Reviews

A Fall of Princes by Judith Tarr

katmarhan's review against another edition

4.0

9/10
Nope, didn’t see those plot twists or that ending coming...
Excellent story, and I wonder if author [a:Judith Tarr|41194|Judith Tarr|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1277332209p2/41194.jpg] originally meant to end the Avaryan saga here. The next book was published 5 years later...

wealhtheow's review against another edition

3.0

In [b:The Hall of the Mountain King|18759739|In the Hall of the Mountain King|Allison Flannery|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1383877075s/18759739.jpg|26655384] a young man named Mirain proved his quality and became king of his late mother's kingdom. In [b:The lady of Han-Gilen|317300|The Lady of Han-Gilen (Avaryan Rising, #2)|Judith Tarr|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1259542326s/317300.jpg|2971204], his foster-sister seeks to help him become emperor. Now decades have passed, Mirain's empire is secure, and his heir has grown into a strong young man named Saraven. Saraven is poised to become a great prince, worthy of taking over the vast empire that his father has fought for. Then he meets the son and heir of his father's greatest foe, and his assurance that his family should rule the world is shaken. Saraven and Hirel fight and tease and mock each other, but eventually come to understand that in each other, they have found a perfect match. Unwilling to allow their fathers to destroy themselves in constant battle, Saraven and Hirel give in to a desperate plan hatched by even more desperate mages...

They magically change Saraven's sex, gender and sexuality, so that he becomes a woman capable of bearing Hirel's children, thus combining the two bloodlines. Saraven reads very differently when he becomes a woman; his relationship with Hirel, in which formerly he was the masterful one, changes as well. That part is frustrating, but I was astounded by how unexpected the sex-switch plot twist was. I don't think I've ever seen it before.

These books are both enthralling and frustratingly purple. The prose is so very stylized that one has to be in a particular mood for them.

coffeeandink's review

4.0

2013 reread. This was my favorite of the original trilogy when I first read it, and that hasn't changed. I didn't think the big plot twist was worked out well, and that hasn't changed, either.

The problem isn't that Sarevadin's sex change is WTF random, the problem is that he immediately identifies as she, she is heterosexual (when male Sarevadin claimed not to be very attracted to Hirel physically), and that she immediately becomes more indecisive and passive than she was. Now that I have it in ebook, I suppose I could run it through a gender-swap page and see if the problem is me reacting differently to women than to men, but I honestly don't think it is. They just do not feel like the same character to me.

I have much more mixed feelings about the gender politics than I used to, and some qualms about exoticization of Asanion.