One failure after another

The story drags. The set-up was interesting but the main character keeps on trying to do things that are doomed to fail. Next to nothing she undertakes succeeds in achieving it's goal right up untill the end. You're supposed to root for her, but she's making it really difficult.

There's a lot of jumping to conclusions on romance as well, which unbalances the story. Sometimes it's dragged into completely unrelated conversations too, driving home a point that didn't need to be made. Show don't tell. I felt very little tension between the princess and the lieutenant, but hey here's literally every other character ensuring me that it's there?

Despite all that I did finish it. I did get invested and that does count for something.

I think a little bit of the drag can also be explained by the narration that made every other sentence a question. The accent is great but there were a lot of weird cuts and misplaced questionmarks.

Can't recommend this one :(

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2 people found this helpful

Utterly Phenomenal

This was an absolute revelation to read and the performance was superb!

Knowing that this was a debut novel left me open-mouthed and learning it is a series made me overjoyed.

Fantasy is a genre filled with cishet white guys who are largely oblivious to the amount of politics and colonialism they include in their works without thinking about it. It's the entire foundation of much of the genre and TTRPG offshoots like D&D. But this takes the existing tropes and analogues to history and includes them purposely to great effect, weaving a beautiful, heartbreaking, and exciting tale filled with realised complex and flawed characters and concepts and tensions so often ignorantly and clumsily included and/ or offensively handwaved that are handled deftly with care and understanding. The book isn't just politics either, I'm just saying it handles them well.

Genuinely one of the best books I've ever read.

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1 person found this helpful

Immersive, intricately-plotted, compelling

Beautiful world-building in a world that’s not instantly familiar to most of us and is so worth getting to know: power, politics, suppressed magic, underground resistance and resurgence, with two compelling characters at its heart: the traduces, banished princess and the overlooked servant discovering her powers and her potential. Wonderful, evocative writing - can’t wait to hear the sequel.

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Looking forward to the next in the series!!!!

This beautiful, well crafted book has left me reeling, thinking over each decision the characters made and thirsty for more.
I'm looking forward to the next book in the series!
Loved the narration too.

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Overacted

Reasonably interesting story but overacted which was distracting. Good characters. Okay writting. Works as a self contained story.

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Fantastic

This novel is absolutely fantastic. i've enjoyed every minute of it. The drama, the action, the pain. And especially the difficult relationships.

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2 people found this helpful

An excellent book of revolution and finding a home

Overall I very much enjoyed this book, it has good worldbuilding to set the backdrop, nothing too special but simple and effective. The characters are interesting, flawed, naive, complement, and develop as the book goes on, although at times a couple of bits felt slightly contrived to move the story along in contrast to established characters or goings on. Often found myself frustrated at things not being said or acted open, but then that just shows I was invested, and that the characters, like real people, won't always make the right decisions or say the right things, even when someone really needs a good slap!
Narration was excellent and the emotion put into it really draws you in; brings life to the characters. Adds pace and drama to the story, not just a monotone recitation of the words, which I absolutely loved!
Can't recommend this and the sequel enough, the sequel is even better!

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Beautiful narration

Excellent storyline, characters and narration. I enjoyed the realism in a fantasy setting. Looking forward to the next in the series.

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Couldn’t finish

I might try reading this myself as parts of the story started off interesting enough if not the most fast paced story. The performance was dreadful though. The cadence of the sentences was often all wrong and that made the emphasis confusing. Dropping in and out of accents and overall overacted and too much for me to bare

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Gripped

loved it, the story was gripping from start to finish. the performance was also perfect and made for an incredibly entertaining listen!

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