A review by atarnus
The High King's Golden Tongue by Megan Derr

4.0

4.5⭐

For the first read I gave this 5 stars from memory as I added it few years after reading. At a second read, this is a good one, but maybe not a full five star worth anyway.

An arranged marriage, political scheming and adventure with competent characters. It's a pretty long book (~110K words) and while the romance is the main theme, it doesn't get the majority of the pages. I do find it an interesting and enjoyable read anyway, though a bit more of the romance could possibly still improve the story. (There are definitely some series from Derr with even less focus on the romace.)

There are several factions and lots of characters but things come together in these pages, so it's not a heavy duty political fantasy. The setting is very nice with an imaginary historical world where queerness is completely normal and accepted, several people are trans so low-key that it seems many readers didn't even catch up on it. I don't especially hunt these LGBT-friendly alternate worlds, but I like this one a lot.