The Reckless Oath We Made

This is a difficult book for me to review, because I loved roughly the first three-quarters of it, and then found myself completely frustrated by the end.

First, I loved the character development in this book. Zee, while not particularly likable, is an excellent depiction of how brutal the cycle of poverty can be. Reading her chapters felt intentionally suffocating. The compounding weight of an incarcerated late-father, an incapacitated mother, an unreliable sister, and the relentless pressure of providing for both herself and Marcus creates the perfect sense of inescapable collapse. Greenwood does an excellent job conveying how survival leaves little room for Zee to focus on long-term thinking, morality, or even self-respect, which makes her gravitation towards drugs, sex, and short-term fixes feel completely logical.

Gentry, meanwhile, represents a completely different vision of humanity. He is stable where Zee is chaotic, generous where she is self-preserving, hopeful where she is nihilistic. I loved how the medieval, chivalric language worked for his character. It easily could have come off as gimmicky, but Greenwood’s full commitment to his voice makes it feel sincere and lovable. Zee and Gentry feel like they come from entirely different worlds, as if they should not even be in the same book together. That may seem like a flaw for some, but I thought Gentry’s voice was a necessary and welcome relief from the heaviness of Zee’s side of things.

Another thing I loved about the book is its implicit commentary on what it means to be “normal.” Society marks Gentry as the strange one, yet he is consistently more capable, more emotionally regulated, and more reliable than Zee in nearly every way. As side characters, Rhys, Edrard, and Rosalinda all add valuable context of what it means to sit a various places along society’s spectrum of “normal”. This is especially true of Rhys, who acted as the sole voice of reason in some of the most preposterous scenarios.

Along those same lines, I appreciated the complexity of Zee and Gentry’s relationship. Similar to her work in All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, Greenwood presents a relationship that feels questionable on the surface, then forces us to interrogate whether that discomfort is fully justified or merely socially conditioned.

But then came the conclusion. I was incredibly frustrated by how events unfolded and by the choices both Zee and Gentry made. LaReigne is unequivocally awful. Zee behaves like a coward and does not deserve the grace Gentry offers her. Edrard and Rosalinda are completely innocent bystanders who are profoundly wronged, and that injustice is what upset me the most. At the same time, I can’t claim these outcomes were poorly written. Every character’s actions are painfully in character and I can see the logic in each decision. I suppose I can’t fault a novel simply because it refused to give me the ending I wanted. Not to mention that Gentry’s stint in prison resulted in some genuinely hilarious passages.

Book author: Bryn Greenwood