Reviews with content warning for Child death - The Foxglove King

The writing was more than serviceable: it was woven into the narrative, supporting it without taking away from it. Several times while reading I found myself enthralled by the words themselves. At other times, the writing was sufficient, technically lacking nothing but in want of something more.

Characters: 4.5⭐️/5

The characters were incredibly fun to read without feeling like caricatures. I loved Lore’s mind, loved to see her interact with her world in such a unique way. And, though the guard-and-prisoner-forced-together trope could feel tired, I appreciated the nuance that refreshed it. I liked reading about Gabe and his history. And our two male interests were distinct and individual, with Bastian, the King, contrasting strongly against Gabe.

Plot: 5⭐️/5

A spy born in the catacombs is traded to the King in exchange for a legal contract after she reveals herself as a deathwitch, a person who can manipulate the essence of death. How can you not love that plot? Or, at the very least, be enthralled by it. I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this plot, and I eagerly await the sequel.

Who Should Read This Book?

Fans of darker, but not dark, fantasy books
Fans of love triangles
Those looking for an interesting high fantasy read with a heavy focus on gods
Fans of fantasy romances where the love interests are forced together
Fans of an intriguing fantasy world

Content Warnings?

Drug abuse, murder, child death, death, death of parent, torture, blood, confinement,

Post-Reading Rating: 4.75⭐️/5

I would like to see the next book please.

Final Rating: 4.5⭐️/5

Content Warnings

hal00alex's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

It does necromancy very well. The spy stuff not so much.

Content Warnings

bluejayreads's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

I took a long time to get through this book, but it wasn’t the book’s fault. I got about halfway through it and then got in a reading slump where I didn’t feel like reading anything – even though I really enjoyed the first half of this book. But eventually I got over the slump and kept going, and of course I finished this book because there’s so much to love.

If you’ve been following this blog for more than a month or two, you probably already know that two of my favorite things for books to have are absurdly powerful protagonists and weird, creepy, and/or otherwise unique religions, the more fanatical the followers the better. So you will not be surprised to find a large part of what I liked about this book is that it has both of them.

I’m going to start by talking about the religion, because it’s foundational to the world and the magic system that our protagonist uses. First off, there is only one god, the god of light and life – because the rest of the pantheon is dead. The rotting corpse of the goddess of death and darkness, murdered by the god of light some centuries past, is buried underneath the city. Magic spills from the corpses of dead gods, which means the city is full of death magic, called Mortem – although not as much as you would expect, because an order of monks given the ability to interact with Mortem by virtue of a near-death experience are in charge of channeling it into stones and plants and otherwise keeping it from killing people. Which, despite the the fact that all of the names for people and magical forces and everything are terrible in this book, is a fantastic premise. “The gods were real and now they’re dead but their power isn’t” is one of my absolutely favorite fictional religion concepts. “Dead goddess’s corpse buried under the city” is a FANTASTIC premise. I love it.

And then we come to our protagonist Lore, who is not only the most powerful Mortem-wieldier since the necromancers were murdered, but was born with this ability for reasons that don’t get explained until the end but definitely involve our dead goddess. She grew up in a smuggler gang helping her moms move illegal drugs around the city, so she’s scrappy and fierce. But she’s actually not all that great at hand-to-hand combat and doesn’t fall into plucky YA heroine tropes. (Despite Lore being twenty-three, this whole book has a distinctly older-end-of-YA vibe.) She’s clever and fierce and powerful, but she’s also determined to survive and generally makes smart choices, which I really appreciate.

This book also gets an award for having the only love triangle I have ever read that I didn’t loathe. I actually kind of liked it. Lore is attracted to the generally kind, highly loyal, fiercely religious young monk who is assigned to both protect her and keep her from escaping while she navigates the court. She’s also attracted to the incredibly handsome bad boy Prince Bastian, who is powerful in his own way and maybe not as bad as everyone keeps telling her. There was a bit of triangle-ing and confusing pining, but I think there were really two things that kept me from hating it. One is that both guys seemed like reasonable choices, for different reasons – I didn’t feel like one was the obvious good choice and the triangle was just unnecessary complication. The other reason is that Lore refused to let the romance be any more than a background element. She is far too practical to let something silly like two hot guys distract her from what’s really important: Stopping the serial mass murder going on, unraveling the complicated plot of theoretical magic and court politics that may or may not be causing the serial mass murder, and most of all staying alive. Lore did have real human emotions and romantic feelings, but she was also relentlessly pragmatic and set on her own self-preservation, which I really loved about her.

The characters were solid, the story was delightfully twisty, the magic and religion were amazing, and the conspiracy, like a good conspiracy, turned out to be much darker and much wider-reaching than I anticipated. The only thing I didn’t actually like was the ending. It seemed far too straightforward after how complex and layered the rest of the book had been, and felt very anticlimactic. The love triangle didn’t even shake out very well because Lore did make a choice, sort of, but the nuanced relationships she had built with both men seemed to entirely vanish after the climax. Despite how much they had all been through together, they seemed cold and distant, like they were back to being total strangers again. On the whole, it felt unsatisfying.

A somewhat unsatisfying ending doesn’t negate how much I enjoyed the rest of the book, though. World, plot, characters, setting, religion, atmosphere, romance, character dynamics – up until the climax and resolution, they were all fantastic. It’s dark, it’s twisty, there’s a love triangle I didn’t hate, it’s got a dead goddess and creepy monks and creepier nuns and a massive conspiracy, and on the whole, it’s a very good book.

Content Warnings

lsiedlak's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

sarahyjackson's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

It took me a long time to get my bearings and feel swept up in the current of the story BUT the final act was propulsive and served major Galaxy Stern, mad woman energy. Eager for the second installment!

Content Warnings

mallorypen's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I wanted sooooo much more from this novel. The worldbuilding has the potential to be interesting, but pretty much from the word go, everything was just a little flat. Reincarnation, necromancy, plots against the heir by the king, powerful religious turmoil? It all sounds exciting, so why did I keep having to speed up the audiobook to get through it?

With a few exceptions, I mostly didn’t care about the three leads. Lore was whiny (maybe the narrator’s fault) and dramatic; Gabe was predictable; and Bastian swung hot and cold between boring and interesting.

The plot would have been 10x more interesting if the author didn’t belabor every point with extraneous detail. The language drifted in and out of purple prose, and the “like so much xxxx” phrase was horribly overused.

There were some interesting elements - the use of poison to keep people alive longer; the dead goddess still leaking power from her tomb; pseudo-zombie monks … but the plot just didn’t quite hit for me. I won’t be reading the sequels, and I just didn’t care about the predictable and tired love triangle.

Content Warnings

brandilion's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The pretty cover is what made me want this book. Then the thought of necromancy forced me to pull open the pages. I personally liked the book, but wasn't in love.

Content Warnings

More...