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Today started the first of a two month leave-of-absence I'm taking from my job, and one of my (several) goals, is to get caught up here so that hopefully, when I go back, presuming the time off works and makes it so I can stop working seven days a week due to burn-out based inefficiency, I can get back to just regular posting. I guess we'll all see how that works out, huh?
I'm essentially fifteen reviews behind at this moment. I'm not certain I will do all of them. Diving back in with The Knight and the Necromancer trilogy by A.H. Lee.
Like Captive Prince, I think of this trilogy as one book that was split into three Because Publishing.
MC1 is Roland. Roland is our titular knight, he is also, as it so happens, the prince of the realm. His father has died somewhat recently and his sister has taken the title of Queen. This is the first time a woman has been allowed to take control of the kingdom, and his sister's position is therefore somewhat at risk. Roland has zero interest in being a ruler, and is well aware that his being The Gay, which was recently de-criminalized in the realm.
Roland has been fighting at the border, where they're dealing with an incursion from a bordering...mage dude, basically, who's using some really Bad News Bears magic. He comes home because his sister has called him there for a meeting with some other rulers regarding treaties to protect their countries, all of which are being threatened by mage dude. (There's a LOT of magical worldbuilding in this, all of it well done, that I'm not getting into, which makes things come together quite a bit more.)
Roland meets Sairis, our titular Necromancer, at the local gay watering hole the night before this meeting, and they hit it off not knowing who each other is. The problem being, Sairis has been raised by another necromancer who's been imprisoned by Roland's family since, you know, forever, and Sairis has some pretty big issues around how people treat necromancers.
I was delighted by this trilogy. Both characters have good reason to mistrust each other, but they're also deep-down ethical people, and Roland, who's a cinnamon roll despite everything expected of him, refuses to believe the worst of Sairis even when Sairis gives him every opportunity to.
In addition to the well-drawn romance that functions far more on these two deciding again and again to trust each other in order to overcome outside obstacles than on the moral-enemies setup, there are a lot of great supporting characters. Daphne, Roland's sister, is at once a practical, intentional leader, but she's also a highly supportive sibling and a girl who's having fun with the man she's marrying for political reasons. The leader of the mage school in Daphne and Roland's kingdom turns out to have a complex and fascinating history and by the end of the trilogy, I kind of wanted an entire book about him.
As much as this is a romance, it shares time as a fantasy, and to some extent, a political thriller, and all of the pieces come together in a satisfactory way. If you're into any of those genres, I would tell you it's worth checking out.
I'm essentially fifteen reviews behind at this moment. I'm not certain I will do all of them. Diving back in with The Knight and the Necromancer trilogy by A.H. Lee.
Like Captive Prince, I think of this trilogy as one book that was split into three Because Publishing.
MC1 is Roland. Roland is our titular knight, he is also, as it so happens, the prince of the realm. His father has died somewhat recently and his sister has taken the title of Queen. This is the first time a woman has been allowed to take control of the kingdom, and his sister's position is therefore somewhat at risk. Roland has zero interest in being a ruler, and is well aware that his being The Gay, which was recently de-criminalized in the realm.
Roland has been fighting at the border, where they're dealing with an incursion from a bordering...mage dude, basically, who's using some really Bad News Bears magic. He comes home because his sister has called him there for a meeting with some other rulers regarding treaties to protect their countries, all of which are being threatened by mage dude. (There's a LOT of magical worldbuilding in this, all of it well done, that I'm not getting into, which makes things come together quite a bit more.)
Roland meets Sairis, our titular Necromancer, at the local gay watering hole the night before this meeting, and they hit it off not knowing who each other is. The problem being, Sairis has been raised by another necromancer who's been imprisoned by Roland's family since, you know, forever, and Sairis has some pretty big issues around how people treat necromancers.
I was delighted by this trilogy. Both characters have good reason to mistrust each other, but they're also deep-down ethical people, and Roland, who's a cinnamon roll despite everything expected of him, refuses to believe the worst of Sairis even when Sairis gives him every opportunity to.
In addition to the well-drawn romance that functions far more on these two deciding again and again to trust each other in order to overcome outside obstacles than on the moral-enemies setup, there are a lot of great supporting characters. Daphne, Roland's sister, is at once a practical, intentional leader, but she's also a highly supportive sibling and a girl who's having fun with the man she's marrying for political reasons. The leader of the mage school in Daphne and Roland's kingdom turns out to have a complex and fascinating history and by the end of the trilogy, I kind of wanted an entire book about him.
As much as this is a romance, it shares time as a fantasy, and to some extent, a political thriller, and all of the pieces come together in a satisfactory way. If you're into any of those genres, I would tell you it's worth checking out.
