To start I’ll just mention that I received an arc from Macmillan UK audio via Netgalley for this book, and I didn’t start it as soon as I should have due to various reasons, but anyway I really enjoyed it, it was really compelling, the narration by Safiyya Ingar was excellent, the setting felt fresh and the characters believable and likeable (except the baddies, obviously).
To sum up the plot, Yaseema is a relic-hunter (a human who somehow has some magic), and ends up crossing into the fae world to find an ancient crown which can be used to restore magic to her dying land (and also rebalance power, we learn that her people are mostly poor and don’t have much to eat, the food descriptions in this book are also top tier and will leave you drooling).
Enter Kiyan the captain of the fae guard, serving the evil king who wants the crown for himself to become unstoppable and subjugate even more people and lands. I won’t say more because I think it will give too much of the plot away.
This was billed as Romantasy, but I would argue its not, its a fantasy story with a romance subplot, the romance wasn’t front and centre and I felt like if you removed the romance and had just made them buddies in crime, it would’ve still have stood as a story. Also because I read the audiobook, I can’t just flick back a few pages to check if I remembered correctly
I’m not gonna lie, it took me a while to get fully immersed in the story as there’s quite a lot of world building and scene setting to get through to get to the juicy action! As this was an audiobook, I was listening to bits here and there on my way to /from work but it wasn’t until I was around 40% in that it really gripped me and I started to root for the characters.
The end was a bit of a cliff hanger that forced me to investigate and confirm that its actually a duology rather than standalone. I will be grabbing the sequel once released because I need to know what happens.
Rated 4.75/5
