A review by wardenred
Valerin the Fair by Rien Gray

adventurous emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Honor is for fools. What code can deflect a sword? Loyalty and duty are what matter.

Frequently, my first reaction to reading a novella is along the lines of, "I wish it was a full novel." With this one, weirdly enough, I kind of wish it was a short story. Or a collection of loosely related short stories, maybe—just short snippets of the characters' lives, allowing the reader to be the one to imagine how much time may have passed in between them and what might have happened.

To elaborate, there are a lot of scenes or scene sequences that were really beautiful and kind of stood on their own. I would absolutely dig them as shorts/flash fics! But the transition between them weren't always smooth, and the fact that the romance leads go literally from "you burned my home down you villain" to "this is one true love" in the space of less than 24 hours gives it such a rushed feeling. I'm not much of an insta-love person in general, but today I learned that combined with my favorite enemies to lovers trope it just doesn't work for me at all. 

Would I mind a more thorough, slower development, if this was a full novel? Absolutely not! But the writing is so beautiful and effective on that small-scale scene level, sooo... Shorts. Give me a series of tiny shorts with fog of ambiguity between them instead of transitions. Yes, I'm surprised by this conclusion, too. :D

Anyway, the writing was absolutely lovely, the Brocéliande Forest came alive on the page, and I enjoyed the druid and witchcraft lore. I also feel the sapphic and genderfluid rep was well done.