What Harmony Forgot by Aurelia Tessar

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BLURB

She is forty-two, exceptionally good at what she does, and not remotely interested in starting over.

Cassia Alarian has spent thirty years mastering resonance: the ability to perceive the forces moving through buildings, communities, and people, and to restore harmony when those forces fall out of balance.

She isn't a chosen one discovering her powers. She's already a master of them.

Which makes it particularly inconvenient when a new machine begins accomplishing in hours what has taken her a lifetime to learn.

Worse, the machine works remarkably well.

Only Cassia senses what its perfect results seem to be missing.

Finding an explanation means leaving the certainty of her profession behind and traveling with Tristan Naveran, a forty-seven-year-old builder whose expertise is very different from hers, and whose company gradually becomes far more important than either anticipated.

Their investigation leads toward old structures, contradictory records, and a history of resonance that does not resemble the one Cassia has spent her life studying.

And the more she learns, the more unsettling the question becomes:

What if the machine isn't misunderstanding harmony?

What if everyone else already did?

For readers looking for grown-up fantasy about grown-up people: What Harmony Forgot combines a layered resonance-based magic system, a 42-year-old expert heroine, travel and discovery, hidden history, philosophical mystery, and a healthy slow-burn romance between two competent adults who actually like and respect each other.

REVIEW 

 

What Harmony Forgot by Aurelia Tessar
My rating: 4.25 of 5 stars

Thank you to the author for the gifted e- arc via Book sirens. All opinions are my own.

BOOK: What Harmony Forgot by Aurelia Tessar (Format, ebook Book Sirens ARC)

FIRST IMPRESSION
At first glance the book had a similar feel to a book I read recently, the prose creating the imagery of the Conservatory and The Order who oversee the population of the continent. The pace was slow in describing Cassia's life, although by chapter 3 Cassia has left the seclusion of the Conservatory at Kahevon to go investigate the 'mechanical Resonator'in Aivera, and you learn more about the world the story is set in.
TITLE: What Harmony Forgot   
Author: Aurelia Tessar
Status: Read | Rating: 4.25/5 ⭐
Progress: Read [481] of [481]  
✨ Mature Leads: 42yo FMC & 47yo Widower MMC
✨ He Falls First: Beautiful, realistic connection
✨ Grief & Growth: The emotional passages on loss.
✨ Ultra Slow-Burn: Organic, character-driven romance
✨ Academic/Order Intrigue: Cloistered scholar learning the truth
✨ Resonance Mechanics: Unique physics-based world principles
QUICK IMPRESSION  
The book starts slow, laying down the worldbuilding with descriptive prose that evokes an atmospheric setting so much that it doesn't feel like just a backdrop; it's an active, participant within the story.
QUICK NOTES  
(view spoiler)[
• 37%: key scene note:
For seven years, every imagined future had seemed to require some subtraction from the life that came before it. As though loving again would revise what Neria had been to him, or place another woman into a space whose shape had been made by someone else. But Cassia did not occupy that space. She had made one of her own. Neria remained where she had always been: in the window seat he had built poorly the first time, in the worn leather around his wrist, in seven years of choices made partly because she had once been there to alter him. Wanting Cassia changed none of it.
• My thoughts
I really like how this was written, the passages that I connected more with were the ones regarding grief, people think that we replace those who we've loved and lost, but, in reality we're forever changing and adapting, so we make room for the new love, while quietly grieving those who still have a place in our hearts. Therefore I connected with Tristan first, rather than Cassia our main protagonist.
(hide spoiler)]
QUOTES TO KEEP  
• not a raw grief being carried carefully so it would not spill. Neria remained present in him without requiring him to walk carefully around the loss, the grief cherished and tuned over years into a shape he could hold without flinching.   
• "I have not stopped grieving her. Not for a single day. I do not think grief is something you finish. I think it is something you learn to carry."  
• "Every experience alters the field that receives it. Materials weather. People change. Relationships accumulate history.” —Principles of Harmonic Study, II. The First Law of Restoration  - Chapter 16 heading
KEY CHARACTERS  
• Cassia Alarian: A Sixfold Master of the Conservatory at Kahevon.. forty-two years old. Hazel eyes, chestnut hair. The Order had shaped nearly everything that came after childhood.,  Her understanding of relationships has been managed, the Conservatory do not encourage relationships. Desire could be managed to prevent obligation. The Order described these customs as protection against outside influence. 
• Tristan Naveran: Builder. The Aiveran Council had asked for an independent assessment from someone who understood how buildings, workshops, and communities actually functioned, he is a widow but in the relationship, he falls first]  
• Harmonic Resonance: Belief system.The one thing that features heavily in this book other than the two main characters that tell the story, is the actual anomaly occuring that Cassia and Tristan are sent to investigate. The basis of the Resonator machine built to fill the gap the Order has in supplying the few Master Tuners to areas in need. I found this fascinating, especially in relation to the current unharmonious state  of the world that it felt in itself a character within this story.
(There are lots of sub characters that the MFC & MMC meet and interact with, but the book is focused mainly on Cassia and Tristan's investigation into the Resonators effect on the townships it's been activated in)
FINAL THOUGHTS  
• The Harmonious vibes:  This is a slow paced book, it took a good half of the book for me to understand the overall world, but the word's flow and you fall into the storyline (slowly) as Cassia and Tristan Walk from valley Town and Hamlet trying to establish what the 'Resonator' is changing, for me it made me think about how we change and adapt to the unseen influence of the world around us, and maybe we could do with some retuning in our world (how I wish it were that simple).
• The discord I felt:I signed up for the book because it sounded interesting, and part of the description was: "a physics-inspired magic system, and slow burn sensual fantasy romance but the word magic system for me was an incorrect description, I haven't seen any evidence of magic systems, no one is performing magic or incantations...YET (Who knows what book 2 will bring). A more accurate description would be to describe it as a belief system, and infact when I was researching (googling harmonic resonance, and the author actually states her story has elements that are based on physics... NOTE: I was more artistic rather than science based at school, I only completed Biology, hence ne needing to Google stuff I wanted to see if it was current to the real world) this is a confirmed science, so rather than magic, I think 'belief system' is a better description for me at least. And as to the slow burn romance, I'd say it's extremely slow ( not in a bad way), I really liked how their relationship developed. One encounter so far (as writing this I'm at 78%) I'm not saying there isn't any connection between our two main characters, but the storyline really didn't follow through with the romantic relationship after the initial event at 51%, (Cassia's ingrained obedience to the order and her assignment being forefront to her)  but after finishing, I would say it takes the whole book for Cassia to fully understand her connection to Tristan.
• Verdict: I recommend using the contents list and going to the back of the book where I found the APPENDICES. I wish authors would put these at the FRONT OF THE BOOK.
The book is a good solid 4.25 ⭐ for me. I think reader's who love atmospheric academia/ epic fantasy (this story is only just revealing itself) will probably enjoy it more. I enjoyed the writing style (some similar books that are in similar genres I've found that the overly descriptive prose took me away from the actual storyline) this book carries the atmospheric world building while revealing to Cassia her cloistered life amongst the Order isn't the complete truth. As Cassia learns and grows, her understanding changes along with her feelings for Tristan. We leave the book understanding that the order has controlled knowledge, and suppressed any form of unverified innovation for decades.
What the author intends book 2 to reveal is something that I am willing to follow Cassia and Tristan as they discover it.

View all my reviews

AUTHOR BIO 

Aurelia spends much of her time traveling or living internationally, collecting observations, photographs, books, handmade objects, and entirely too many new questions along the way.

She has a particular affection for old buildings, beautiful materials, things made by hand, objects with visible histories, long epic fantasies, and places that reward looking twice.

Find out more on Aurelia Tessar official website: 

for new behind-the-scenes book details, magic system lore, and perhaps even a bonus chapter…! As well as news on book two and other works coming soon.

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