3.75⭐️/rounding up to 4⭐️
For transparency’s sake, I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Life got in the way and I am only now able to give this book my time. But thank you to the author for the ARC 🫶🏻
For a debut and the first in a series, I think this is a really good start!
What Worked for Me
* The world is interesting. Though the concept of seasonal courts with different elemental magic is not new, the sense of place and ambiance for the 3 courts we do visit is excellent. The courts and the Isle of Illora (where the sisters live) feel rich and developed, visually I can still see them clearly in my mind. I particularly found Nivali (Winter) interesting -it was giving Vikings the tv show vibes. The mind control, animal control, and dream walking abilities of the Lunar court were cool, creepy, and deployed very effectively. We can understand why these are feared throughout the land.
* The main characters are reasonable and likable. I found the FMC Nova and MMC Callan refreshingly mature and rational. They respect each other and each other’s choices, admit fault and apologize when wrong, and approach situations like reasonable adults (mostly).
* Commander Lucan, my grumpy love. Love his relationship with Nova and Nox. Also, love Nox and want only good things for that cutie.
* The plot and general story arc is solid. Situations don’t feel manufactured or only due to stupid decisions. Similarly, their resolutions feel earned.
* No third act breakup or cliff hanger ending! These are often unnecessary and annoying -do away with them romantasy genre! Thank you Lorin Coffler for not including these tropes. Which brings me to possibly my favorite thing the author did with this book…
* Playing with and disarming common romantasy tropes. The author will set up tropes and common beats of the genre only to immediately knock them down -either by subverting them or resolving them immediately. Oh the weird girl whose weird mother mysteriously appeared from the woods and then immediately disappeared? Yeah, pretty much everyone in that village knows she’s Fae. Nova is not even that surprised to hear it herself. Being told to stay back from a battle because your training montage does not make you qualified or skilled for battle, only to ignore that order and immediately get in a sticky situation because you’re not some unexplainable battle savant? Refreshing! But then having the maturity to actually admit you messed up and acted impulsively. Chef’s kiss. Unfortunately, this does backfire some in the first half the book -which brings me to…
What Didn’t Work For Me
* The pacing in the first half. The unfortunate side effect of the author setting up common beats only to immediately address them is that it sort of deflated the momentum and removed tension. It felt like a lot of false starts, and with most mysteries being addressed right away, there was nothing creating the necessary tension to keep me engaged.
* The Autumn court nobles. Do we really trust Fawn and Evander? What’s their whole motivation for helping Nova? I didn’t get shown enough of their relationship with either Nova or Callan to understand why they care for each other, nor why they would drop everything to risk body and limb defending Nova in the third act. Perhaps this is intentional and they are acting on yet to be revealed ulterior motives. We shall see. I did find Lady Autumn far too eager to have Nova, a stranger, marry her son and heir. Suspicious indeed.
* The main relationship. I’m not one to advocate for more chapters, but here is where I wish I had more pages to SEE the Nova and Callan relationship. We are told they care for each other, that they write to each other, but I don’t know WHY they are in love. A few more glimpses into their day to day, more snippets of letters, would have solved this. When the “I love you” comes, it unfortunately did not feel earned to me. Which is a pity, because with that central relationship feeling underbaked, it left me wanting more from the whole book.
All in all, this was still a good time and I’ll still be tuning in for book 2. Always in awe of anyone who can create worlds like this! Lorin Coffler has a gift for ambiance and this is a solid debut.