Cyndere's Midnight by Jeffery Overstreet

Cyndere is a young Princess who has lost nearly everyone who ever mattered to her. Her bold, seafaring father died when his ship capsized in a violent storm at sea. Her brother, an accomplished musician, died in an attack by Beastmen. And her husband, the Lawyer Deuneroi, is also killed by Beastmen when he goes to the aid of the fellow house of Abascar, which was recently destroyed by fire and collapse.

The only person to survive was Deuneroi's bodyguard, a man named Ryllion, who survived almost unscathed when Deuneroi was killed. Thought dead, he pulled himself out of the ruins of the house, and was promptly sent to the nearest garrison to the beastmen, with the orders to reduce their numbers. He chafes under this duty, feeling that he may have once been buried literally, but now he feels buried metaphorically under his duty to kill as many Beastmen as he can.

But Cyndere has come to the same Garrison with her friend, Emerienne, a sisterly who was Cyndere's closest childhood friend. They have come here to set fire to a Remembrance Tree in Deuneroi's name, to give Cyndere a small measure of peace after the death of her husband. But Cyndere has a plan she cannot even tell her closest friend: She and Deuneroi had a plan to heal the Beastmen and make them human once more, and she has really come in pursuit of that goal.

Jordam is a Beastman, one of four brothers. His oldest brother, Mordafey, is unsatisfied with the amount of power he has now and has a plan to gather himself more, one that involves not only Jordam, but his two other prothers Jorn and Goreth. Unbeknownst to the others, though, Jordam was touched by Auralia, a worker in colors, and is much less feral and prone to violence than the others. He also suffered an accident that broke off part of his scalp and has found it easier to think since then. But when Jordam and Cyndere finally meet, it has profound implications for both of them... and for the houses of Abascar, the House of Cent Regus (that of the beastmen) and Cyndere's own house of Bel Amis.

As the Beastmen go to war against the Garrison and the Houses of Bel Amis and Abascar, Ryllion reveals his treachery, working for the seers who almost completely run the people through their beliefs. And the seers have access to potions that seem the same as the essence that makes the Beastmen what they are. Is the tragedy of Cent Regus about to repeat itself? Or can Cyndere and Jordam prevent the tragedy? And is Jordam, himself addicted to Essence, able to overcome his addiction by using the colors Auralia left behind?

This was a good, if confusing novel, since when I picked it up I was unaware that it was the sequel to another novel, "Auralia's Colors". And aside from the many references to that novel (for example, House Abascar was destroyed in that novel), this one is able to stand on its own. If anything, Jordam is the real star of the book, in that he is the one who risks the most to warn the King, Cal-raven, of Abascar, of the attack by the Beastmen of Cent Regus, and that the seer Pretor Xa is allied with the Beastmen who will be attacking.

He also struggles to overcome his addiction to Essence, believing it to be bad, and struggles to use Auralia's colors to calm himself when he is craving essence. In the end, he is saved by his brother Jord's killing of the Sopper Crone, the woman who doles out essence. In comparison to Jordam, Cyndere, the putative heroine of the book, comes across as dangerously naive, even though she does redeem herself by learning better during the course of her association with Jordam.

The Beastmen of Cent Regus, while being mean, brutal and nasty, also evoke some sympathy when we learn how they ended up this way, and distaste falls on Pretor Xa and the seers as being ultimately responsible for the Beastmen. But by the end of the book, neither the Beastmen nor the seers are truly defeated, but there is hope that these threats will come to an end in the next book, to be called "Cal-Raven's Ladder", and I may be around to read it.