A review by tessisreading2
Bewitched & Betrayed by Lisa Shearin

3.0

I've been enjoying this series, but something about it irks me. Our narrator/heroine, Raine Benares, is Special - she has extra-special parents, various extra-special abilities, and hot guys falling over her everywhere she turns. But why does this bother me when a lot of epic fantasies are similar, with Special male leads? I think it's basically the lack of "competition" - Raine is really the only female lead in the books. There are occasional female supporting roles, but they never last more than one book, they are generally not prominent, they are generally very much "supporting" (e.g. they are not the crucial characters involved), and they never present sexual competition for Raine - most of them are significantly older or younger and presented as "wise matriarch" or "helpless young girl." Given that, I really enjoyed Inara's introduction here, but as we stacked up man after man after man - all of the supporting mage roles were men, all of the pirates are men, all of Raine's family are men (we met her uncle, her cousin, and another cousin - and not a single mention of the aunt who presumably produced them all; then there's
Spoilerher father, who is in another body - which is a male body
). There's one lady assassin (
Spoilerwhose identity Raine assumes
) and Inara, and mention of Inara's grandmother; that's pretty much it. In a previous book we met Piaras' girlfriend, a powerful mage student - whose role was
Spoilerhelpless kidnap victim
, full stop. I think she literally fainted at crucial moments. It just feels like a D&D campaign being run by people who have taken the totally historically-inaccurate assertion that "most women in the middle ages didn't do anything except cook and have babies" to heart.

That said, it's a fun read and it moves along at a good clip, so I'm definitely going to be continuing the series.