notice how Bataar's arc can steal the spotlight by moments, revealing more layers on what was already a grey character.

The previous book already had certain dark moments, but I was really glad to see how Omer embraced them, always using them in ways that could be more emotionally impactful; I found myself strangely attracted to the page, flying through this novel.

The Harpy Knight is a worthy sequel to the Gryphon King, a novel that reaffirms Sara Omer as an author on my auto-read list, especially as I love dark fantasies that put the effort into creating multi-layered, complicated characters with many faces, and with a setting far from the classical European fantasy. I'm really curious to see how Omer will conclude this trilogy, but I will be there!