The Crack at the Heart of Everything by Fiona Fenn - 4 / 5 stars
This has: grumpy-sunshine MM relationship, the grumpy is a traumatised sorcerer, the sunshine is a knight who tags along on the adventure, much to the sorcerer's chagrin
This was a really nice and sweet, yet also tense and dark story. The premise: the empress’ mage is exiled after the end of the war because he had a death curse placed upon him - is already quite interesting, and was, in my opinion, also executed well in this.
The world that this is set in kind of reminded me of The Locked Tomb series, as it also takes place in our solar system in the wake of some initially only vaguely defined apocalyptic event that is related to magic - though this book is much less high-tech sci-fi and actually tends more towards a steampunk-ish vibe. The world-building felt very natural and was conveyed very organically.
The small cast of characters is very loveable, the main exception to this being the empress Lore. However, it was pretty clear to me from the beginning that Lore was not actually gonna be a good guy. In other books, having the main character not realise that their 'friend' is not actually their friend and also not a good person, while the reader can already infer these facts can be very tedious. The insertion of the flashback chapters did go a good way to helping the reader understand why Orpheus has not let himself come to the same conclusion as the reader. It would have been nice if their relationship had been a little more fleshed out, because as is, the big emotional moment that ends the story doesn't quite hit as hard as it should have.
Additionally, some of the love story also felt like it could have been fleshed out more, because while I did really like the dynamic built up between Orpheus and Fenrir, their romance scenes fell a bit flat for me.
The narrator’s voice was a bit more on the monotone side, and initially I thought that might get annoying, but I honestly didn’t even notice it after the first few chapters.
Release Date: 28. October 2025
Thank you to Tantor Audio for the ALC
