A review by kaje_harper
Tournament of Shadows by S.A. Meade

4.0

I really enjoy historical stories, and especially appreciate a setting and period that are not the usual British Regency. (Nothing against Regencies, mind you, but this was refreshing.) The characters are interesting - two less-than-perfect spies, one Irish, one Russian, who meet and are attracted to one another on a road through the desert, somewhere in the region of Afghanistan. When they arrive at their destination, they find that their business in Bukhara will pit each of them against a mentally unstable Emir, who has a tendency to throw captives into a foul prison pit on a whim.

I appreciated the realistic maneuvring of the MCs with their failures as well as successes. The romance is slow, the disagreements plausible. I missed a little intensity in both the arguments and the tenderness - a bit more depth and time spent on those moments (like Gabriel's emotions when he learned a hard truth and changed boats) would have been welcome. The romance felt a little uneven, and I'd have liked to be more pulled into the emotional component of it. The love scenes are well done and the level of description was close to perfect, and the author manages a plausible HEA in a time when that was hard for two men to come by.