Presumably you, like me, are not familiar with The Iamos Trilogy. After a little bit of digging I discovered that it is a young adult LGBT sci-fi trilogy of novels (plus one novella!) by author Lyssa Chiavari. I'm not sure if Chiavari knows RoAnna Sylver personally or not, but I imagine it was pretty cool when RoAnna put out Another World: Songs Inspired By The Iamos Trilogy, to know that a creative work you created inspired someone else to create their own work in a completely different medium. Art begets art, and that's a wonderful thing about humanity.
As for the album itself, it's four tracks - possibly one for each book in the collection, I'm not sure - and something that is immediately apparent is RoAnna's voice. Specifically it's their vocal style, very folky and melodically complex, and often elevated with near-perfect harmonies.
The opening track, Another World, has something of a retro flavour to it. It sounds like something that could have come out in the 90s, sat on the CD rack next to Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill and Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club. Big synths, spacey arpeggios, and drum machines back up what is a pretty big and ambitious song. It flirts with sounding a bit cheesy but I think it's so sincere and well composed that it gets away with it.
Follow ups Blackbird, Fly Away and None Can Stop The Sun are more overtly folky. The former is pretty much entirely vocals and piano, much more restrained and eerie sounding, and again I really have to compliment the vocal harmonies here. It's probably my favourite song here.
None Can Stop The Sun is much lighter, and I think lyrically the first time something specific to the novels is referenced (unless "meantan gorm" is something that passed me by). I say it's lighter, but lyrically the lightness exists in contrast to the darkness, as the song explicitly makes references to war. I'm a bit torn on this one, generally. Where I think RoAnna's vocals have been top notch throughout, they're a little pitchy here to the point that I think it detracts a little. Still, they stick the landing as the final moments feature the most ambitious singing on the whole EP and they're note perfect.
Finally we close out with One World (Finale). Again, this seems to be directly referencing the contents of the novel as it opens with chanting in what I assume is an alien language. It's moody and hypnotic, optimistic sounding while still evoking a feeling of uncertainty. It's a decent closer, for sure.
Where I struggle a bit with the album, through all four tracks, is the production. It's really quite rough. Many of the instruments have a very MIDI sound to them, which honestly I found a bit jarring at first but I got used to. The bigger issue is the vocal recording. RoAnna's voice is so good, it's such a shame that the recording is so tinny and distorted throughout the album, and it does end up being a little distracting.
Still, it's not a deal breaker, and I love that this release exists at all. I love that someone who, as far as I can tell, is not a particularly well known author could inspire someone to the point of recording this EP.