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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I think the writing is actually very flowery but in a good way - that being said it felt like the book was wayy to slow at times and the flowery language was good for a bit but again at times when things should've sped up - they didn't making me lose focus. I think this book would've been a good pick and read if I didn't have like 10 other books that came from my library holds - and then I could've taken my time reading it.
I liked the dynamics established - I just wished things happened quicker and there was a little more clarifty on what was going on politically and characterwise.
I liked the dynamics established - I just wished things happened quicker and there was a little more clarifty on what was going on politically and characterwise.
I was so happy when I heard this book was going to be published, as I had a lovely experience receiving feedback on my first ever novel draft from the author through the Author Mentor Match program. I was overjoyed when I found out it would be a Fairyloot adult fantasy subscription pick, and when I received mine, I teared up seeing the beautiful art of a FMC who not only has a chronic illness, but also looks like me. I knew this would be a book of my heart, and it certainly is. I loved the intricate worldbuilding and the honest depiction of Vasalie's struggles. I only wish I could have so many love interests like she does (as a writer, I personally would have handled the love quadrangle differently)--maybe if I was a dancer in a fantasy world instead of an attorney in Washington DC. I will eagerly await the sequel and continue to hold this book in my heart.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
There were a lot of elements of this book that I liked and a lot of elements of this book that I hated. The amount of times my rating of this book changed while reading it is impressive.
I hated that the main character is accidentally portrayed as dumb. For example, when she starts learning about Anton and realizes he’s actually a good person, she doesn’t question why a kind man would have a Glory Court. She just accepts it and is like hmm I guess he’s not a good guy. I wish she would just think about it even a little bit. It could be that she doesn’t want to give men the benefit of the doubt because of her trauma, but it’s not conveyed like that. (Also the Glory Court actually being a healing court. Yawn. Try being fucking original.)
When she switches from liking Copelan to liking Anton and she’s like Copelan only wanted me because of the way I make him feel about himself. Okay what? There’s literally no evidence to even remotely support this. Being like he only took care of me because he wanted to feel good about himself could be her trauma presenting itself, but it’s not described like that in the book. Every other time something is due to her trauma, the book is super fucking explicit about telling you that. Shoving it in our faces. As if the readers are stupid and can’t read between the lines. So it’s hard to give the book this generous interpretation (of she just thinks like that due to her trauma) because if it was due to her trauma, the book would tell us like it does every other time. If the author left wiggle room for interpretation, I would just accept this as Vasalie not being able to trust that some men do have good intentions due to her trauma. Generally this is just one example of the author thinking the readers are stupid. She also repeats information all the time. As if I forgot something I read about just a few chapters ago. She mentions that Morta was actually Mercy like 10+ times. And she repeats Morta’s lore all the time. Trust your readers to remember stuff please.
I hated how Vasalie only trusted Copelan with certain truths and not others only so that the plot could move in the direction that the author wanted it to. For example, she tells him about her father but not that she is being blackmailed into doing things she doesn’t want to do. I feel like she could have told him that she was being blackmailed without revealing who it was so that Copelan didn’t accidentally get her in trouble, but still reveal that small truth so that Copelan doesn’t just see her continually break the rules seemingly just because she wants to. In his perspective, she’s almost taking advantage of their friendship so that she can break more rules. And she doesn’t think about his perspective AT ALL!! All of their beef is from her withholding information which leads to misunderstandings. And she does not acknowledge it. She says “think what you want. You always have” BUT GIRL ITS BECAUSE OF YOU!!! ON PURPOSE!!!! She feels so betrayed by him, but never acknowledges that it’s completely reasonable for him to do that considering what he knows about the situation. She takes advantage of their relationship to get away with breaking rules, and then she gets upset when he notices and does something about it.
I was super intrigued by Illian and Vasalie’s relationship at first. But I quickly became disillusioned. We don’t see any evidence of the so called friendship that she had with Illian. All we see is Illian being this evil person, and I’m just left wondering how the fuck she became friends with him in the first place. I wish he was a more complex character that was sometimes good so that we would understand why she became friends with him in the first place. If their relationship was more distant and was just him protecting her and liking her dancing, it would make sense that she never really got to know him, so she didn’t know how bad he could truly be. But it’s described that they hung out a lot and would just talk all of the time. So what qualities did she find in him that she would want to form that friendship?
A tiny thing that kept bothering me was the way they cursed by saying “Morta’s teeth” because why her teeth?? Never explained idk.
There *were* things I enjoyed about this book lmao. I liked the portrayal of her chronic illness. It was really interesting, developed well, and actually affected her character and her actions. I liked the descriptions of the dancing and the costumes because I liked how it showed how truly creative Vasalie was. Generally I thought Vasalie was a really interesting character. I wish the writing would be consistently explicit or implicit about how she thinks that all men are bad due to her trauma. Either remove all the explicit parts and just hint at it, or add explicit parts explaining that she doesn’t question Anton’s Glory Court because she doesn’t want to give men the benefit of the doubt, and explain that she only thinks that Copelan only took care of her because he wanted to feel good about himself because she doesn’t want to believe that he actually just cared for her, and explain that Copelan didn’t betray her he just did what he believe was right with the information he had and that she only feels betrayed because she’s been betrayed horribly before. If I just assume this book is consistently explicit when talking about Vasalie’s trauma, then it accidentally portrays Vasalie as dumb because instead of not thinking about those things due to her trauma, she’s just not thinking about it because she’s not very intelligent—which I really think wasn’t the intent.
I think generally, this book had good ideas and then shitty editors.There was no need to be super explicit when talking about Vasalie’s actions being due to her trauma (left no room for a more generous interpretation). There’s no need to repeat information a ton of times. Illian needs to be developed more as a character. He needs good traits that Vasalie would have seen at first to then form a friendship (protecting her is not enough). If Illian was developed more as a character then his relationship with Vasalie could be more complex.
When she switches from liking Copelan to liking Anton and she’s like Copelan only wanted me because of the way I make him feel about himself. Okay what? There’s literally no evidence to even remotely support this. Being like he only took care of me because he wanted to feel good about himself could be her trauma presenting itself, but it’s not described like that in the book. Every other time something is due to her trauma, the book is super fucking explicit about telling you that. Shoving it in our faces. As if the readers are stupid and can’t read between the lines. So it’s hard to give the book this generous interpretation (of she just thinks like that due to her trauma) because if it was due to her trauma, the book would tell us like it does every other time. If the author left wiggle room for interpretation, I would just accept this as Vasalie not being able to trust that some men do have good intentions due to her trauma. Generally this is just one example of the author thinking the readers are stupid. She also repeats information all the time. As if I forgot something I read about just a few chapters ago. She mentions that Morta was actually Mercy like 10+ times. And she repeats Morta’s lore all the time. Trust your readers to remember stuff please.
I hated how Vasalie only trusted Copelan with certain truths and not others only so that the plot could move in the direction that the author wanted it to. For example, she tells him about her father but not that she is being blackmailed into doing things she doesn’t want to do. I feel like she could have told him that she was being blackmailed without revealing who it was so that Copelan didn’t accidentally get her in trouble, but still reveal that small truth so that Copelan doesn’t just see her continually break the rules seemingly just because she wants to. In his perspective, she’s almost taking advantage of their friendship so that she can break more rules. And she doesn’t think about his perspective AT ALL!! All of their beef is from her withholding information which leads to misunderstandings. And she does not acknowledge it. She says “think what you want. You always have” BUT GIRL ITS BECAUSE OF YOU!!! ON PURPOSE!!!! She feels so betrayed by him, but never acknowledges that it’s completely reasonable for him to do that considering what he knows about the situation. She takes advantage of their relationship to get away with breaking rules, and then she gets upset when he notices and does something about it.
I was super intrigued by Illian and Vasalie’s relationship at first. But I quickly became disillusioned. We don’t see any evidence of the so called friendship that she had with Illian. All we see is Illian being this evil person, and I’m just left wondering how the fuck she became friends with him in the first place. I wish he was a more complex character that was sometimes good so that we would understand why she became friends with him in the first place. If their relationship was more distant and was just him protecting her and liking her dancing, it would make sense that she never really got to know him, so she didn’t know how bad he could truly be. But it’s described that they hung out a lot and would just talk all of the time. So what qualities did she find in him that she would want to form that friendship?
A tiny thing that kept bothering me was the way they cursed by saying “Morta’s teeth” because why her teeth?? Never explained idk.
There *were* things I enjoyed about this book lmao. I liked the portrayal of her chronic illness. It was really interesting, developed well, and actually affected her character and her actions. I liked the descriptions of the dancing and the costumes because I liked how it showed how truly creative Vasalie was. Generally I thought Vasalie was a really interesting character. I wish the writing would be consistently explicit or implicit about how she thinks that all men are bad due to her trauma. Either remove all the explicit parts and just hint at it, or add explicit parts explaining that she doesn’t question Anton’s Glory Court because she doesn’t want to give men the benefit of the doubt, and explain that she only thinks that Copelan only took care of her because he wanted to feel good about himself because she doesn’t want to believe that he actually just cared for her, and explain that Copelan didn’t betray her he just did what he believe was right with the information he had and that she only feels betrayed because she’s been betrayed horribly before. If I just assume this book is consistently explicit when talking about Vasalie’s trauma, then it accidentally portrays Vasalie as dumb because instead of not thinking about those things due to her trauma, she’s just not thinking about it because she’s not very intelligent—which I really think wasn’t the intent.
I think generally, this book had good ideas and then shitty editors.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
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
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
J'étais très mitigée d'abord. Puis complètement soulée a la fin.
Le plot aurait pu être bon, avec une fille brisée par la prison et celui qu'elle pensait être son protecteur.
Une perspective d'amour avec son maître de danse, puis/et avec le 2eme roi, mais en fait tout était beaucoup trop éparpillé.
Beaucoup trop de pistes lancées, et ducoup aucune qui ne m'a vraiment touchée.
Je ne la shippais avec aucun des deux garçons.
Je déteste les triangles amoureux, mais étant donné que je n'étais ni attachée à l'un, ni à l'autre, je n'ai pas eu de mal a lire le livre.
Le plus gros soucis c'était l'héroïne. L'actrice l'a rendue débile. Particulièrement toute son histoire avec Copeland... A quel moment quelqu'un est aussi stupide ? Elle a juste voulu nous la mettre avec Anton et ducoup elle a baclé la rupture avec Copeland en l'accusant de juste l'aimer pour l'aspect physique et sensuel alors que ce n'était pas du tout ce qui était renvoyé avant. Soudainement elle le hait alors qu'elle même draguait en même temps le roi ?
Ensuite toute l'histoire de la Glory Court et Anton, et elle qui croit encore au fait qu'il ken les esclaves alors que c'est vraiment CLAIR que c'est juste lui qui fait semblant et en fait les sauve ?? En fait vraiment c'était trop cringe et pas du tout bien ficelé.
L'aspect verre et danse était sympa bien qu'il ne m'ait pas vraiment happé. Pareillement pour le fait qu'elle était handicapée (j'ai pas vraiment trouvé que c'était bien expliqué, ou qu'on ait assez appuyé dessus, c'était pas clair. Elle sort de deux and de prison où elle a pas pu se lever et elle remarche ?)
En plus on avait une héroïne décrite encore bcp trop de fois comme "small" "short" et un prota masculin comme coureur de jupons qui baise tout ce qui bouge un sourire dragueur a la bouche. On souffle.
Tout de même j'avais pas envie de lâcher le livre parce que le plot était intéressant.
Mais la fin était elle même décevante car sortie de nul part, fin bon je lirai pas le 2.
Note : 13,5/20
Le plot aurait pu être bon, avec une fille brisée par la prison et celui qu'elle pensait être son protecteur.
Une perspective d'amour avec son maître de danse, puis/et avec le 2eme roi, mais en fait tout était beaucoup trop éparpillé.
Beaucoup trop de pistes lancées, et ducoup aucune qui ne m'a vraiment touchée.
Je ne la shippais avec aucun des deux garçons.
Je déteste les triangles amoureux, mais étant donné que je n'étais ni attachée à l'un, ni à l'autre, je n'ai pas eu de mal a lire le livre.
Le plus gros soucis c'était l'héroïne. L'actrice l'a rendue débile. Particulièrement toute son histoire avec Copeland... A quel moment quelqu'un est aussi stupide ? Elle a juste voulu nous la mettre avec Anton et ducoup elle a baclé la rupture avec Copeland en l'accusant de juste l'aimer pour l'aspect physique et sensuel alors que ce n'était pas du tout ce qui était renvoyé avant. Soudainement elle le hait alors qu'elle même draguait en même temps le roi ?
Ensuite toute l'histoire de la Glory Court et Anton, et elle qui croit encore au fait qu'il ken les esclaves alors que c'est vraiment CLAIR que c'est juste lui qui fait semblant et en fait les sauve ?? En fait vraiment c'était trop cringe et pas du tout bien ficelé.
L'aspect verre et danse était sympa bien qu'il ne m'ait pas vraiment happé. Pareillement pour le fait qu'elle était handicapée (j'ai pas vraiment trouvé que c'était bien expliqué, ou qu'on ait assez appuyé dessus, c'était pas clair. Elle sort de deux and de prison où elle a pas pu se lever et elle remarche ?)
En plus on avait une héroïne décrite encore bcp trop de fois comme "small" "short" et un prota masculin comme coureur de jupons qui baise tout ce qui bouge un sourire dragueur a la bouche. On souffle.
Tout de même j'avais pas envie de lâcher le livre parce que le plot était intéressant.
Mais la fin était elle même décevante car sortie de nul part, fin bon je lirai pas le 2.
Note : 13,5/20
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
Amazing plot, wonderful characters, vivid descriptions, and a very compelling FMC. While it didn’t grip me right away, it definitely got me there by the half-way point. I really enjoyed it overall and will definitely be reading the sequel.
My two critiques:
1) The ending felt a bit rushed and threw me for a loop. Up until the last 40 pages the world isn’t very mystical, then suddenly the plot turns VERY mystical, and it was jarring.
2) In the first quarter of the book, the author squeezes in so much backstory and world building between lines of dialogue (I’m talking over a whole page’s worth), which makes the flow of conversation very clunky. An odd stylistic choice that thankfully settles down post-exposition.
My two critiques:
1) The ending felt a bit rushed and threw me for a loop. Up until the last 40 pages the world isn’t very mystical, then suddenly the plot turns VERY mystical, and it was jarring.
2) In the first quarter of the book, the author squeezes in so much backstory and world building between lines of dialogue (I’m talking over a whole page’s worth), which makes the flow of conversation very clunky. An odd stylistic choice that thankfully settles down post-exposition.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A Dance of Lies was a fast-paced and engaging debut!
The writing stood out to me compared to many other romantasy novels I’ve read recently, and I was particularly impressed by the vivid descriptions of the dance performances. I also appreciated that the romance wasn’t entirely predictable from the start (and I was happy that it ended up being with the character I was rooting for). And of course as someone with POTS, I was glad to see that representation included.
That being said, I did wish the story leaned more heavily into its fantasy elements. For much of the book, it felt closer to magical realism than full fantasy, which may work for some readers but isn’t my usual preference. I also found the FMC frustrating at times, though I’ll admit that made her feel more realistically flawed.
For some reason I went in thinking this was a standalone, so the ending definitely caught me off guard! It closes on enough of a cliffhanger that I’ll be interested to see where the series goes next.
Thank you to Del Ray for access to an eARC via NetGalley!
The writing stood out to me compared to many other romantasy novels I’ve read recently, and I was particularly impressed by the vivid descriptions of the dance performances. I also appreciated that the romance wasn’t entirely predictable from the start (and I was happy that it ended up being with the character I was rooting for). And of course as someone with POTS, I was glad to see that representation included.
That being said, I did wish the story leaned more heavily into its fantasy elements. For much of the book, it felt closer to magical realism than full fantasy, which may work for some readers but isn’t my usual preference. I also found the FMC frustrating at times, though I’ll admit that made her feel more realistically flawed.
For some reason I went in thinking this was a standalone, so the ending definitely caught me off guard! It closes on enough of a cliffhanger that I’ll be interested to see where the series goes next.
Thank you to Del Ray for access to an eARC via NetGalley!