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A review by pagepixie
A Court This Cruel and Lovely by Stacia Stark
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
I’m not usually one to be too brutal in a review and I’m going to try my best.
Let me start with, I WANTED to like this book. In fact, going into this I thought I was the perfect target audience for this book. I love fantasy romance books. I’ve read a fair amount of them. On top of that I have seen this book around a lot. I have seen it on lists next other titles I LOVED such as Trials of the Sun Queen, Blood & Steel, The Bridge Kingdom, etc.
But this book just did NOT do it for me. I will say I’m partly to blame because I felt it in the first few chapters but I thought to myself, “Hey, it’s the first book we’re just meeting these characters and everything is warming up. Keep going.” So I did. And I had to force myself to finish.
To be fair I’ll start with the pros. There was potential with this plot line. I see the merit of the ideas. In this world humans are born with magic but it is taken from them at birth as “sacrifices” to the gods and a tiny kernel of magic is returned to them once they turn 25. Sometimes babies retain their magic and they are considered “unworthy” by the gods and should that magic be discovered (at any age) those people are executed. Of course, we have a currupt King and everything is not what it seems. And our FMC is a “chosen one”.
The FMC has time magic, she can freeze time. I really liked this power. I haven’t seen it before so that was cool. And there was some found family vibes at one point.
However, despite the potential the writing felt dry. The characters felt empty. The plot felt like bullet points rather than a story.
Our FMC, Prisca, was just a shadow of some of the greatest fantasy romance protagonists out there. She was trying to be badass, and vengeful, and sassy, but came across irrational, naive at best and stupidly rash at worst. And yet every mistake she made ended up playing out for her and even fixing the biggest problems she was facing? She faced almost no consequences for the poor decisions she made because they ended up benefiting her in the most ridiculous ways.
Her entire world and identity and faith system is upended and a lie and she asked no questions. So we got no answers. But she does think about killing people a lot?
Our MMC. Not much to say. He’s a big, grumpy jerk who apparently fell in love with our girl because she killed two people? I guess. To be fair, he kind of puts up with a lot, but so did I.
The ending was pretty fun I guess. It’s a cliff hanger but I’m pretty sure I won’t read the next one. Unless I’m bored and just too curious XD
Anyway, unfortunately I could keep going with this, but I’ll leave at that.
Let me start with, I WANTED to like this book. In fact, going into this I thought I was the perfect target audience for this book. I love fantasy romance books. I’ve read a fair amount of them. On top of that I have seen this book around a lot. I have seen it on lists next other titles I LOVED such as Trials of the Sun Queen, Blood & Steel, The Bridge Kingdom, etc.
But this book just did NOT do it for me. I will say I’m partly to blame because I felt it in the first few chapters but I thought to myself, “Hey, it’s the first book we’re just meeting these characters and everything is warming up. Keep going.” So I did. And I had to force myself to finish.
To be fair I’ll start with the pros. There was potential with this plot line. I see the merit of the ideas. In this world humans are born with magic but it is taken from them at birth as “sacrifices” to the gods and a tiny kernel of magic is returned to them once they turn 25. Sometimes babies retain their magic and they are considered “unworthy” by the gods and should that magic be discovered (at any age) those people are executed. Of course, we have a currupt King and everything is not what it seems. And our FMC is a “chosen one”.
The FMC has time magic, she can freeze time. I really liked this power. I haven’t seen it before so that was cool. And there was some found family vibes at one point.
However, despite the potential the writing felt dry. The characters felt empty. The plot felt like bullet points rather than a story.
Our FMC, Prisca, was just a shadow of some of the greatest fantasy romance protagonists out there. She was trying to be badass, and vengeful, and sassy, but came across irrational, naive at best and stupidly rash at worst. And yet every mistake she made ended up playing out for her and even fixing the biggest problems she was facing? She faced almost no consequences for the poor decisions she made because they ended up benefiting her in the most ridiculous ways.
Her entire world and identity and faith system is upended and a lie and she asked no questions. So we got no answers. But she does think about killing people a lot?
Our MMC. Not much to say. He’s a big, grumpy jerk who apparently fell in love with our girl because she killed two people? I guess. To be fair, he kind of puts up with a lot, but so did I.
The ending was pretty fun I guess. It’s a cliff hanger but I’m pretty sure I won’t read the next one. Unless I’m bored and just too curious XD
Anyway, unfortunately I could keep going with this, but I’ll leave at that.