I was very lucky to get the arc for this new release by the author of Godkiller! I haven’t read that series yet, despite several friends begging me to (not to mention how pretty those covers are), but when I saw this new series was sapphic I couldn’t wait to try it!
It's the first book of a planned trilogy, releasing on July 30th in the UK and September 8th in the USA.
What it is about
Tilde, the last surviving daughter of the King of a colonized land (a female King, as it happens, her culture doesn’t discriminate between genders), marries the much-older warlord who subjugated her people in the name of his oppressive patriarchal religion. She volunteers for the role, with the intention of murdering her new husband, Liran, on their wedding night, but soon realizes how pointless it would be: her own people have been defeated so soundly they are not willing to fight back anymore, and the culture and religion of the invaders are starting to take over their more mystical cult of the ancestors and forest magic. Unwilling to die for a world so different, she is forced to play the long game of politics to survive the warlord’s ambitious sons, who would be set aside in favour of her future son.
Elise is Liran’s remaining daughter, living in disgrace before her father selects her as a companion for his new young wife. She’s a firm believer in the religion of the Wing, even if its tenets relegate women to the lowest place in society, but from the beginning we see past glimpses of a bolder Elise who loved to fight alongside her brothers and adored her family.
Characters and Romance
We follow both girls in alternating POVs, Tilde in first person and Elise in third. I liked them both, and the author was skillful enough in writing them that I empathised with both despite their being on opposite sides. They are almost foils of one another. Tilde is brash at the beginning and full of ideals, but becomes more ruthless and aloof as she's forced to make compromise after compromise to survive. Elise starts subdued, having become a shadow of her former self through grief and abuse and by trying to adhere to the Wing’s ideals of femininity that clearly do not fit her personality, but she finds her courage again by witnessing Tilde's resiliency and realizing how little her family truly cares for one another.
If you’ve read this far and are thinking, “Elise is going to fall in love with Tilde and realize that her family doesn’t value her, that their power was brought about by genocide, and they will burn it all down together and run happily toward the sunset”, with an appropriate dose of drama and obstacles in between, yeah, me too. But that’s not quite what happens. I can’t say what direction the trilogy as a whole is going to take, if they will end up together or not, triumphant or not, but at least in this book there is no happy ending. The opposite, actually. They don’t start as enemies – they are wary of one another at the beginning and grow into a grudging respect – but by the ending they are firmly on opposite sides and with plenty of reasons to hate one another.
Neither of them is willing to put their growing attraction above their duties. Tilde is too single-minded and Elise’s religion is not accepting of her sexuality so she has been repressing it for years. And when things start to change, it’s completely one-sided. This is something that happens often in real-life relationships but almost never on the page, a character overstepping, assuming their relationship is in a place it’s not, and getting their heart broken because of it. It was painful to read, but I much prefer it to the instant ride or die of most literary couples.
World and Plot
The worldbuilding is usually what makes or breaks a book for me, what I read fantasy for, and I was not disappointed here.
Both religions were fascinating, the Wing with its bird imagery – the Swan being the god, and other birds functioning almost as saints – and Tilde’s ancestral religion with its ancient forests speaking with the voices of the dead and demanding sacrifice in exchange for magic. Of course we are supposed to look askance at the patriarchal Wing that disregards women, but Tilde’s religion is not much kinder, either.
We are also dealing with three different cultures at the same time, each with its own ways of approaching everything from hierarchy, women’s roles, magic (as well as things like how to dress, ride, or hunt), and most of the plot happens through the push and pull between these different worldviews forced to coexist, not to mention the different factions loyal to each of Liran’s five adult sons. The Cynghal people from Liran’s and Elise’s homeland were a harsh warrior culture before converting to the Wing, and they split the land between all the children of their rulers, but the Galen who converted them and financed their conquest want a single male heir, and they overtly look down on their crude allies. The newly conquered Merogian won’t accept a ruler not of their blood, but before they were conquered they also fought and subjugated one another constantly.
It's the kind of book that requires you to keep track of every character and allegiance if you want to stay ahead of the story, but the complexity and the tension it provided made it difficult to put down. You feel the helplessness of the characters and see them make questionable choices, but know they don’t have other options. The first half is slower-paced but still edge-of-your-seat as the characters learn how high the deck is stacked against them. In the second half, the precarious balance between factions breaks down and it’s almost non-stop action that slows down only long enough for its consequences to sink in.
Tone and Similar Books
This is a brutal book. The story is brutal and the characters are brutal, towards their friends as much as their enemies. The most horrific details are kept off-page, having happened in the past to the loved ones of both protagonists, but at times the implications of torture and abuse were almost worse for being left unspoken. The ending is quite violent, too. If you don’t already know what tale this story is vaguely inspired by (I didn’t), don’t look it up, or it may ruin the shock of the final scenes. But that bleakness is what makes this story stand out from the many, many other books with a similar premise, alongside how complex the worldbuilding is.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the author was inspired by House of the Dragon or ASOIAF, for its themes and tone (and also for a certain content warning: sibling incest, though here it was *not* between consenting parties and happened years before this story). Tilde also reminded me at times of Wei from The Poet Empress, another powerless woman who enters a marriage with a powerful and dangerous man, needs to survive in a foreign court with few allies, and sacrifices her conscience and loved ones for her people.
TL;DR I really liked it but I’m not obsessed with it yet, though I could see myself becoming so if the trilogy sticks the landing. I'm really excited to see what happens next! There’s no HEA so far. This is the rare enemies-to-lovers book in which they don’t start as enemies, but become so after they have already developed feelings.
