June Book Reviews: How to Find a Nameless Fae by AJ Lancaster
I received a free copy from Victory Editing Co-op via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Publish date June 26th.
I devoured AJ Lancaster's Stariel series in about a week, so I was happy for a early chance to snap her latest novel up. In How to Find a Nameless Fae, Gisele was bargained away to a fairy as a baby--but he never showed up, and now she's forty. Determined to end her worsening curse, Gisele plots to track down the fairy and threaten him into freeing her...
This fantasy romance had a relentlessly sensible older protagonist with a love for gardening which reminded me strongly of T Kingfisher's fairy tale romances, and a touch of Howl's Moving Castle about the plot. Unsurprisingly, I had a blast with a book that reminded me of two of my favorite authors. It's immensely readable. I started reading at 9 pm at night and finished by 7 am (Regret). Lancaster wields an expert's touch with the romance, which contains an outrageous quantity of pining tempered by Gisele's inherent practicality and prior sexual experience. The endlessly inconvenient curse forces a sort of empathetic emotional connection between the two of them, which is a fun romance trope.
The majority of the plot is set in the fae's house, which has a strong personality of its own, playfully moves rooms around, and in a particularly delightful touch, subscribes to interior design magazines. The nameless fae himself is about the sort of man you'd expect to live in a playful sentient manor with an overgrown garden and a gorgeous yet disorganized library, with the addition of cat ears and a tail. The reason he cursed Gisele is a complex story that the novel takes its time revealing, and he's spent forty years hiding in the manor from an enemy. Ultimately, the plot twists are fairly predictable, but in a way I found satisfying rather than frustrating.
My only complaint is that this book didn't include more graphic scenes of Gisele gardening. A VERY crunchable novel. If you enjoy T Kingfisher's fairy tale romances, run, don't walk, to pick this novel up.
Stariel special editions and a promise of a new release announcement coming soon (maybe?)!
Let's start with the special editions!:
The Kickstarter for the special editions featuring art, beautiful reversible dust jackets, and more, is now only less than 600$ away from the goal with a little less than a month left to go! Donate if you can! We're so close to getting these beautiful editions! (If I had a job, I'd push the project over the edge myself! Unfortunately, I am seventeen and unemployed)
A vauge promise of an announcement:
In a recent email of her newsletter, Lancaster compares writing to gardening, how seeds spend so long in the soil, then sprout up and all of a sudden grow like crazy. In this she says she doesn't like to say much about her works in progress until they've "sprouted into the sunlight and grown a few leaves" and continues to say that her current project is "about an inch below soil level" below the "weeds of distraction" being the delightfully successful Kickstarter ("delightfully" being my words here, in part because this information came before the Kickstarter went live). Surely, this means we're getting news soon, should Lancaster's current project bloom in good time! Is it something in the world of Stariel, such as what has been alluded to on her website? Or perhaps the next installment of Fae & Firstborns? Maybe it's something entirely new! We just have to wait and see! (Sigh, waiting.) If you don't hear it from the newsletter directly, then you'll surely hear it from me!
(bonus parenthetical on the special editions: Kickstarter doesn't say when the project first went live, but I think it's only been up for like two days? either that or a week and that's still crazy! If we keep going at this rate, we'll certainly reach the stretch goals! Patterned edges, a bonus scene, and ribbon bookmarks? I'd kill for those!)
(bonus bonus parenthetical: I double wish I could donate now, the rewards are so enticing! A bookmark with art, and stickers? And if you donate a lot you get to name one of Plumpuff's kittens and get a one of a kind printed booklet of the bonus scene that'll be written about your kitten! God I hate being poor.)
Blurb: The Lord of Stariel is dead. Long live the Lord of Stariel...whoever that is. Everyone knows who the magical estate will choose for its next ruler...or do they? Will it be the lord's eldest son, who he despised? His favourite nephew, with the strongest magical land-sense? His scandalous daughter, who ran away from home years ago to study illusion? Hetta knows it won't be her, and she's glad of it. Returning home for her father's funeral, all Hetta has to do is survive the family drama and avoid entanglements with irritatingly attractive local men until the Choosing. Then she can leave. But whoever Stariel chooses will have bigger problems than eccentric relatives to deal with. Winged, beautifully deadly problems. For the first time in centuries, the fae are returning to the mortal realm, and only the Lord of Stariel can keep the estate safe.
Greetings, adventurers, welcome back to the library!
During the depths of my reading slump, I never thought I’d read another long series again. Nothing was appealing to me. There were no books that could pry me away into their pages. Until last year, when I finally picked up a book again (and decided to make it my entire personality). I talk a lot about A Botanist’s Guide series, it was the reason I got out of my slump in the first place. I slowly chugged through over the course of last year, then I recently reviewed an ARC of the newest book. However, there is another series I read last year, made up of five books, that I zipped through in about two months. I couldn’t devour them fast enough.
If you read my 2024 Book Wrap-Up, you may recognize the books I’m talking about. The Lord of Stariel series was written by A.J. Lancaster. From what I’ve gathered, it’s her debut series. I must say, as an overall series, it did not disappoint. It’s a gas lamp fantasy, set in a steampunk 1920s style world. In this whimsical world magicians, illusionists, and fae are real.
This series is one I've been recommending to any fantasy reader who will listen. My mom has read it, and I loaned it to a friend who thought it sounded good. What caught my eye was that the series was advertised as Howl's Moving Castle meets Bridgerton. The former is my favorite book and movie, so of course I had to check it out. I don't know much about Bridgerton, but they're both very apt comparisons.
The Lord of Stariel
The first book, The Lord of Stariel, was released in October of 2018. In it, we follow Hetta Valstar returns home for her father’s funeral. The Stariel estate is a sentient fae land, and they must determine who the heir will be. We meet Hetta’s brother, Marius, along with her childhood friend, Wyn. There's a vast cast of other Valstar family members, and everyone in Hetta's generation has to touch the Star Stone to reveal the heir. However, things quickly go amiss, and Hetta discovers that not all buried things stay buried.
I think this is a great start to the series. It's on the shorter end and, I will admit, the climax didn't really hit for me. It was kind of there and gone, it didn't really feel like it was the big culmination of everything this book had been working to build. Still, I didn't think that it was bad. Each subsequent installment in the series gets better (in my humble opinion). At the moment, The Lord of Stariel sits at 3.9 stars with 9.4k ratings on GoodReads. I rated it 3 stars myself.
The Prince of Secrets
The Prince of Secrets is the second in the series. Its release came just a few months after The Lord of Stariel, releasing in January of 2019. I have a bit of a vendetta against the second book in a series - any series (which is something I plan on talking about in depth later down the road). So I was pleasantly surprised to find that The Prince of Secrets didn't feel useless.
We find out more about Wyn and why he came to Stariel in the first place. We also start to see the budding romance between him and Hetta. I absolutely love Wyn. He's one of my favorite love interests in any series. The Prince of Secrets currently sits at 4.1 stars and 4.7k reviews on GoodReads. I rated this installment 4 stars.
I know it's normal to see numbers drop off as the books go. But I'm still slightly disappointed to see that not as many people returned for the sequel.
The Court of Mortals
The Court of Mortals is third book, we finally see the consequences of the first two books on the wider world. We get to explore more off Stariel lands. Learning more of the way politics work, and how the general world is governed. We also get to see Wyn start to rediscover himself and his identity after hiding it away for so long.
The third book followed in January of 2020. It's 412 pages long, currently sitting at 4.2 stars with 3.8k reviews on GoodReads. I also rated this one 4 stars.
The King of Faerie
The King of Faerie is the final book in the main storyline of The Lord of Stariel series. I am going to give you a little spoiler -- if the unexpected pregnancy trope isn't for you, then you might not like this one. To be fair, it does have a purpose. It acts as a reason for Stariel to claim Wyn as its own. Hetta and Wyn have to chase down the king of faerie so that they may gain his blessing to be wed.
This is the longest installment in the series at 550 pages. It was released in July of 2021. But it definitely uses every page to build a satisfying ending to series. It currently sits at 4.3 stars and 3.3k reviews. I couldn't decide if I wanted to give this one 4.5 or 5 stars. Either way, it ended up being my favorite installment in the series.
One of my favorite things about the Stariel series, is that it has multiple POVs without being obnoxious about it. Being in third person - even better. This is probably the most fluid and organic use of multiple POVs that I've read. It's like in a TV show or movie when there's a seamless transition between the characters you're following. There's never a section where I was like, "This added nothing to the story. We didn't need this section."
A Rake of His Own
A Rake of His Own follows Hetta's brother Marius while he's in university. Wyn's brother, Rake, shows up bleeding and naked. This is a spin off with a little spice, cute gay romance, and a mystery. Rake and Marius pair up to try and catch a murderer. The book was released in October of 2022. It's 437 pages and currently sits at 4.4 stars with 2.2k ratings. It was such a fun read, and we get a bit of follow up on Stariel, and what Hetta and Wyn have been up to in the meantime!
I cannot recommend this series enough! It's one I definitely plan on rereading soon. It's great for anyone who likes fantasy and wants a story set in a unique world.
You can visit the author's website HERE!
Thanks for reading, I hope you stop by the library again soon!
- Whisper
Let Me Know: Have you read this series? What did you think?
I read a good book series and I am once again making it everyone’s problem. This is spoilery and disjointed and unedited, just everything I wrote down while listening.
Proper review post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/ycizz8/review_discussion_the_lord_of_stariel_stariel/
