Tag Archives: fantasy

the umbra king banner

Book Review: The Umbra King, by Jamie Applegate Hunter

I picked up a copy of Jamie Applegate Hunter‘s The Umbra King as an Amazon freebie. The author is quite active on TikTok. So, she’d passed my feed numerous times, and I was tempted.

The morally grey don’t want redemption. They want retribution.

After the brutal murder of her twin sister, Aurora “Rory” Raven spends years forging herself into a ruthless vigilante killer.

She never gave up her search for the man who killed her sister, but when she is convicted of thirteen murders and sentenced to five-hundred years in Vincula, the prison realm, she knows her sister’s death will never be avenged.

After arriving in Vincula, Aurora discovers her opportunity for retribution is closer than she thought.

Caius is the notorious Umbra King, ruler of Vincula, King of the Monsters, and the thing nightmares are made of. After being locked in his own realm for a crime he didn’t commit, his only focus has been revenge.

But when Aurora drops into his throne room, representing everything he despises, they begin a game of cat and mouse, and before long, their hatred turns into something else.

Circumstances draw them together, but revenge might tear them apart.

my review*Spoiler warning*

I seem to be in the minority, but I did not enjoy this. In fact, I own both books in the duology, but I’m not going to bother reading book two (and I hate leaving things unfinished). I will preface my complaints with the fact that the writing is fine. The book is perfectly readable (if overly long). I just didn’t like it.

I have several issues that all sort of roll up together. For one, despite the spice, this book felt juvenile to me. There are just too many scenes of hanging out with friends like carefree youths to match the intended seriousness of the story. Some of that hanging out is doing things like having a foot race to the treehouse, like kids. So, when I say that the tone of some parts doesn’t match others, I’m serious. The heroine is a serial killer, let me remind you.

Second, Rory shows up in what is essentially a cushy prison and is instantly treated differently than anyone else. She gets away with things no one else can, even before anyone realizes she’s a fated mate to the king. This begs the question, is she able to get away with things because she’s special, or is the fact that she’s special based on the fact that she gets away with things? The order matters because, in one scenario, the reader is left wondering why she is being given allowances no one else is when no reason (besides being the heroine) is provided. It’s a disconnect. The reader is basically being told how special she is and not at all being shown her being special; it’s the circumstances that are special.

Last and most importantly, a two-parter: You know what trope I hate more than any other trope in the whole world? It’s the scorned women as the villain trope. This trope is largely straight-up misogyny. It’s centuries of women being told they can’t trust one another, that sex is a resource that can be used to garner another resource (a man). Thus, that resource can be stolen by other women and must be guarded. Failing that, the loss can be vindicated. I HATE THIS TROPE WITH A BURNING FIERY PASSION. It makes my heart hurt when female authors write it. We—the entire female population—deserve better.

Hunter leans into this hard in this book and doesn’t do it with any subtly. The transactional nature of the scorned lover’s sexual appetite is wholly apparent. She is not only a scorned lover. She is a scorned lover who was only a lover to stand close to power. She then used her sexuality to manipulate other men into trying to remove her obstacle to returning to the king’s bed. Imagine a tree with all the plots imaginable at your fingertips and choosing to reach for the one hanging closest to the ground. She also has absolutely zero depth or character outside of this one-dimensional misogynistic presentation.

But the use of the scorned lover trope is problematic in this book for a second reason too. I’m not 100% sure how to express this. But I’ll do my best.

Hunter sets up what is a pretty complex world. (I could quibble with the stability and consistency of the world, but I’ll set that aside.) The world is geographically small but consists of several sorts of magics, three realms, multiple layers of deities, etc. She provides a serial killer heroine with a fairly intricate backstory and a tragic, dark king as a love interest. It’s a big, complex world that is staged for a big, complex plot. Then, Hunter wrote a small, tight, personally vindictive story that we’ve all read a million times before and utilized none of the complexity available to it.

The world, as written, should be supporting inter-realm intrigue, including assassinations and Machiavellian machinations. Instead, we’re given a jealous ex-girlfriend, innumerable drinks at the bar with bubbly friends, and more staircases than I can count. We still have the murders and attempted assassinations, oddly, but they don’t fit in with a small-scale plot. Sure, the ex the umbra king photomight be a mean girl, but leaping to murder feels super forced and out of place in the context of the plot. Those attempted murders feel like they should be coming from large, political-level players, not the king’s ex-fleshlight with a face. The ex-girlfriend as a villain was simply too mundane and unimportant to fit with the rest of Hunter’s story structure. It felt dwarfed by its surroundings. Why, for example, do I need a multiple-page world guide for a story that might as well be set in a high school?

All in all, this one was a great big ol’ flop for me.


Other Reviews:

I can’t decide which to include. So, here is a whole list of reviews: The Umbra King Reviews

 

mechanical magic banner

Book Review: Mechanical Magic, by Lorraine UIrich

Here I am, at the end of another year, trying to finish up my author alphabet challenge. I set out to read a book by an author whose surname begins with every letter of the alphabet each year. Just as almost every previous year, we’ve reached mid-December, and I still hadn’t read an author whose name starts with a ‘U.’ I find these the hardest to find usually. So, I purchased a copy of Mechanical Magic by Lorraine Ulrich to fit the bill.

mechanical magic cover

When Aster Genisov, a creator of mechanical novelties, is asked to help a wounded elf, his special talents and painful past could be the key to the elf’s survival.

Y’rean was born to touch the sky, but when his wings are destroyed by a cruel master, not even the life he begins to build with Aster can assuage his despair. Aster has the means to help him—it’s written in his gypsy blood—but is love enough for Aster to face his past and embrace his talent for mechanical magic?

my review

It’s a good thing that I don’t bother with star ratings here on the blog because this would be a hard book for me to rate. I think if I had read it five years ago, I would have loved it; I probably rated it five stars. I was very into M/M romances at the time, and I think I would have appreciated the quietness of the story. But tastes change with time, and now the sedateness of the story left me wanting. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was bored. But it definitely wasn’t hitting the notes I currently enjoy. However, if you are someone who enjoys a calm, soft romance, this is a good one to pick up.

mechanical magic photo


Other Reviews:

Mechanical Magic By Lorraine Ulrich

 

kingdom of endless slumber banner

Book Review: Kingdom of Endless Slumber, by Paige A. Cook

I picked up a copy of Paige A. Cook‘s Kingdom of Endless Slumber as an Amazon freebie.

Kingdom of Endless Slumber

Isadora has been possessed by demons for as long as she can remember. While the rest of the world sees her as a misguided, bipolar trainwreck to be medicated into silence, death has other plans for her.

Plunged into a new world where beings have horns, scales, and tails–Iz must learn to control her new dark powers. As the first Necromancer to live in Bellesberry for 100 years, she has her work cut out for her. She’s lived her entire life on auto-pilot being unable to take the reigns back from the demonic entities who lived inside of her. By some miracle, in this new realm, she is free of them. Free to be herself. Too bad she doesn’t know who that is yet. Much to her luck, she lands square in the camp of an adventurers’ party! Looking past the blue-skin and horns, they are incredibly alluring with human-enough features.

The rag-tag group of friends welcomes Iz to join the group. Their company includes an atheist cleric, two orc “sorcerers,” and a whirlwind of chaotic attraction that Iz has never experienced before, especially in this quantity. Will Iz find herself swept up in discovering a new place she feels like she belongs or will her past demons catch up to her all too quickly?

my review

“Fuck. I’ve been Isekai’d.”

Look, it’s finals week. I am super stressed. I purposefully chose a book that looked like it would be utterly and deliriously ridiculous (in a good way) for the sheer diversion it could provide. And, at first, this book delivered. I was enjoying the light fem-dom nature of it. I liked the heroine. I was intrigued by the possible harem participants. The anime-style guild adventure (complete with magic buffs and declarative magic) was working. At first.

I was annoyed at the anachronism, true. Every time references to corn chips, cheerleader outfits, bikinis, and such showed up in a non-earth world with no obvious contact between the realms, I was pulled out of the narrative. But it was fine. I wanted a silly distraction. That was the point.

Then, the author seemed to just give up. There came a point when things stopped making sense. I thought I was missing chapters or something; the plot started jumping so abruptly. I still don’t know why the group went to the Stone King, for example, or if they succeeded with whatever the plan had been. Or when that plan was made.

This started out as a safe 3-star read. It ended at about 1.5.

kingdom of endless slumber photo


Other Reviews: