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allisoncfong 's review for:
Queen of Roses
by Briar Boleyn
First I want to thank NetGalley and Briar Boleyn for this ARC of Queen of Roses in exchange for an honest review.
In this King Arthur retelling, the reader follows Morgan, Arthur’s half-fae sister. It is written in first person from Morgan’s point of view and split into two parts: her life in the castle and her life on a quest. There are major themes of spousal, child, animal, and power abuse with a splash of racism. If you are sensitive to those topics, I would not recommend this book to you.
I will be honest and am sorry to say that I found this book difficult to read and was unable to finish. It has a lot of potential to be great. The story telling, timeline, and grammar are passable, but I had a lot of issues with character development, which I will address later in this review. After reading 75% of the book, I couldn’t get myself to want to read it. I decided to clean my bathroom over picking up the book to read. It is listed as a Romantic Fantasy on Amazon so I tried to stick it out to see if there would be any spicy scenes, but didn’t get far enough to find out. Personally, after 75%, if there isn’t even a kiss in sight, I don’t consider it a romance. It was also too slow in the romance department for me to consider it a slow burn.
As aforementioned, the themes didn’t bother me so much as the character development. As the reader, we hear all of Morgan’s thoughts. From the beginning, she trains with knights and seems to be a strong female character. Her thoughts are strong and she seemed to be able to defeat opponents in sparring matches with her strength. Her actions, however, contradict her thoughts. She wants to be strong, but is easily manipulated and submissive. Even in a historical setting, her submissive was a little much for me to stomach.
It is often mentioned that she has been sworn to go to the sanctuary to be with the high priestess Merlin, where she will be devoted to the Three, their favored gods. Morgan says over and over that she has no fae magic, yet she takes a medicine every other night without question. It is clear that this medicine, which her fae mother also took, suppresses any magic that Morgan may have while also making her debilitatingly ill. Yet, she tells herself and the reader that she has no magic.
She also has very striking gray hair that sets her apart from other 20-something-year-old females in the text. At one point, she goes behind Arthur’s back and helps a civilian hunting party kill a boar for food. She has been the princess her whole life with gray hair that makes her stand out, yet she thinks that these villagers don’t know who she is when she shows up to help them. She quickly fell into the “too dumb to live” type of character for me.
There are also side characters whom I wasn’t at all convinced were what they said they were. Namely the assassin, Kairos Draven. In Part 2, he, Morgan, and another character called Whitehorn set off on a quest to retrieve Excalibur. Whitehorn is a power hungry abuser in his own right, but also the lapdog of King Arthur. Whitehorn forces Morgan to take her medicine nightly, instead of every other night. This in turn causes Morgan to become very sick and unable to eat or sleep. Draven tells her to stop taking the medicine because she is growing weaker from lack of food or sleep. She asks him how he knows she’s not sleeping when she’s in her tent and he’s sleeping outside. He tells her that he sleeps near her and can hear her tossing and turning. That is believable to me. Yet, later on in the story, Whitehorn tries to kidnap Morgan by binding and gagging her in the middle of the night. Whitehorn tries to get her onto a horse while he also brutally kills Draven’s horse so that they won’t be followed. Draven only wakes up when Whitehorn turns to try to kill him in his sleep. So Draven can hear her tossing and turning in the tent, but not any commotion of her being abducted and then his poor horse being killed? It is just too far-fetched for me to believe that if he’s a great assassin, that he wouldn’t have woken up.
I could go on with examples of why each major character is flawed beyond believability, but think I’ve made my point. Unfortunately, this book wasn’t for me.
In this King Arthur retelling, the reader follows Morgan, Arthur’s half-fae sister. It is written in first person from Morgan’s point of view and split into two parts: her life in the castle and her life on a quest. There are major themes of spousal, child, animal, and power abuse with a splash of racism. If you are sensitive to those topics, I would not recommend this book to you.
I will be honest and am sorry to say that I found this book difficult to read and was unable to finish. It has a lot of potential to be great. The story telling, timeline, and grammar are passable, but I had a lot of issues with character development, which I will address later in this review. After reading 75% of the book, I couldn’t get myself to want to read it. I decided to clean my bathroom over picking up the book to read. It is listed as a Romantic Fantasy on Amazon so I tried to stick it out to see if there would be any spicy scenes, but didn’t get far enough to find out. Personally, after 75%, if there isn’t even a kiss in sight, I don’t consider it a romance. It was also too slow in the romance department for me to consider it a slow burn.
As aforementioned, the themes didn’t bother me so much as the character development. As the reader, we hear all of Morgan’s thoughts. From the beginning, she trains with knights and seems to be a strong female character. Her thoughts are strong and she seemed to be able to defeat opponents in sparring matches with her strength. Her actions, however, contradict her thoughts. She wants to be strong, but is easily manipulated and submissive. Even in a historical setting, her submissive was a little much for me to stomach.
It is often mentioned that she has been sworn to go to the sanctuary to be with the high priestess Merlin, where she will be devoted to the Three, their favored gods. Morgan says over and over that she has no fae magic, yet she takes a medicine every other night without question. It is clear that this medicine, which her fae mother also took, suppresses any magic that Morgan may have while also making her debilitatingly ill. Yet, she tells herself and the reader that she has no magic.
She also has very striking gray hair that sets her apart from other 20-something-year-old females in the text. At one point, she goes behind Arthur’s back and helps a civilian hunting party kill a boar for food. She has been the princess her whole life with gray hair that makes her stand out, yet she thinks that these villagers don’t know who she is when she shows up to help them. She quickly fell into the “too dumb to live” type of character for me.
There are also side characters whom I wasn’t at all convinced were what they said they were. Namely the assassin, Kairos Draven. In Part 2, he, Morgan, and another character called Whitehorn set off on a quest to retrieve Excalibur. Whitehorn is a power hungry abuser in his own right, but also the lapdog of King Arthur. Whitehorn forces Morgan to take her medicine nightly, instead of every other night. This in turn causes Morgan to become very sick and unable to eat or sleep. Draven tells her to stop taking the medicine because she is growing weaker from lack of food or sleep. She asks him how he knows she’s not sleeping when she’s in her tent and he’s sleeping outside. He tells her that he sleeps near her and can hear her tossing and turning. That is believable to me. Yet, later on in the story, Whitehorn tries to kidnap Morgan by binding and gagging her in the middle of the night. Whitehorn tries to get her onto a horse while he also brutally kills Draven’s horse so that they won’t be followed. Draven only wakes up when Whitehorn turns to try to kill him in his sleep. So Draven can hear her tossing and turning in the tent, but not any commotion of her being abducted and then his poor horse being killed? It is just too far-fetched for me to believe that if he’s a great assassin, that he wouldn’t have woken up.
I could go on with examples of why each major character is flawed beyond believability, but think I’ve made my point. Unfortunately, this book wasn’t for me.