"Citadel"

C. M. Alongi has published short stories and novellas in the sci-fi and fantasy genres and talks about sci-fi, fantasy, and horror through a feminist lens on her YouTube channel.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Citadel, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Citadel is a letter that Olivia writes to her dead boyfriend:

Dear Elias,

They’re finally letting me back into the forest. They wouldn’t let me go on expeditions after you died out there. I overheard them whispering about me wanting to join you. And yes, I would love to see you again. If you and the rest of the town turn out to be correct about Purgatory and the Hundred-Faced God, that would be phenomenal. But I don’t believe in that. There’s no scientific evidence suggesting any of that is real. So getting myself killed by demons or a menziva or anything else would be pointless.

I wonder about it, though. You never wanted to go to the forest, and I hate that they made you. That they forced you anywhere near those monsters and got you killed. I wish I’d been there with you.

Love,

Olivia

This is actually a pretty good insight into the rest of the book. One of the main conflicts is Olivia dealing with her grief over losing Elias to this centuries-long conflict between humanity and the “demons” of the Flooded Forest. There’s a religious component to this war: people are taught that they used to be angels until they rebelled against the Hundred-Faced God, lost, and were banished to the planet Edalide, losing their immortality and angelic attributes. In order to make their way back to God, they have to purge the entire forest of “demons.” Until then, any human who dies is stuck in Purgatory.

Olivia, being an atheist, has a few problems with this, but she can’t share them out loud. When her mother Sarai tried that, she was executed. But she can’t stay silent forever, as she figures out a few chapters later that the “demons” are not brainless animals from Hell but are actually sentient people.

Now, losing your boyfriend to a “demon” is one thing. That’s like losing them to a bear. But finding out that the creature who killed your lover is capable of intelligent thought and morality, that’s something else altogether. Which is why Olivia decides to go into the Flooded Forest alone to get answers, which she does around page 135.

She also mentions a “menziva.” That’s a type of predator. Think alligator but bigger. She ends up face-to-face with one of those later in the book, as well as several other dangerous creatures of the Flooded Forest.

This Page 69 Test is really fun! I’ll have to try it on some future reads.

Visit C. M. Alongi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue