wildatheart1339's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Death, Homophobia, Murder, Kidnapping, Blood, Sexual content, Violence, and War
Moderate: Alcohol, Animal death, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Religious bigotry
Minor: Classism, Sexual harassment, Fire/Fire injury, Sexism, Vomit, and Pregnancy
pitsikakku's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Graphic: Murder, Sexual content, Confinement, Grief, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, War, Violence, Xenophobia, Injury/Injury detail, and Slavery
Moderate: Animal death, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and Death of parent
marioncromb's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
This was one of those unputdownable, breeze-through reads for me, very readable prose, characters i cared about, interesting historical setting, captivating romance. But i had one big problem with it.
For me, there were just far too many sex scenes. This was maybe slightly balanced out for me by having a canon asexual side character, but only slightly, as they are a side character and their asexuality almost just seemed like more of a plot device not to get in the way of the main couple. And the sex scenes were very idealised and explicit, basically just porn:
Spoiler
idealised in that the only two bodily fluids that exist are saliva and jizz, no one has a gag reflex, magically no one ever needs to douche, the sex is always mindblowing etc etcTo give you an idea of how much. This is a book of four roughly equal quarters:
First quarter: plot: a young knight tries to befriend his prisoner
Second quarter: basically just porn, just so much porn
Third quarter: mostly porn, some plot
Last quarter: thankfully back to mostly plot and only some porn
For a 500+ page book, its a lot of porn. But if you like that sort of thing definitely give it a go because i found it very enjoyable otherwise
Graphic: Confinement, Kidnapping, Sexual content, Torture, and Violence
Moderate: Animal death, Cursing, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Hate crime, Homophobia, Murder, and Physical abuse
Minor: Alcohol, Child abuse, Death of parent, Grief, Infidelity, Outing, Pedophilia, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual harassment