Shea Godfrey

I mostly enjoyed this, although the writing felt a bit amateurish at times. It suffers from the overly dramatic style of description that seems to plague many/most romance novels. But I thought the characterization was decent and the narrative compelled me enough to keep reading. The Queen's characterization was done well, as was Jessa's. Darrius seemed like a spoiled brat in many ways....I'm not sure if this was intentional or not on the part of the author. But she was interesting to read about. Oh, and the lesbian sex was hot, that probably earned it a half star there. ;)
I hold out hope that the writing style improves a bit in the next one; if so, it'd be a solid series.… (más)

The book was engaging when I got past the casual racism that we're all supposed to accept and when I ignore that the last part of the book devolved into ridiculous sex scenes that were unnecessary.

On one hand it was super great to have a protagonist of colour! On the other hand, the culture that she comes from is so horribly dealt with that I could vomit. The brown persons are quite all literally disgusting. I could maybe give you a society that overall treats women as lesser, but when you make this society the PoC and then the white society is somehow the only place that love exists, then you can step away. We don't even get one MoC who's remotely kinda decent. Yes, the white society had problems with women and their "place" as well, but there are tons of characters in that society who are sympathetic if not lovable. The PoC were made to be as close to some bastardization of South Asian Muslims and then they were made to be the most disgusting human in the entire world. It was so frustrating to see that portrayal.

And then there's the part later on when it devolves into just loads of unnecessary sex. I mean, for some people that maybe a thing that they like, but it just felt so ridiculous to me that so many of the pages were dedicated to it (and I won't get into the strange language that is used to describe sex). And the word erotica is nowhere in sight in the genres on this site. It's kind of hilarious since the entire book is basically the main characters lusting after each other.

This book could have definitely gotten a few more stars if it's treatment of PoC wasn't as gross, but it was so yeah.… (más)

I received this book for review on Netgalley.

I was hoping this book would be better than the first and it was but not by too much. The language is very dense in it's attempts at eloquence so much that it made my head hurt, especially during the sex scenes. They were thankfully less than in Nightshade but it was still over the top and a bit ridiculous.

I'm very happy that the magic played a real role in this book and Jessa strength on mind was wonderful to see. It was nice to see her take charge.

The treatment of what we could call the persons of colour in the previous book was atrocious. It was slightly better in this book. There was a bit more talk of the people themselves and we get to see one man in court be mostly decent, but I don't think it does enough to counteract the stereotypes that were in play in the first book.

I was considering giving this book three stars but the prose was a bit too painful for all that. I do think that Godfrey can only improve though, because this was indeed better than the first in the series.… (más)