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jayjayre's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I was pleasantly surprised by the book as a random pick from the library, I'd recommend this for a character-focused dive into an interesting, queer, mild fantasy world.
I found the small magic system to be well-integrated into the world of the story, and as a bonus, it was suitably plot-relevant. I appreciated the inclusion of queer characters and the diversity of gender, especially because it was simply a facet of the characters rather than a focus of the plot. I love fantasy worlds that don't transplant bigotry/systems of oppression from our world, this setting has a woman ruling, people can marry any gender, and there is a common pronoun used for some (nonbinary) characters, and that is all in the background.
I loved the characters in this book. I worried I wouldn't like several of them to start, but they grew on me, and a character I found very annoying upon first introduction ended up being my favorite by the end. I think this book would be even better on a second read, with the knowledge of where the characters' development leads coloring my perspective.
This book is not a good book to skim for action/adventure/mystery. The plot is a bit plodding with a predictable mystery and antagonists that are not well-developed. Thankfully, that is a relatively small part of the book, mostly sidelined for the very enjoyable character-heavy focus. It was rewarding to get to know the main characters, reveal their flaws, and see them grow to understand each other while they better themselves and their relationships.
(My rating is increased compared to my personal enjoyment of the book, as it's not my ideal subgenre. I don't detract stars for things aimed at a different target audience.)
I found the small magic system to be well-integrated into the world of the story, and as a bonus, it was suitably plot-relevant. I appreciated the inclusion of queer characters and the diversity of gender, especially because it was simply a facet of the characters rather than a focus of the plot. I love fantasy worlds that don't transplant bigotry/systems of oppression from our world, this setting has a woman ruling, people can marry any gender, and there is a common pronoun used for some (nonbinary) characters, and that is all in the background.
I loved the characters in this book. I worried I wouldn't like several of them to start, but they grew on me, and a character I found very annoying upon first introduction ended up being my favorite by the end. I think this book would be even better on a second read, with the knowledge of where the characters' development leads coloring my perspective.
This book is not a good book to skim for action/adventure/mystery. The plot is a bit plodding with a predictable mystery and antagonists that are not well-developed. Thankfully, that is a relatively small part of the book, mostly sidelined for the very enjoyable character-heavy focus. It was rewarding to get to know the main characters, reveal their flaws, and see them grow to understand each other while they better themselves and their relationships.
(My rating is increased compared to my personal enjoyment of the book, as it's not my ideal subgenre. I don't detract stars for things aimed at a different target audience.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Mental illness
Minor: Grief, Alcohol, Kidnapping, and Eating disorder
eidal's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Kidnapping and Violence
Minor: Alcohol and Pregnancy
keresian's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Okay listen - LISTEN. I stayed up til 2am to finish this. I was hooked. There's so much simmering behind the scenes with world building. The plot is phenomenal. The brilliant way Rowland has woven in gender and sexuality, love and familial bond. I love this book and this world - this is a tough one to beat for favourite of the year.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Blood, Alcoholism, Alcohol, and Drug use
Minor: Violence, Sexual content, and Death of parent
comradeant's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
I really enjoyed the description of Kadou’s anxiety. Lots of Political intrigue and royal court that made you feel like you were standing in the middle of it. Fantastic banter. I felt the ending was a bit rushed and felt that I deserved a bit more comfort after the slow burn I suffered through. Extremely well written and the character development was amazing. Either way I am fan and I enjoyed it but the last chapter made me feel like a hook up that woke up alone with “gas money” left for me on the nightstand.
Content Warnings
Minor: Gaslighting and Panic attacks/disorders
motherofdogs's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders
clairvoyant_weapons's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders
vanillatwilights's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders and Mental illness
Moderate: Kidnapping
Minor: Violence and Murder
ceruleanseas's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Sexual content, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Alcohol and Drug use
Minor: Grief
after_i_finish_this_chapter's review against another edition
emotional
funny
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, and Panic attacks/disorders
wardenred's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
A man could be good, but a prince? A prince could only be good enough. He could, if he tried his utmost, meet expectations. But they were far, far too high for anyone to be able to exceed them.
Well, this was an interesting experience! I really, really loved the romance and the two leads' character arcs. These parts of the books were handled absolutely beautifully. The slow burn? The gradual growth fueled by all the realizations? The way Kadou and Evemer just worked together? The themes of fealty? The way Kadou's anxiety was handled? Evemers entire personality? Aspects of so many of my favorite tropes woven together into one glorious tapestry, from enemies to lovers to bodyguard romance to fake dating? Perfection, really. In terms of all this, the book hit all of my buttons.
Everything around the romance, though... The more I read on and the closer I looked at the other aspects of the novel, the more weirdly artificial everything around the two main characters looked. On the surface, the Ottoman-inspired setting was brimming with detail, from infodumps about currency to the smaller stuff like all the descriptions of food and clothes. But somehow, most of it felt like digging deeper would reveal a glaring void rather than a larger iceberg. And hey, you know what, that is often indeed the case with SFF novels that aren't *about* worldbuilding! Half the magic of writing sometimes is about arranging the stuff you have in a way that makes readers feel that it goes so much deeper than it does. But here, those tricks just felt strangely obvious. Like almost everything about the setting mattered inasmuch as it affected the main characters and their budding relationship.
There were two aspects of the worldbuilding that I found genuinely interesting and thought-provoking. One, in a good way: the way inheritance works, the whole deal with body-fathers, how female rulers don't need to marry because everyone already understands their children are their own/belong to the dynasty, whereas male rulers have to marry to have the legal claim as fathers. This here is a lot of cool stuff. The other aspect, I'm more on the fence about, although I appreciate it: the active inclusion of nonbinary characters, or rather, the way it was handled. On one hand, it was incredibly cool that there were so many, that society is fully accepting of nonbinary characters, that there's an accepted third set of pronouns, etc! I love this! On the other hand, as a nonbinary person I disliked how all of them were basically shoved into the same category. There are men, women, and there's a third gender. Here are three boxes to sort yourselves into instead of two. Um. Call. What if someone doesn't fit into any of the boxes regardless? What about genderfluid people? It's inclusive on one hand, and constraining on another in a way I feel the treatment of nonbinary identities just shouldn't be. Idk. I'd rather stand under an umbrella than live in a box, personally.
Then there's the external plot, and, my. That's the whole reason this could never be more than a four-star read read for me. It was just so utterly shallow and at times silly! Even more so than with the worldbuilding, every bit of it glaringly, obviously, starkly existed to allow for hitting the romance plot beats at the right times. The villain might as well have been walking around with a big neon sign, "HELLO I'M THE BAD GUY," and the fact it took hundreds of pages to uncover the whole mystery/conspiracy says nothing good about plenty of the characters. In fact, it completely ruins the initially strong characterization of the female characters—Zeliha and Eozena—which is a damn shame. With Zeliha in particular, it's just so frustrating. She initially looked like a strong, capable, complex woman juggling a lot of important threads, but apparently, she just needed to listen more to her younger brother early on and the fact she didn't paints her in a rather strange light at the end. I kept waiting for some twist to occur and prove to me that the "big neon sign" was in a fact a red herring, but noooo.
The romance, though. The romance and its development. That sure deserves all the stars, just as the deep delves into both leads' inner worlds (I come from fanfic, okay, I'm a sucker for 500-pages character studies) and Rowland's amazing prose. So all in all, I liked the time I spent with the book—and picking apart all of its element to see the purpose of each was fun and educating in its own way!
Well, this was an interesting experience! I really, really loved the romance and the two leads' character arcs. These parts of the books were handled absolutely beautifully. The slow burn? The gradual growth fueled by all the realizations? The way Kadou and Evemer just worked together? The themes of fealty? The way Kadou's anxiety was handled? Evemers entire personality? Aspects of so many of my favorite tropes woven together into one glorious tapestry, from enemies to lovers to bodyguard romance to fake dating? Perfection, really. In terms of all this, the book hit all of my buttons.
Everything around the romance, though... The more I read on and the closer I looked at the other aspects of the novel, the more weirdly artificial everything around the two main characters looked. On the surface, the Ottoman-inspired setting was brimming with detail, from infodumps about currency to the smaller stuff like all the descriptions of food and clothes. But somehow, most of it felt like digging deeper would reveal a glaring void rather than a larger iceberg. And hey, you know what, that is often indeed the case with SFF novels that aren't *about* worldbuilding! Half the magic of writing sometimes is about arranging the stuff you have in a way that makes readers feel that it goes so much deeper than it does. But here, those tricks just felt strangely obvious. Like almost everything about the setting mattered inasmuch as it affected the main characters and their budding relationship.
There were two aspects of the worldbuilding that I found genuinely interesting and thought-provoking. One, in a good way: the way inheritance works, the whole deal with body-fathers, how female rulers don't need to marry because everyone already understands their children are their own/belong to the dynasty, whereas male rulers have to marry to have the legal claim as fathers. This here is a lot of cool stuff. The other aspect, I'm more on the fence about, although I appreciate it: the active inclusion of nonbinary characters, or rather, the way it was handled. On one hand, it was incredibly cool that there were so many, that society is fully accepting of nonbinary characters, that there's an accepted third set of pronouns, etc! I love this! On the other hand, as a nonbinary person I disliked how all of them were basically shoved into the same category. There are men, women, and there's a third gender. Here are three boxes to sort yourselves into instead of two. Um. Call. What if someone doesn't fit into any of the boxes regardless? What about genderfluid people? It's inclusive on one hand, and constraining on another in a way I feel the treatment of nonbinary identities just shouldn't be. Idk. I'd rather stand under an umbrella than live in a box, personally.
Then there's the external plot, and, my. That's the whole reason this could never be more than a four-star read read for me. It was just so utterly shallow and at times silly! Even more so than with the worldbuilding, every bit of it glaringly, obviously, starkly existed to allow for hitting the romance plot beats at the right times. The villain might as well have been walking around with a big neon sign, "HELLO I'M THE BAD GUY," and the fact it took hundreds of pages to uncover the whole mystery/conspiracy says nothing good about plenty of the characters. In fact, it completely ruins the initially strong characterization of the female characters—Zeliha and Eozena—which is a damn shame. With Zeliha in particular, it's just so frustrating. She initially looked like a strong, capable, complex woman juggling a lot of important threads, but apparently, she just needed to listen more to her younger brother early on and the fact she didn't paints her in a rather strange light at the end. I kept waiting for some twist to occur and prove to me that the "big neon sign" was in a fact a red herring, but noooo.
The romance, though. The romance and its development. That sure deserves all the stars, just as the deep delves into both leads' inner worlds (I come from fanfic, okay, I'm a sucker for 500-pages character studies) and Rowland's amazing prose. So all in all, I liked the time I spent with the book—and picking apart all of its element to see the purpose of each was fun and educating in its own way!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Confinement and Violence