Miltantly Romantic

It's been a minute. 2021 was...a thing that happened. I am trying, at this time, to have one post a month. It's the 29th of January, so clearly I'm not off to what one could consider a smashing success, but also, it's not February. Calling it a win.

Other romance-related goals for this year include not losing my mind when the second season of Bridgerton releases and it's all the community can talk about for six months while I mostly want to crawl in a hole and die, getting some more trans/genderqueer titles in the rotation, being a little more willing to DNF when I'm not enjoying. 

Other writing goals for this year: to do it. In any form. Anywhere. We'll see how that goes, shall we?

In any case, as promised in the above title (and the tags, for that matter), a review. Turning this leaf over with Maxym M. Martineau's Kingdom of Exiles.

The subgenre for this one is fantasy, and the world building is truly lovely. I enjoyed the heck out of this book and only have some extremely minor nitpicks to mention.

Our female lead is Leena. Leena comes from a place where the people are known as Charmers, and they use what's essentially an innate ability to draw others to them to tame magical creatures. When the book starts, Leena has been exiled from her home for crimes she hasn't committed, framed by an ex who did commit said crimes. Understandably, she has some trust issues. She's also doing a bunch of illegal stuff to get by. But her competence is established very early, as is her tendency to genuinely care about others, even when she maybe shouldn't. Leena is an intensely likeable character from the get-go.

When a contract for a hit is put on her, Leena forces her way into the guild that has taken the contract and negotiates with the head of the guild, Noc, to get the hit rescinded. Noc, who's got ninety-nine problems of his own, makes a deal that if she can get the guild four creatures of a certain level of skill, he'll "handle" the contract.  What Leena doesn't know is that by the rules of the guild, the contract can't be rescinded, barring having the person who ordered it rescind it or killing that person, and Noc simply intends to kill her once he's gotten the creatures.

In fairness, Leena has forced her way in by way of almost killing his second, so he thinks he's dealing with some kind of criminal mastermind, basically, but I will say, I was pretty side-eye-ey about this.

Anyway, Noc and the three other assassins Leena is going to provide with creatures have to go on a road trip to go get the creatures. You'll be shocked to find out that Noc and Leena fall in love along the way. Then there's a BUNCH of exterior problems that have to be overcome for that love to be even mildly viable. For those that this might bother: this is the first in a planned six book series, and there are elements of the plot that are not resolved at the end. That said, it ends at a HFN place and it doesn't feel like you'll die if you can't begin the next book immediately.

All right, my nitpicks, and they really are minor.  I like very much that Noc is clearly queer--he's had past relationships with both men and women, there's no question that he finds both men and women romantically interesting. However, in a world where there does not seem to be an issue with queerness, at least so far as I can discern, the fact that it is his past heterosexual relationship that sets off a war, and that he ends with Leena because, as one of his male near-lovers explains, "she's the missing piece," it fronts his m/f relationships in a way that his m/m relationships are not. I don't actually think this was intentional on the part of the author. Especially as the relationship between Kost (the near-lover) and Noc has settled into deep platonic love, it doesn't feel as though it's meant to be dismissive. Even so, it would have been really easy for the relationship that began the war to be the one between Noc and his male lover because...their society doesn't have our hang ups. And sure, you have a bit of a kill your gays issue there, but not really, because a) several of Noc's past lovers are dead because Noc has been living with a curse with that as the end result, and b) Kost is still alive and we are introduced to another queer character at the end of the book that it's heavily suggested will play a larger part in the coming books/is interested in pursuing Kost.

Also, with the exception of a few minor characters here and there, for a completely different world, everyone seems weirdly pretty white.

If you are someone for whom characters keeping secrets from each other bothers you, I would tell you to proceed with caution. Both characters have serious secrets, and they are not revealed until well into the book. Some of Noc's STILL have not been revealed to Leena, which is a little squicky, if I'm being honest. They both have good reasons for keeping quiet as long as they do, everyone's motivations in this book make sense, but if that's a thing for you, well, reader beware.

And finally, there's a point in the book where Noc assumes something he is told which is exceedingly vague and he's really dumb AF to make the assumption he makes means one thing and it actually means something completely else which screws Leena six ways from Sunday. Again, it makes sense why he makes this assumption, but also, there's a decent amount of 'because plot' that happens there, which also might be a thing for some peeps.

That said, Leena's a great leading character, and Noc is pretty darn good.  Kost, Calem, and Oz are all deeply engaging, and the found family happening in this is *chef's kiss*.  As a plus, the creatures are interesting, and sometimes adorable. Most of all, I never felt like the plot got in the way of the characters or the relationships, which I feel like 99.9999% of plots do.

I'll definitely be looking into the next book sometime in the near future.

This is written in a tight POV from one of the main characters, Tom.  Tom grew up incredibly wealthy, the child of a widower.  It's not clear how his mom died.  Possibly in childbirth?  Illness shortly thereafter?  Anyway, she's not in the picture.  Tom's sophomore year of college, his dad gets charged with running a huge Ponzi scheme.  This first leads to Tom being barricaded in his house with his father while the press surround them on every side until they run out of food--delivery services have proven unwilling to deal with getting through the press--being betrayed by one of his friends to the press, catching his father having tried to commit suicide and having to call the ER, and then, when the charges are actually set, all of the assets being frozen.

Tom basically decides that he desperately needs his college degree to dig himself out of the mess, but not having any financial help, he starts living out of his car and driving it as a gypsy cab in the hours when he can't drive a legal cab.  He does this the entire summer and then shows back up at school to find out he has a roommate, Reese, who Does Not Want a Roommate, and was specifically promised by the school he would not have one. 

We later find out why Reese is so het up about this issue, and frankly, it does not come as a surprise that his previous roommate stood by and watched as Reese was assaulted by some of the roommate's friends the year before, largely for the crime of being out and gay.  Reese's father, also a single parent, is super in Reese's corner, and when he finds out about it, bullies the school into making sure Reese will be at least slightly more safe.

Which the school promises to do and promptly drops the fucking ball on.  Reese embarks on a campaign to run Tom off with his Gayness, including regularly bringing back hookups, even when Tom is in the room.  (Something that Reese does without any type of discussion or consent on Tom's part and despite the fact that Tom finds it hot, that honestly bothers me a lot.)

Tom, however, already has a pretty good idea that he's bi, or, as he often calls it "equal opportunity."  It doesn't work out the way Reese wants it to.  Or, arguably, it does, because after about six misunderstandings caused by the fact that Tom has trust issues from here to Siberia, and Reese is doing his best to fuck his way past his trauma, the two of them end up getting together.  It's actually from there that things get particularly interesting, as Reese is out and Tom is not ready to be, for a whole slew of reasons.  There's a lot of compromise on both parts, and working through things, and fights, and working to be better for the other person.

One of the things I particularly liked about this book was the frank acknowledgement that being bi means a person is capable of dating the other gender, and that doing so is simpler not just in terms of prejudice but in terms of meeting partners.  I also appreciated that it called out the problem of bi invisibility when bi persons enter into relationships, and the way both the het and queer communities have issues with the identity.  Worthwhile as well was the unpacking of the struggle of being out even in an environment where Tom is aware that it's most likely to be easily accepted.

I was pleased that the two of them genuinely broke up and were apart for a chunk of time.  I think it's true of a lot of relationships that begin when people are young that a break is often necessary to define who you are as people apart from each other and if the relationship works if you are those people in it.  

I didn't love that while we know Tom is an unreliable narrator, it's not clear just HOW unreliable until pretty late in the book, and then it's a little bit harder to grapple with how much you can support his motives or not.

In addition, I felt like the climactic moments were all weirdly placed.  I appreciated that Reese didn't wig when he figured out a secret Tom had been keeping because he was ashamed, but at the same time, it's been this huge thing for like three-fourths of the book and then it's just neatly resolved in about a page.  Or, when they break up, we don't find out that Reese has officially done so until Tom thinks about it in a flashback.

I suppose I just felt like a lot of time the real heft of where the emotions should be isn't where they end up, or maybe that there's just not enough of them, period.  I didn't mind the book, but it never really grabbed me, either.