Relevant Categories: Low-Fantasy/High-Fantasy Combination, Fated to be Doomed Lovers, Past Lives, Butch Knight/Femme Witch
Rating: General audiences, however explicit scenes present.
โโ.5
Reader Discretion: As a reminder, this is solely my personal opinion; you are free to agree or disagree. I ask that any and all responses be polite.
During my November trip to Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, I purchased this book from a quaint, cozy store for two primary reasons: a story to keep me occupied during downtime, and a craving for sapphic love. The hardcover was lovely, and the synopsis promising; it was an immediate purchase as I had been eyeing it since it was first announced.
I read in the evenings in my hotel room, retired for the night, and I read on the plane for nearly the entire flight back home. It has now been almost two months since then and I have given up on this story, deciding to DNF at seventy-eight percent, after an arduous and slow reading pace from lack of interest, utterly disappointed.
To begin with my most severe gripe: subpar prose. I was presented with bland, repetitive writing mostly constructed in basic sentence structure. It bored me, this lack of variety; it felt simplistic and flat, almost juvenile. But this shocked meโI had heard praises sung for this author and her Burning Kingdoms Trilogy, thinking, 'Surely, this must be a fluke.' (And I hope it is, considering I own, and have yet to read, The Jasmine Throne.)
This issue bleeds into many others: character development, world-building, imagery, romantic yearning, etc.
I believe the characters of Lavinia (Vina) and Simran had great potential, as most characters in the beginning do but poor foundational prose contributed greatly to my not-caring for our main protagonists. The character of Hari (whose name I forgot in the midst of typing and needed to refer back to the book, as a reference for how forgettable the secondary characters are) seemed replaceable with a cardboard cutout. The same can be said for Galath. And Cora, and the other witches, and the boy with antlers who I cannot be bothered to remember now.
The plot itself was, somehow, both convoluted and dull; an oxymoron lasting for almost five-hundred pages, of which I forwent the last two-hundred. With the story placed in an alternative London (which I initially assumed to be medieval-based, yet firearms and sex toys are present in this world), it was difficult to fully immerse myself, especially when other towns and locations seemingly lack names, and therefore meaning or importance (e.g. "A Nameless Town" and "A Broken Abbey" can be found on the book's included map). How boring; where is the creation of this world?
Similar statements can be made regarding the rushed and dull development of our love interests. Of which, after perusing others' reviews, I am not the only one to think so. The story relies all too heavily on glimpses of past-lives between Vina and Simran to create tension and yearning, but it fails so horribly and presents as this forced love. (Which, to be fair, there is a degree of autonomy taken from our characters as they are destined to love and told they have no other choice.) And, thus, intimate moments left me less-than-satisfied, from first kiss to first sexual encounter there lacked a true yearning. We are told these characters have yearned over and over, but we experience this through the memories of past-lives, not always through Vina and Simran directly.
(And, speaking of, there is a scene towards the end of the book that is so poorly written I could not bear it. It is the moment when Simran is being flooded by various different memories of past lives from othersโ perspectives to find Galathโs name. The writing is supposed to be jagged and abrupt to reflect Simranโs tumultuous experience, but it is choppy and muddled and difficult to follow.)
I understand that the โrushedโ nature of this story is likely by design. Our characters are on borrowed time, as is stated constantly throughout the book, for good reason; it is the sole driving factor of this story. And for the final two-hundred pages I could not endure, I hope there were some improvements to this, and to the dialogue, and, generally, to the entire story.
The only praise I will give is for representation and the political discussion of negative impacts of fascism in a partially fictional setting. Even this I feel could have been better fleshed out and explored.
Hi, y'all! This will be a not-so-brief introductory post; blog guidelines and other pertinent posts will be linked in the pinned navigation as I continue to build this blog.
For those who are not familiar with me, I go by the pseudonym of Dem, a shortened moniker of my first username and Tumblr blog. I have a Bachelor's of Science in Biology, a love for reading, and an even deeper admiration for writing
If you have followed me to this blog from my original fandom writing blog @demxnscous, it's been so longโI've missed you! And I've been kept utterly busy by a lack of creativity and a hopeful plan for a career shift. The end of the year has brought me crawling back by tooth and nail; there is a hole in my heart where engaging with community is the only remedy. I have missed the camaraderie here and want to be more active into the new year, however I can be.
Since my personal writings have been nil, I've put together a reading blog to document my thoughts, reviews, and hopefully incite some meaningful, fun discussion. Of which such things will center on primarily fictional works, with a sapphic focus in fantasy and horror.
I have already read a handful of these sorts of novelsโall of which can be found on my GoodReads profileโhowever my reviews from these prior works are limited to star-ratings, and I do not feel I could provide a proper, in-depth review at this point without a necessary re-read.
But I digress; with this blog, I hope to exchange thoughts, provide personal insight, and continue to broaden my reading!
