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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
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:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Kidnapping, Murder, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail
This was a good quick read! The character building was fun but a little repetitive. I’m excited to see what the next book has in store for this blade welding MC.
DNF
Maybe it's the mood I'm in that's throwing me off but this book is boring. The plot isn't all that interesting and the politics are just something I've seen over and over again. I'm okay with fae fantasies but what set this book apart from the rest? Not much. I was more upset though about how I was 70 pages in and the "enemies" kissed on their first encounter (technically second, because this was a rematch) Which didn't even make sense to me, that her enemy who she struggled to track down. All it took was to ask for a rematch through some connections. Okay... Keera isn't a teenager nor is she in her twenties. Both her and The Shadow aren't human, I'm not sure how old she is but she's old enough to not be this cringey. It just didn't seem all that believable.
I also have to mention this, I get this book tackles hard themes. Which I'm okay with but my god. Keera is absolutely depressing to read as an FMC. She's CONSTANTLY drinking and self harming. As I said, I'm aware that this is the point. But it just makes it hard to read when her inner monologuing is her constantly battling between her depression and morals.
Maybe I'll come back to this, not sure.
Maybe it's the mood I'm in that's throwing me off but this book is boring. The plot isn't all that interesting and the politics are just something I've seen over and over again. I'm okay with fae fantasies but what set this book apart from the rest? Not much. I was more upset though about how I was 70 pages in and the "enemies" kissed on their first encounter (technically second, because this was a rematch) Which didn't even make sense to me, that her enemy who she struggled to track down. All it took was to ask for a rematch through some connections. Okay... Keera isn't a teenager nor is she in her twenties. Both her and The Shadow aren't human, I'm not sure how old she is but she's old enough to not be this cringey. It just didn't seem all that believable.
I also have to mention this, I get this book tackles hard themes. Which I'm okay with but my god. Keera is absolutely depressing to read as an FMC. She's CONSTANTLY drinking and self harming. As I said, I'm aware that this is the point. But it just makes it hard to read when her inner monologuing is her constantly battling between her depression and morals.
Maybe I'll come back to this, not sure.
Rating: 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑
Spice (scale below ↓): 🌶️🌶️
Tags: adult fantasy, assassin fmc, bisexual rep, alcoholism, political intrigue, enemies to lovers, romance sub plot, fae, found family
The first 30% are fine, good, even, but I noticed that my attention started drifting a lot after the first 3rd of the book. I continuously grabbed my phone to scroll through apps or drifted off chasing my own thoughts while reading. Most of this book is political intrigue, and I do find the plot setting interesting and well done, but the pace is slow. I was waiting ages for things to happen. A lot of that lull is supplemented with traveling or conversations between characters as they get to know each other, and normally that would be enough to sustain me as a character driven reader. However, the main characters in this series are all so tense and emotionally guarded that it takes ages before they even remotely open up to reveal anything personal. Essentially, there’s either a lot of sitting, talking and plotting political hypotheticals, or, when they’re not doing that, they’re traveling on horseback from A to B, talking and plotting political hypotheticals. So you have a slow plot and slow character development on top of that, which didn’t leave me with much to be excited about.
I do like the female main character, Keera. I thought her character concept was well done, even though assassin archetypes are by no means a novel idea. But I like that Keera isn’t some barely legal 18 year old, and what I like even more is that the author truly doesn’t pull any punches. Keera assassinates. Anyone. Anyone the crown wants her to eliminate, she eliminates. She doesn’t discriminate between gender nor level of guilt. And definitely not age, either. She has admitted that she’s eliminated innocent children in the past, if the king commanded it. That’s a pretty tough pill to swallow and not something I’ve seen before in fantasy books. Authors always try really hard to keep their morally gray characters within the “morally redeemable” margin. I don’t know if I find Keera redeemable, but Melissa Blair has found a really great balance between Keera’s actions vs her motivations, so that, in the end, you still firmly root for her.
There were also really sweet moments with Keera and her friend as the royal court. Their friendship is definitely one of the highlights for me, and it does a good job of showing a more vulnerable side to Keera’s layered character. And I like how we’re SHOWN the evidence of that vulnerability directly through on page scenes, instead of just point blank telling us about it in boring, expositional monologuing, like so many books in this genre tend to do.
What I really didn’t like is how the romance took a 180° turn. We went from hateful enemies for the entire book so far, to gentle caresses and whispered affections under the night sky literally within the span of a chapter. They’ve known each other a week and a half. It felt unearned and extremely underdeveloped at the moment it happened, because the love interest doesn’t actually KNOW her at that point. Especially considering how tense and guarded they both are, to think that they do a full 180° like that just because the love interest found out Keera DOES have a heart, feels incredibly inconsistent with their personalities. I mean, I’m glad they realize Keera is a person with feelings and all, but it takes more than discovering basic humanity in someone to start catching feelings, at least to me. It’s a real shame because I was thinking of praising how the narrative took its due time with the romance, letting it build on genuine respect and trust, actually allowing them to be genuine enemies for a while, rather than the insta horny nonsense we see in most books these days. But alas.
I actually found myself rooting for another character, but I know that’s not going to happen.
To me, “slow burn” means that the romantic feelings THEMSELVES creep up slowly, unexpectedly, built up with trust over time and little interactions that slowly chip away at them. “Slow burn” doesn’t mean they catch feelings after hanging out for barely 2 weeks and spend the next 300+ pages denying themselves and doing a poor job of hiding. Which is why this book doesn’t get my slow burn approval stamp.
There’s other character inconsistencies, like how Keera absolutely hates having her back touched, to the point where she yelped and flinched away as if stung by a scorpion the one time it happened on accident. But then, 20 pages later, she’s completely fine dancing a waltz, where she has multiple dance partners resting their hands on her back. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even notice. Almost like she forgot that she doesn’t like people touching her back.
I think that’s my overall consensus of this book. It’s inconsistent. Not in any big way, it’s not like those books that have glaring, jarring plot holes. The inconsistencies here are small, one here, one there. But that’s almost worse because this book had every potential to be really great if only it didn’t ruin the immersion by betraying its own laws in these little ways that add up and up and up. It’s such a waste, because here is this really intriguing character that we took the first 140 pages to carefully cultivate and build up bit by bit until we had a really strong sense for who they are, and it’s thrown out the window for the sake of pushing romance tropes too early in an underdeveloped dynamic between her and the love interest. Oh, what could have been.
Also, this is just a silly side note, the amount of times I read the phrase “crossed my/ his/ her arms” could’ve gotten even an elephant oblivion drunk if you were to take a shot every time you read it.
* * *
Spice Scale:
🔥 just kissing, no touching, no intimacy (Tithe, Ironside)
🌶️ kissing, some touching, no or subtly implied intimacy (Legendborn)
🌶️🔥 intense kissing, fade to black (The Queen of Nothing)
🌶️🌶️ kissing, touching, 1 tame explicit scene (ACOTAR)
🌶️🌶️🔥 1-2 tame explicit scenes (Fourth Wing, ACOMAF)
🌶️🌶️🌶️ multiple explicit scenes, dirty talk (Bride)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🔥 multiple very explicit scenes, some kinks (ACOSF)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ frequent intense explicit scenes, kinks (Souls Trilogy)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🔥 intense, kinks, more spice than plot (Haunting Adeline)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ almost/ every chapter, intense, extremely kinky
Spice (scale below ↓): 🌶️🌶️
Tags: adult fantasy, assassin fmc, bisexual rep, alcoholism, political intrigue, enemies to lovers, romance sub plot, fae, found family
The first 30% are fine, good, even, but I noticed that my attention started drifting a lot after the first 3rd of the book. I continuously grabbed my phone to scroll through apps or drifted off chasing my own thoughts while reading. Most of this book is political intrigue, and I do find the plot setting interesting and well done, but the pace is slow. I was waiting ages for things to happen. A lot of that lull is supplemented with traveling or conversations between characters as they get to know each other, and normally that would be enough to sustain me as a character driven reader. However, the main characters in this series are all so tense and emotionally guarded that it takes ages before they even remotely open up to reveal anything personal. Essentially, there’s either a lot of sitting, talking and plotting political hypotheticals, or, when they’re not doing that, they’re traveling on horseback from A to B, talking and plotting political hypotheticals. So you have a slow plot and slow character development on top of that, which didn’t leave me with much to be excited about.
I do like the female main character, Keera. I thought her character concept was well done, even though assassin archetypes are by no means a novel idea. But I like that Keera isn’t some barely legal 18 year old, and what I like even more is that the author truly doesn’t pull any punches. Keera assassinates. Anyone. Anyone the crown wants her to eliminate, she eliminates. She doesn’t discriminate between gender nor level of guilt. And definitely not age, either. She has admitted that she’s eliminated innocent children in the past, if the king commanded it. That’s a pretty tough pill to swallow and not something I’ve seen before in fantasy books. Authors always try really hard to keep their morally gray characters within the “morally redeemable” margin. I don’t know if I find Keera redeemable, but Melissa Blair has found a really great balance between Keera’s actions vs her motivations, so that, in the end, you still firmly root for her.
There were also really sweet moments with Keera and her friend as the royal court. Their friendship is definitely one of the highlights for me, and it does a good job of showing a more vulnerable side to Keera’s layered character. And I like how we’re SHOWN the evidence of that vulnerability directly through on page scenes, instead of just point blank telling us about it in boring, expositional monologuing, like so many books in this genre tend to do.
What I really didn’t like is how the romance took a 180° turn. We went from hateful enemies for the entire book so far, to gentle caresses and whispered affections under the night sky literally within the span of a chapter. They’ve known each other a week and a half. It felt unearned and extremely underdeveloped at the moment it happened, because the love interest doesn’t actually KNOW her at that point. Especially considering how tense and guarded they both are, to think that they do a full 180° like that just because the love interest found out Keera DOES have a heart, feels incredibly inconsistent with their personalities. I mean, I’m glad they realize Keera is a person with feelings and all, but it takes more than discovering basic humanity in someone to start catching feelings, at least to me. It’s a real shame because I was thinking of praising how the narrative took its due time with the romance, letting it build on genuine respect and trust, actually allowing them to be genuine enemies for a while, rather than the insta horny nonsense we see in most books these days. But alas.
I actually found myself rooting for another character, but I know that’s not going to happen.
To me, “slow burn” means that the romantic feelings THEMSELVES creep up slowly, unexpectedly, built up with trust over time and little interactions that slowly chip away at them. “Slow burn” doesn’t mean they catch feelings after hanging out for barely 2 weeks and spend the next 300+ pages denying themselves and doing a poor job of hiding. Which is why this book doesn’t get my slow burn approval stamp.
There’s other character inconsistencies, like how Keera absolutely hates having her back touched, to the point where she yelped and flinched away as if stung by a scorpion the one time it happened on accident. But then, 20 pages later, she’s completely fine dancing a waltz, where she has multiple dance partners resting their hands on her back. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even notice. Almost like she forgot that she doesn’t like people touching her back.
I think that’s my overall consensus of this book. It’s inconsistent. Not in any big way, it’s not like those books that have glaring, jarring plot holes. The inconsistencies here are small, one here, one there. But that’s almost worse because this book had every potential to be really great if only it didn’t ruin the immersion by betraying its own laws in these little ways that add up and up and up. It’s such a waste, because here is this really intriguing character that we took the first 140 pages to carefully cultivate and build up bit by bit until we had a really strong sense for who they are, and it’s thrown out the window for the sake of pushing romance tropes too early in an underdeveloped dynamic between her and the love interest. Oh, what could have been.
Also, this is just a silly side note, the amount of times I read the phrase “crossed my/ his/ her arms” could’ve gotten even an elephant oblivion drunk if you were to take a shot every time you read it.
* * *
Spice Scale:
🔥 just kissing, no touching, no intimacy (Tithe, Ironside)
🌶️ kissing, some touching, no or subtly implied intimacy (Legendborn)
🌶️🔥 intense kissing, fade to black (The Queen of Nothing)
🌶️🌶️ kissing, touching, 1 tame explicit scene (ACOTAR)
🌶️🌶️🔥 1-2 tame explicit scenes (Fourth Wing, ACOMAF)
🌶️🌶️🌶️ multiple explicit scenes, dirty talk (Bride)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🔥 multiple very explicit scenes, some kinks (ACOSF)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ frequent intense explicit scenes, kinks (Souls Trilogy)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🔥 intense, kinks, more spice than plot (Haunting Adeline)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ almost/ every chapter, intense, extremely kinky
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a lot better than I was expecting it to be! The characters were intelligent and well written and I liked the descriptions. There’s definitely some heavy content so check your TWs but I liked the main romance and I really enjoyed the protagonist. Her struggle was well written and her morality was complex and multilayered. I actually just really really liked this! I wasn’t super invested which is why it didn’t get 5 stars but it was really interesting and I intend to finish the series
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Mental illness, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
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
4.5 stars
Despite a slow start, this book turned out to be surprisingly good. I discovered it through a Goodreads reading challenge, and once the plot picked up, I was completely hooked—only for it to end on a cliffhanger!
Despite a slow start, this book turned out to be surprisingly good. I discovered it through a Goodreads reading challenge, and once the plot picked up, I was completely hooked—only for it to end on a cliffhanger!
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was fine! Like just fine. It was very formulaic, but I kind of needed a book like this after really struggling with my last read. The story was entertaining and Keera as a character. The plot was pretty predictable and the pacing was all over the place. I also thought the writing and dialogue was kind of choppy at times. I will continue the series because I had fun, but this definitely wasn’t anything extraordinary.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes