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A review by a_reader_obsessed
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
3.0
3.5 Stars
My reading this year has not gone as planned. I’m not sure if my tastes have changed or I’m too distracted by other things to really focus on what used to be my top comfort entertainment, but where this book should’ve grabbed me from the start, alas, it took me about three times as long to finish.
What I will say is that this is a very very complex historical magical England, and despite such complexity and hierarchy and legend, things are still nebulous, things still need to come to fruition, and it’s apparent that there’s a lot of unanswered questions left for this planned trilogy.
Beware a snail’s pace not only in the plotting and progression but also the romance. There are some seriously ginormous assholes in this story that don’t quite get any satisfactory and deserved ass kickings. Pretty much every side character is a jerk, and the sexism is infuriatingly rampant though I suppose that goes along with the time frame this is set in.
Overall, the slow burn love story between Robin and Edwin is quite good. Surprisingly, for such a mainstream MM, it is remarkably explicit. The main characters have their personal problems and long standing issues that obviously shape their interactions and reactions, all of which I felt stymied a lot of what they go through as they race against time to solve Robin’s horrible curse as well as the central mystery why a fellow employee of the mysterious magical Assembly has gone missing. The blurb isn’t wrong. What they uncover is quite a serious and sinister thing. This ends well enough for Robin and Edwin, and it remains to be seen how they and their fellow cohorts thwart the nefarious plot set in motion over the next two books that have yet to be released/written.
My reading this year has not gone as planned. I’m not sure if my tastes have changed or I’m too distracted by other things to really focus on what used to be my top comfort entertainment, but where this book should’ve grabbed me from the start, alas, it took me about three times as long to finish.
What I will say is that this is a very very complex historical magical England, and despite such complexity and hierarchy and legend, things are still nebulous, things still need to come to fruition, and it’s apparent that there’s a lot of unanswered questions left for this planned trilogy.
Beware a snail’s pace not only in the plotting and progression but also the romance. There are some seriously ginormous assholes in this story that don’t quite get any satisfactory and deserved ass kickings. Pretty much every side character is a jerk, and the sexism is infuriatingly rampant though I suppose that goes along with the time frame this is set in.
Overall, the slow burn love story between Robin and Edwin is quite good. Surprisingly, for such a mainstream MM, it is remarkably explicit. The main characters have their personal problems and long standing issues that obviously shape their interactions and reactions, all of which I felt stymied a lot of what they go through as they race against time to solve Robin’s horrible curse as well as the central mystery why a fellow employee of the mysterious magical Assembly has gone missing. The blurb isn’t wrong. What they uncover is quite a serious and sinister thing. This ends well enough for Robin and Edwin, and it remains to be seen how they and their fellow cohorts thwart the nefarious plot set in motion over the next two books that have yet to be released/written.