Reviews

A brilliant end to the series of Leander and Taylors journey. There is another 4 more books and I might read them one day but they're about the other characters. Really loved Leander, he would do anything for Taylor and the way he shows his love was beautiful. Taylor was a great character and the authors telling of her adjusting from being human to a high fae was really realistic. Loved her writing, the plot and the characters. Really got lost in this world.

leilin's review

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3.0

The individual "books" in this series are really short (it is about a book-sized work all together).
The following review is for the whole story.

So, I already reviewed a book by this author (Fae's Consort) that I thought was really bad... but hear me out! It wasn't pure masochism that made me come back for more, I swear!
It was the fact that I liked a lot the setting of that book and wanted to see if maybe it could be matched with a better story. And it did (somewhat). So Yaaaay (somewhat)!

What I dislike in the aforementioned book was the characters: they were boorish, out of place and dumb. Here it's getting better, and that's partly because of the context: the Winter Kingdom is populated by a tough people who have to live in a very harsh environment... picture the pop-culture imagery of Vikings. In addition, the King has to fight back the attraction for his "mate" because she doesn't yet feel the same way, and we are explained that the bound he's feeling is a sort of tangible red-string hooked between two souls (or between the beasts living within, in the case of Faes). So this sets the stage for seeing the beastly side of the king in a more positive light than was the case in the last book (where the hero was a basic neanderthal trying to lord over a refined kingdom and looking quite the fool as a result). The more barbaric aspects of this king are totally within context, his bouts of primal rage and/or lust make sense as they are the result of a suppressed literal beast inside him. And actually, this casts him as all the more likable and impressive, when he proves to be quite the progressive king and to be able to rein in the various wants of his inner beast for a rather long time.

As for the heroine, she's fine... not more. At first she insists on going back to the human world and she has good reasons for it (

Spoiler

she mentions that, after her shitty childhood, now was the point in her life when she had finally managed to free herself from the past and was carving out her own future. She was finally succeeding and wanted to see for herself that she could get through to a better life... pretty good reason!

) except that this is never mentioned again and she goes on to, I kid you not, say she'd rather go back to a friendless/family-less life to pass exams, pay bills and watch reruns of friends by herself (she literally says so) than staying here to explore a world of magic, become a queen and be loved by a whole lot of friends, topped with a handsome king. I mean, sure... I guess she must really like Friends?
There's also a relatively recurrent attempt to portray her as relatable and funny (I guess?) by having her make heavy references to human mundane things. And I don't mean in her mind, which would be fine, but out loud, to friends who can't possibly understand her. She then proceeds to either laugh at her own "wits" or try to explain, which is also pure cringe. Not to mention that the references themselves are pretty lame. I had to mentally block out every iteration of this, it was painful -_-

The overall story was fine, but it still had a bunch of plot holes, some of which could have been relatively easily addressed.
Side characters were highly likable with the very notable exception of Beth. She started great but

Spoiler

wtf is wrong with that girl and her out of control voyeurism kink? Somewhere around the 1/3 or half mark in the story her character development simply comes to a dead stop and her obsession with watching the two main protagonists having sex becomes her sole defining characteristics, for the remainder of the adventure. Such a waste, she started out so nicely...
As a side note, and after reading several of her books, I can safely assume that this author has a thing for voyeurism/exhibitionism... so much so that I was deeply concerned as to what the official "Mating Ceremony" toward the end, taking place in front of all the nobility of this kingdom and the neighboring one, was going to be

.

There are also a lot of missed opportunities in there. An obvious aspect of the story that should have been explored was the rise of the heroine to a position of power. She starts off as someone with a relatively deep rooted self-acceptance problem, justified by a very difficult childhood. All of a sudden, she's catapulted in another world where she meets someone that seems to love her out of nowhere and then a bunch of people insta-swearing to serve her with their life. Unsurprisingly she has trouble to accept all this, and I would have liked to see her progressively understand what her new role entailed, explore it and then eventually accept and even embrace it. It would have been way more satisfying that way. Instead there is little to no growth there. For example,

Spoiler

she is explained that one can't refuse an oath of allegiance without dishonoring the one who offered it, so she accepts reluctantly... and she does so almost every time it happens. I would have loved to see her progressively realize that by refusing to believe in herself she implicitly reject the validity of her friends' trust in her, maybe she could have turn that a bit in her head and ultimately use it as a strength to rise up to the task, embrace her role as a sovereign whose people are counting on, etc. But nope, she just keeps it up. She does discover and accept a darker part of her, toward the end of the story. It would have been more meaningful if that darker part was related to her own demons and weaknesses, though, but that wasn't the case

.

So that's a 3 stars because I really kinda like the faes, changeling, etc. world. Would have been 2 if not for that cool setting.

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