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Hey guys, we are closing in on our last few reviews, and my last few reviews as a judge in this contest. I’ve been at it a while now and I need a little break — I may pop up again but who knows!
This was a book I had hoped Kristen would provide the balancing perspective for; it’s a romance, somewhat YA with younger protagonists, and it’s got fucking dragons in it. That said, Kristen DNFed, so my review will be the only review. Unfortunately, I don’t think I was the target audience for this one. Other reviewers clearly loved it—Chels from Fantasy Faction gave it an 8, and the OG blog awarded it a 9—so take my thoughts with a grain of salt if the tropes and narrative devices mentioned below are right up your alley.
We’ve got a slower burn romance with a fated lovers trope — she is something called a Moontouched child, and typically, these people are thought of as cursed. Moontouched children are often given away by their parents, and in other more extreme circumstances, the parents just off their babies after figuring out they are Moontouched. She has an appearance sort of similar to Dani from Game of Thrones/ASOIAF, she’s got pale white hair, kind of a pale complexion, etc. She’s the only woman Moontouched, I’m not sure if that’s, like, in the entire world or just the ones in the Brotherhood, but needless to say, she’s a rarity. It’s possible other female Moontouched have been born but killed by her parents or something. She’s handed a “Marriage Fate” after going through the Fate Ceremony, and she’s not happy about this at all. She’s supposed to marry whoever is the winner of this championship tournament coming up soon — another common trope. I was expecting the people competing in this tournament to be fucking pissed, because who wants to marry a Moon touched person if they will likely give you these cursed moonchild children? However, they’re all for it, and that kind of threw me for a loop. The fact that she’s pretty somehow off sets the fact their kids might be ostracized from society.
Anywho, as things progress we get some more characters like Lang, who is a prince with a mission to fuck up her Marriage Fate. Lang’s dad is a dick and is manipulative and brings in some court intrigue to the plotlines. There’s also a guy named Seth who is another Moontouched person from another part of the world called the Sightlands, and as that name would suggest, he has visions of the future. To throw in another trope, he’s got feelings for Tani but won’t talk about it.
I think my favorite part of the book were the dragons, the prince, Lang, is bonded to a dragon and as Luscaz mentioned in his part of the Fantasy Faction review, they sort of steal the show anytime they are on page – I’m fine with that. The world building was okay, I felt it was a bit overexplained at points with big chunks of info dumping as opposed to just “showing” me things in world in a more natural kind of way. It relies on the five senses kind of magic, so you’ve got places called The Scentlands, Touchlands, Sightlands, etc. I used to be someone who really enjoyed categorized magic or “structured” magic, but my taste has shifted a little bit away from that as the years go on — but this could appeal to people who like Brandon Sanderson type of world and world building. It’s an epic scope and clearly there’s a lot going on outside the borders of the world that’s on the page, so I’ll give it that.
Ultimately, it was difficult for me to tell whether the pacing genuinely dragged or if my lack of engagement made it feel sluggish. While the prose was good enough to keep me turning pages, several character actions felt driven by plot necessity rather than organic motivation. This also ends on a cliffhanger type ending which doesn’t usually set well with me. Even if a book is part of a continued series, I much prefer a more wrapped up ending than one that tries to urge you to read the next installment by leaving the first one incomplete.
I’m sad to say that it just wasn’t the right fit for me, but that is the nature of the contest sometimes.