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Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch

1 review

friends2lovers's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny medium-paced

4.0

“It just feels a bit ridiculous.”
“Ah well, that’s the human condition right there, ain’t it? Lot of it feels a bit ridiculous. But it turns out sublime if you let it.”

This is 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. I was having a stressful week when I read this and had a hard time mustering up the time and energy to read, which affected my enjoyment. I suspect if I had been in a better head space, I would have appreciated this a lot more.

For a standalone fantasy, I thought the worldbuilding was done well. The politics made sense, the magic was unique and interesting, and the scope of the conflict was large enough to have stakes, but small enough to resolve in under 400 pages. The pacing in the first half was slow, but it picks up in the second half.

The book is told in 3rd person from Fenn’s POV only, which is necessary because Morgrim has secrets that aren’t revealed until the plot requires them to be. While I would have liked to see some of Morgrim’s POV to get to know him better, I think being with Fenn the whole time was the right choice. Fenn is an underdog and an ‘outsider’ discovering magic for the first time, just like the reader, so he’s easy to root for and connect with. There were a couple of times in the story where Fenn’s humiliation was just so palpable, my heart broke for him.

The one criticism I have about Fenn is his general manner and style of speaking (is “diction” the right word for that?). I’m having trouble placing the accent (Cockney? Yorkshire?), but it’s obviously meant to give the impression that he’s of a lower class than Morgrim, who speaks more smoothly and properly in comparison. It was just difficult to read sometimes, like the word choices or sentence structure interrupted the flow. It also made him come across as too much of a goofball at first. As the story progresses, this was less of an issue, but it took a long time for me to get over the awkwardness of it.

Overall, a very worthwhile read and I look forward to trying Welch’s other MM fantasy romance, Salt Magic, Skin Magic.

______________

Endnotes

Series: None, this is a standalone

Genre: M/M Fantasy Romance

Setting: A completely fictional fantasy world

Hero: Fenn Todd, vagabond, brown & gray close-cropped hair, age 46

Hero: Morgrim, the court sorcerer, neat black beard, long black hair, age 43

Tropes: forced proximity, opposites attract, class difference, hero in peril

Format: Kindle ebook borrowed from Libby, no copyright page, released September 22, 2021

Length: 369 pages, 100k words (I got these numbers from Kobo, which is where I get all my page and word counts. I have no idea how Amazon came up with 261 pages!)

Read Date: February 13, 2022

Heat Index: 3.4 🌡️🌡️🌡️

Heat Notes:

4 full, moderately explicit sex scenes. Sex acts include 69, spanking, light dom/sub.

Content Warnings

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