A review by tessisreading2
Tournament of Shadows by S.A. Meade

Did not finish book. Stopped at 15%.

Loved the setting and set-up, hated the romance plot, which felt very redolent of slash fanfiction power dynamics. It was going so well to begin with - our narrator has been sent to Bukhara to try and extract two comrades (the historical Connolly and Stoddart) from prison; while in disguise as an Uzbek holy man, he meets up with an undisguised Russian officer who has been sent by the tsar on a mission of his own to the emir of Bukhara, and feels the pangs of attraction almost immediately - and then suddenly

our narrator decides that the only way to get the Russian officer - who is, obnoxiously and prominently, missing a letter from his surname; Meade calls him "Yakolev," the Russian surname is "Yakovlev" - to help him save the British officers is to offer him "my body." You can almost hear the porn music starting up. There were plenty of political reasons and arguments that the narrator could have made to get Yakovlev (I absolutely refuse to say "Yakolev") to help with the emir, and that in turn would have allowed a more organic spark of physical attraction/interest, in my opinion.

Obviously this is all opinion and what did not work for me may work for others, etc. etc. 

I think generally I probably had too many expectations for this one, though. The Great Game is a wonderful setting and particularly for MM romance, but this seems to be basically the only book that has used it, which in turn means that it's no surprise that it isn't precisely what I, personally, had envisioned for a romance novel in this setting.