At Christmas, I signed up for the Rainbow Crate book box. The first box contained A Marvellous Light, by Freya Marske. Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.
Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it–not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.
Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles–and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.
I enjoyed the heck out of this. I mostly just loved the main characters. But the world and magic system were interesting, the humor dry, the romance slow to build, and the writing so easy to read. The mystery wasn’t overly complex, but neither was it painfully obvious. And I did think it dragged a little in the middle; not in a boring way, just in a more of a middle than expect way. But, all in all, I’ll be on the edge of my seat waiting for more of this series.
A nation born of angels, vast and intricate and surrounded by danger… a woman born to servitude, unknowingly given access to the secrets of the realm…
Born with a scarlet mote in her left eye, Phédre nó Delaunay is sold into indentured servitude as a child. When her bond is purchased by an enigmatic nobleman, she is trained in history, theology, politics, foreign languages, the arts of pleasure. And above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Exquisite courtesan, talented spy… and unlikely heroine. But when Phédre stumbles upon a plot that threatens her homeland, Terre d’Ange, she has no choice.
Betrayed into captivity in the barbarous northland of Skaldia and accompanied only by a disdainful young warrior-priest, Phédre makes a harrowing escape and an even more harrowing journey to return to her people and deliver a warning of the impending invasion. And that proves only the first step in a quest that will take her to the edge of despair and beyond.
Phédre nó Delaunay is the woman who holds the keys to her realm’s deadly secrets, and whose courage will decide the very future of her world.
Books often get lost in my TBR, especially ebooks. That’s what happens when you own a ridiculous number of them. That’s also how I’ve owned a copy of this book since 2017 and basically forgotten about it, or about owning it. Because I’ve seen it on the library shelf several times and passed it up (not realizing I had a copy at home). I gave it a pass because the blurb made me think the story would be really seedy and I just wasn’t up for immersing myself in that.
Then it happened that I stumbled across a Best of Fantasy Romance list that included Kusiel’s Dart. The thing about this list was that I’d read 4 of the 13 books on it and didn’t think any of them were best-of worthy. (1 I flat out disliked.) So, I decided to read the remaining 9 books, over the next few months, and see how I feel about the list, as a whole, once I’d read them all. And in investigating them, I rediscovered that I own this book. So, I started here.
On a humorous side note, since I have an ecopy and didn’t think to check the page count on Amazon or GR, I didn’t realize I was leaping into a 1,000 page epic. Surprise! (I think that if this book was published today, instead of almost 20 years ago, the publishers would have broken it into several books. I’m glad they didn’t though.)
In a bit of a petty huff, I have to admit that I liked it a lot. (I still don’t know if I’d call it best-of material, but it’s certainly closer than the others on the list that I’d read.) The world building here is wide and deep. The politics intricate and complicated. I admit I occasionally got lost in who’s who and what’s what. But it is wonderfully complex and diverse. I laughed, I cried, I rooted for the underdogs, and I appreciated the variety of love and friendship on display throughout the book.
To address my fear of seediness, it wasn’t. There was sex in the book, but I would almost say there wasn’t a single sex scene, as I would normally think of them. Never did I feel sex was used erotically. It was there, but the point wasn’t to titillate. If anything, her masochism—not that the words sadist or masochist were used in the book—was far FAR more prominent. And while I agree it had use to the story and plot, I still can’t help sneering a bit at anything that glorifies women’s sexual suffering (just not my thing). But I was gratified to find that role of sadist was filled by both men and women. So, there wasn’t the strict man = abuser, women = victim correlation some such themes are reducible to.
I imagine I’ll continue the series at some point. But I’m not leaping into book two just yet. I’ve got too many other commitments to dedicate myself to another epic just now.
While the Iskat Empire has long dominated the system through treaties and political alliances, several planets, including Thea, have begun to chafe under Iskat’s rule. When tragedy befalls Imperial Prince Taam, his Thean widower, Jainan, is rushed into an arranged marriage with Taam’s cousin, the disreputable Kiem, in a bid to keep the rising hostilities between the two worlds under control.
But when it comes to light that Prince Taam’s death may not have been an accident, and that Jainan himself may be a suspect, the unlikely pair must overcome their misgivings and learn to trust one another as they navigate the perils of the Iskat court, try to solve a murder, and prevent an interplanetary war… all while dealing with their growing feelings for each other.
I borrowed an audio copy of this book in order to have something to listen to as I folded laundry and such. Then, I spent about a day and a half finding other chores to do, so that I could keep listening. This is both the curse and the blessing of a good audiobook.
I very much enjoyed this—the story, writing, and the narration. The story kept me engaged, the romance was worth rooting for, the writing was crisp and easy to follow (with some pointed humor in it), and the narrator did a good job. Though he (the narrator, Raphael Corkhill) did start audibly swallowing about half way through and that irritated me a little.
I thought both Kiem and Jainan were marvelous character and the difficulty of both of their situations came across well. I did think their continued misunderstanding of one another went on too long and it became notably artificial. But it did make the resolution feel like a payoff for putting up with it. I liked the side characters and the world in general. So, all in all, I’d call this a winner and I’ll be back for more of Maxwell’s writing in the future.
