Narrators: Caitlin Elizabeth, Victoria Mei, Will Thorne, and Adenrele Ojo Publication Date: November 28, 2023 (audiobook) Format Read: Audiobook Audiobook Length: 12 hours and 31 minutes Page Length: 394 pages My Rating: 2 / 5 stars Links: Amazon | Audible...
Narrators: Caitlin Elizabeth, Victoria Mei, Will Thorne, and Adenrele Ojo
Publication Date: November 28, 2023 (audiobook)
Format Read: Audiobook
Audiobook Length: 12 hours and 31 minutes
Page Length: 394 pages
My Rating: 2 / 5 stars
Links: Amazon | Audible | Goodreads
SYNOPSIS
From cult-favorite writing duo Kit Rocha comes a fiery novel set in a lush fantasy world brimming with ancient magic, dangerous secrets, and erotic connections.
For three thousand years, an ancient dragon god has protected the borders of the Sheltered Lands. In return, he makes only one demand: every one hundred years, the mortal ruler must send their heir to serve as his consort…for as long as they can survive.
Sachielle of House Roquebarre is the thirty-first consort to be sacrificed to the monster who guards the mountain passes. She is young, beautiful—and she has three secrets.
First: she’s a disposable orphan trained in seduction.
Second: her handmaid, Zanya, is an assassin and the only person she has ever loved.
Third—and most dangerous: she’s cursed. Sachi and Zanya have five weeks to murder the Dragon in his bed. If they fail, the mortal king’s curse will steal not just Sachi’s life, but her very soul.
The Dragon has only one secret: he is nothing like what they have been told. And he will do whatever it takes to possess them both…
REVIEW
I think I need to stop trying to read romantasy books, even from authors I’ve liked a lot previously who have written in other genres. I’ve come to realize I want battles and actual fighting. At best, we get sparring here and that’s…it? There IS a life and death element to the story but it never feels particularly pressing because the romance takes over. It wouldn’t be too bad, but the romance is the slowest of burns. I normally adore slow burn romances, even where the couples don’t get together in the first book, but there needs to be tension or some external plot to keep me occupied in the meantime, and I just wasn’t getting that at all.
The pacing felt weird from the romance side of things to me and the external plot takes a backseat. The ending implies something big is on the horizon but I don’t really get a sense of the threat. I understand the WHO but not why I should care. I think I was too taken aback at the random POV thrown in at the last minute, and I was still distracted trying to remember who this person even was. And the thing is, I just don’t know if I’ll care enough to come back to the story when the book comes out almost a whole year from now.
Content warnings include (taken directly from the authors’ website) violence, murder, reference to past trauma for heroine #1 (child abuse, emotional abuse, trained in seduction under coercion), and reference to past trauma for heroine #2 (child abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, violently trained as an assassin).
So, I just did a whole re-read of the available Kit Rocha backlist available on audiobook earlier this year. It’s the Beyond, the Gideon Rider’s, and the Mercenary Librarians series. Those all take place in the same world. This is a brand spanking new fantasy world, and I think I just have a whole different set of expectations when it comes to fantasy books. This is romance-focused with a bit of fantasy thrown in. A story with a fantasy flair if you will. And I know a lot of romance readers prefer that and love that, but I am not one of those readers. I fear I’m a fantasy first and then a dash of romance girlie, so this is just not my thing.
This was signed as a duology I think? The audiobook is 12 hours and 31 minutes and while this is far shorter than other adult fantasy books I listen to and this length seems more on par with older YA fantasy (before the 400+ page fantasy books took over), the book FEELS long when it comes to the story. The story moves at a snails pace. When I first got the e-ARC, I winded up stopping at 5% because I was already bored. I wasn’t into it. I winded up getting the audiobook though because it was whispersynced on Audible (if you have the Kindle Unlimited copy) for only $1.99. Well, I finished it but it was rough there at the 50% mark, because I was ready to quit. Again, I was bored.
The story is about three characters – Sachielle (Sachi), the human consort who is to marry the dragon god; Zanya, Sachi’s handmaid and assassin who loves Sachi; and then there’s Ash, the dragon god in question. The book seems undecided whether he is 3000 or 4000 years old, but the point is, he’s old. Sachi and Zanya are 25.
One of my favorite characters from the authors’ books is Ashwin from the Gideon Rider’s series so it was super weird to see a MC called Ash here. But I guess Ash is a play on the fact he can shift into a dragon? And breaths fire and can turn things into ash? I’m not sure if that is his full name and Ash isn’t short for something? If he said, I missed it. Also, are there other dragons or is he the only one? How did the people in this world decide on the name ~dragon~ if there are no others? Did his parents name him Ash in some divine prophecy knowing he’d be a dragon one day? I have questions.
But like the blurb says, Sachi and Zanya have been sent to trick the gods (Ash and friends) and they must kill the dragon god within a set number of days. Sachi has been cursed to die if they don’t succeed within 5 weeks. The premise of Ash having to take human consorts in general seems convoluted to me. He is…one with the earth and he marries them to…preserve the land? I honestly don’t know. I think it was in one of the many bedtime stories and lore told in the book but it honestly did not stick in my brain as I was listening to the audio.
The pacing of the romance was odd to me. This is a FFM polyam book and I loved the idea of that pairing because we don’t really see enough of that in romance books. But half the romance already happens before the book starts. Sachi and Zanya already fiercely love one another, even if they had previously only been able to show each other their affection in a dream place Sachi can create. Disappointingly, Sachi immediately falls for Ash the minute they’re married and bonded in a (nonsexual) bonding ceremony. I don’t know when Zanya fell for Ash.
They’re all so hesitant to have sex together until they’re not. Like it feels there’s just nothing happening for ages because Ash is trying to be respectful and suddenly we’re having sex scenes that escalates into a mini orgy scene by the end. It does harken back to the authors’ Beyond series days but the orgy scene here really threw me off because it doesn’t work well when you don’t know who’s who and you’re trying to keep up on audio alone.
There’s a LOT of characters thrown at you in this book and I don’t have a sense of who anyone really is besides our main three and the one known as the Lover (Aleksi, another god). There’s also the Huntress and the Wolf, a newborn water spirit, and a security detail of five people known as the Ravens who turns into actual ravens. But hell if I know anyone’s actual names. Maybe it’ll be more obvious in the next book and easier to know who’s who but all the characters just blend together to me and don’t have enough depth to them to differentiate who’s who.
All the gods are old but they weren’t born gods. They were all humans once and later became gods when the world needed them. But the problem to me is they feel and act like they’re so young for people who are thousands upon thousands of years old. Like, I could get behind them being a few hundred of years old based on their personalities, but thousands is a stretch. The one time they actually showed some old wisdom is that they recognized Zanya for who she was and what her mission was pretty early on. I actually liked that it wasn’t a huge secret they were all just sitting around waiting for Sachi and Zanya to fess up to.
Ash I liked, but I feel like he doesn’t really have that PRESENCE in the book I was expecting. Although he is a POV character, he doesn’t exhibit godly power and the confidence you’d expect? Maybe something did dampen in him when his last consort tragically died, but I think I would have almost preferred this to be strictly a FF romance between Sachi and Zanya because I don’t know what Ash is bringing to this relationship. The audiobook narrator was Ash was fine. Will Thorne is apparently a recognizable actor and narrator under his real name, but I don’t think I’ve listened to anything he’s narrated before. He brings a slight British accent to an otherwise American sounding cast. The other narrators in the book also use an accent for Ash when he shows up in their POVs, which seemed well done.
I’ve seen reviews say they like Zanya the most? But I don’t know why. I guess it’s because Zanya can fight with weapons, is standoffish, and seemingly has a darker past? The thing is, she has a very single minded focus on Sachi, and Sachi alone. She wants to keep her lover alive by any means necessary and I just found her POV chapters exhausting. I get her fears? But I got very tired and bored reading her chapters because she thinks about nothing else. I also think I don’t like Zanya as much because I don’t love the audiobook narrator for her. The narrator pseudonym isn’t a secret since it’s been said in an interview that’s available online and she uses her own face for her pseudonym social media profiles, but Victoria Mei is Natalie Naudus, who narrates a lot of popular fantasy audiobooks under her NN name. I had a very bad time listening to her in the Drowned Empire series and the Radiant Emperor books, so realizing it was her again here for this audiobook was disappointing. I got through them but I’m not a fan.
I did like Sachi the most as the book went on. I think she’s the most unassuming character and I don’t like how every character acts like she can’t take care of herself. She also had rigorous training for this moment – when she’d marry the dragon god. She might not have been trained in weaponry like Zanya, but I don’t think Sachi is to be underestimated and I appreciate her strength. The narrator for her threw me off at first. I’ve never listened to Caitlin Elizabeth before but my literal first thought was that she had a voice that would do better for YA audiobooks because her voice sounds so young. I don’t think the actress is young herself but her voice sounds that way. And what do you know, she has a pseudonym as well for very popular and well-known YA books so I guess I wasn’t wrong.
We have a fourth narrator listed in this audiobook listing, Adenrele Ojo. She appears in the last chapter in the audio and I am confused I guess. Like why was this POV change needed for this scene specifically? What does she add to the story? And more importantly, who is this character? I was so distracted by this new character POV, the shock of who appears in the last scene didn’t have the same punch to it that I’m sure it was supposed to have. I THINK she’s the Siren. The god of the sea? Why was she even there when she says she hasn’t even seen Ash for 3000 years at that point? What is her role?
So, how they solve the conundrum of saving Sachi and not having to kill Ash (this is a romance after all) feels like a bit of handwavy magic. It just all gets fixed out of the blue. There is a harrowing moment involved but maybe I’m just used to reading longer books because everything happens so fast here from one scene to the next and things get explained away so quickly that it had no impact on me whatsoever.
I know a lot of reviews say they love the worldbuilding but the worldbuilding is lost on me apparently. I am not getting a great grasp or sense of the world like I would expect for a fantasy book. It feels very…surface level.
The first, oh…75% of the book was super slow to me despite the short book. I’m not even sure what they’re doing. Once Sachi and Ash get married, they’re immediately on progress going around to different castles where people throw a party for them. And it’s just rinse and repeat where they’re on the road again and then at another party. I wish something happened during this time like someone attacking them while they’re on the road. ANYTHING. But there just wasn’t really anything exciting happening by my measure of fantasy books. When I’ve read the authors’ previous books I’ve never felt bored. This was, for the most part, just really boring. And that’s a shame because I’ve really liked a lot for the authors’ books in the past. I just wish I liked this as well. I think I need to give their older PNR books a try instead of their fantasy books. I know they’re huge fantasy readers (or maybe just Bree out of the writing duo), and maybe something about this story reflects their love for older school fantasy books because I personally prefer more recent fantasy book styles? And maybe that’s where my disconnect with the story is.
I know I’m the odd one out here. Many people love this book and I think if you’re not an epic fantasy reader, or just don’t read fantasy books in general, you might really love this. I just like a very specific type of fantasy book and this didn’t work for me. The romance didn’t work for me either and I think I would’ve loved it more as a FF book rather than an FFM polyam. It fell flat for me and I’m sad about that, but the authors’ do have a wealth of backlist books I still haven’t gotten to yet, so I think I’ll read those instead.
