An imaginative and entertaining, if underedited and salacious, sex-and-sorcery romp.
A witch’s persecution of her stepdaughters leaves ample opportunity for dalliances in this fantasy/romance.
Following The Scarlett Mark (2020), this second installment of Lane’s A Reign of Blood and Magic series finds the sorceress Cynara presiding over the Kingdom of Velez, where she’s hated by everyone, including her son, King Lowell. She’s known as The Ebony Queen because of her mainly black wardrobe and blacker heart. Craving more dark power, she meets with the fallen angel Daemonis, who promises to help her with a mega-spell that will precipitate Ragnarök and gifts her immediately with the power to cause storms in distant places. She deploys tempests against the three stepdaughters who have fled to far-flung lands to escape her wrath. Princess Rose gets swept overboard during a storm at sea and is saved by studly pirate Edwin Perrow. Princess Scarlett, happily engaged to Lord Nicolai Graydon, gets engulfed by a sand tornado that only abates when the war god Odin gallops across the sky to her rescue atop his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. Princess Ruby and her handsome guardian Garrett Morris endure the worst ordeal after a snowstorm drives them into a cave that Cynara seals shut with lightning. A dayslong slog through a tunnel takes them to a shallow pool that they have to wade through, leaving them no alternative except to get naked and fall into each other’s arms. Meanwhile, back in Velez, Sister Mary Margaret (who is the princesses’ mother, Regana, in disguise) and the Lord Chancellor take time out from plotting against Cynara to have sex in church. And Cynara takes time out from witchery to fondle the manhood of her stable groom. Lane’s romantic fantasia is a talkfest with dialogue that’s sometimes tart and punchy (“You lie once, I take your tongue. Twice, you lose your arm”) but often overripe (“I’d plunder your lips right now, causing them to swell with desire, and I wouldn’t stop pillaging your lift until my rudder—”) or indecipherable (“The battle cry doesn’t spy her last breath until the soldier accepts his final mark”). Still, Cynara makes a compelling villain—a scene where she ferrets the truth out of Mary Margaret has a chilling ruthlessness—and the otherworldly effects are vivid and well rendered in this energetic tale.
An imaginative and entertaining, if underedited and salacious, sex-and-sorcery romp.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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